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An international task force will help Russia to find alternatives to
dumping its stockpile of radioactive waste into the oceans, nations meeting
in London agreed last week. Signatories to the London Convention on dumping
waste at sea made their offer even though Russia refused to back the meeting’s
decision to ban all nuclear dumping at sea.

Greenpeace hailed the decision to impose a permanent ban on marine dumping
of nuclear waste as a ‘major leap forward’. But while the US voted for the
ban, the four other prime nuclear nations – Britain, France, Russia and
China – all abstained, as did Belgium. The abstaining nations are now likely
to announce that they will not obey the ban.

Any nation can opt out of the ban provided it registers its intention
within 100 days. A spokesman for Britain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food said the government would be ‘considering the position’.

The meeting was attended by only 42 of the 71 signatories to the London
Convention. No nation voted against the ban but some countries suspected
of having nuclear weapons, notably Israel, did not attend.

The ban replaces a 10-year voluntary moratorium on ocean dumping, agreed
in 1983. A scientific panel set up by the parties to the convention in 1986
to review the environmental impact of marine radioactive waste disposal
reported to last week’s meeting but failed to make a recommendation for
or against the ban. It merely noted that sea disposal brought special problems,
including ‘transboundary transfer of radioactive materials’ and the problems
of monitoring waste on the seabed.

Last week’s meeting did not propose any immediate new research into
the impact of radioactive waste on the oceans, but said there should be
a review ‘within 25 years’.

The meeting also agreed to complete phasing out dumping of industrial
waste by the end of 1995 – with exceptions such as sewage sludge and dredgings
– and confirmed a ban on incinerating industrial wastes at sea.

Britain ceased dumping nuclear waste in the early 1980s after members
of the National Union of Seamen refused to take part. Britain says it has
no plans to resume, but wants to keep open the option, particularly to
scupper its fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

Britain, France and Belgium are already committed under the Paris and
Oslo Conventions not to dump radioactive waste in the northeast Atlantic,
including the North Sea, until 2008. According to Greenpeace, these conventions
also effectively ban signatories from dumping in other parts of the world’s
oceans, because radioactivity could eventually reach the northeast Atlantic.

The Soviet Union, despite signing the London Convention, continued to
dump large amounts of nuclear waste at sea for several decades. Russia
recently caused an international outcry by dumping radioactive waste into
the Sea of Japan (This Week, 6 November). Russia failed to persuade the
meeting to grant it an exemption to the ban and allow it to continue dumping
until 1995.

Nations offering to take part in the technical assistance programme
for Russia include Norway, Japan, the US, South Korea and Britain. The meeting
called on these countries to ‘explore the possibilities of international
cooperation in implementing alternative land-based methods of radioactive
waste disposal’.

But delegates said the group could only be of help if Russia was prepared
to provide a detailed inventory of wastes. It was given 12 weeks to comply
– and two years to provide a final statement of its plans for managing future
storage and treatment of radioactive wastes.

A Russian report presented at the start of the meeting detailed past
sea dumping. It revealed numerous projects aimed at handling radioactive
waste safely that had been begun but were never completed because the government
decided that marine dumping was cheaper and easier.

In 1972, the Soviet authorities dropped a programme started by the navy
during the 1960s to build purification plants to handle intermediate-level
waste. And a scheme to build special storage facilities for reactors from
nuclear submarines, adopted in 1985 and due to be completed in 1993, ‘had
not been implemented’. Monitoring dump sites for leaks had not been carried
out ‘for over 25 years’.

The report also claimed that stopping the dumping at sea immediately
could be dangerous and would lead to ‘a real threat to personnel and the
population’ on shore.

‘Existing storage facilities . . . are overfilled’, it said, and waste
from ships has been accumulating in containers in outdoor areas. It was
‘impossible to stop radioactive waste dumping at sea without simultaneously
solving handling problems on shore’.

The report says that building facilities to handle the decommissioning
of the Russian nuclear fleet alone would cost several billion dollars. But
the London meeting made no provision for finding that money.