(351.3487) WISE Amsterdam - Action is urgently needed by the international community to regulate this form of radioactive waste disposal before the UK's plans go further. Although Sweden already has a small radioactive waste dump under the seabed, but accessed from land (Forsmark), this type of dump for radioactive waste (or other hazardous material) is a new idea and not yet regulated by international agreements.
There are two relevant international marine pollution agreements: the London Dumping Convention (LDC), a global agreement which controls pollution from sea-based sources, such as ships; and the Paris Convention, which controls marine pollution from land-based sources in the North Sea and North Atlantic. Governments have so far avoided making a decision on controlling radioactive waste dumps under the seabed but accessed by land by referring the issue from one Convention to another. Last year's Paris convention meeting in Reykjavik agreed to refer the matter to the LDC. But in October 1990, the LDC rejected responsibility for this type of dump, saying it was a land-based source of pollution -though at the same time it accepted that dumping radioactive wastes into the seabed from platforms, using an oil rig for example, was a sea-based source of dumping and thus did come under its responsibility.
Meanwhile, at last year's LDC, as well as in a debate this month at the Danish Parliament and at February's Nordic Council meeting in Copenhagen, the Swedish and Danish governments seem to have accepted that Forsmark is a land-based source of dumping and thus come under the regulation of the Helsinki Convention (the marine pollution convention covering the Baltic Sea).
Now attention needs to be focused on the upcoming meeting of the Paris Convention (the 13th Joint Meeting of the Oslo and Paris Commissions) which will be held 13-15 June in The Hague, Netherlands. A strategy suggested by groups working on this issue is to encourage the Nordic government to submit a formal proposal to the Paris Convention that radioactive waste dumps under the seabed but accessed from land are a land-based source of pollution and therefore controlled by the Convention. To help with this, as well with ways to focus more attention on the matter, NENIG (the Northern European Nuclear Information Group) is preparing a special Briefing paper for folks who want to take this on. Contact them at the address below.
Source: NENIG Briefing 45, 15 Mar. 1991.
Contact: NENIG, Bains Beach, Commercial Street, Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland, tel: +44-595-4099, fax: 595-4082.
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