Nuclear Waste

When, in 1983, the London Dumping Convention banned the disposal of high-level nuclear waste into the oceans, there was no shortage of protests. High-level nuclear waste presents a tremendous storage problem, and simply tossing it into the oceans was by far the most "cost-effective" solution. Until the treaty, Atlantic Ocean dumping was common practice for such nuclear nations as Great Britain, Germany, Japan, France, Switzerland and Sweden.

Unfortunately, international treaties are frequently broken, and Greenpeace charges that this one has been repeatedly violated by Russia, a signatory. "Despite the official claims that they 'did not dump, do not dump nor have plans to dump radioactive waste,' Russia...has-and still does-dispose high, medium- and low-level waste [in the oceans]," charged a 1993 Greenpeace International television documentary. Some 18 nuclear reactors have been dumped, six complete with nuclear fuel, the documentary reports. And an estimated 300 nuclear submarines from the former Soviet Union are awaiting decommissioning by the year 2000, with only minimal on-site storage available.

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