Scientists Call for Reevaluation of Ban on Radioactive Waste Dumping in Ocean

PACIFIC GROVE, Calif. — Nearly four years after imposition of a global moratorium on ocean dumping of low-level radioactive waste, increasing numbers of scientists are calling for a reevaluation of the ban.

That was apparent Friday at the conclusion of a five-day symposium on ocean disposal attended by 130 scientists from nine countries. Many of the scientists here warned that land disposal of the radioactive wastes, which include material used in medicine and industry, poses a far greater threat to human health and the environment than ocean dumping.

Charles L. Osterberg, an ocean resources specialist with the U.S. Department of Energy, argued that the ocean, with 323 million cubic miles of salt water, is better able to cleanse itself than the land. The ocean also produces just a fraction of the world’s food. By contrast, he said, land disposal could not only threaten the food chain, but also contaminate drinking water and threaten humans by direct exposure.

But such arguments, he complained, are often ignored by those intent on saving the oceans.

“We’d have a heck of a lot more respect for ground water if we had whales in it,” Osterberg said in a luncheon speech.

And, despite what Andrew Robertson, chief of the ocean assessment division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the “scientific consensus” in favor of considering ocean and land dumping at least on equal terms, many of the researchers here acknowledged that the political tide is running against them.

“I’m discouraged,” said Osterberg, who has worked with renowned oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and who has challenged Cousteau’s warnings that the world’s oceans are “dying” from pollution.

“I think all the environmental groups are in favor of strong laws protecting the ocean and I think probably 99% of the public is, too. And, in a democracy that pretty much does it. I just think they’re wrong,” Osterberg said in an interview.

The renewed public discussion among scientists of the “ocean option” comes at a time when states are struggling to meet a congressional deadline of January, 1987, for establishing regional compacts for the land disposal of low-level radioactive wastes.

Currently, low-level wastes are buried in shallow pits in Beatty, Nev., Richland, Wash., and Barnwell, S.C. California produces 220,000 cubic feet of low-level waste annually, which is sent to Richland.

Not all scientists are in agreement that ocean dumping is necessarily preferable.

David Goldsmith of the Toxic Substances Research and Teaching Program at the University of California, Davis, observed, “We’re not prepared at the moment to do effective policy making because we don’t have good science at the moment.”

Whatever is learned in ocean studies, several said it would be unrealistic to base policy decisions purely on scientific evidence.

Clifton E. Curtis, president of the Washington-based Oceanic Society, who addressed the symposium on Friday, noted that fishermen in both Spain and Ireland in the past several years have seen the markets for their catch drop because of unsubstantiated fears of radioactive contamination.

Those fears prompted Spain to become one of the principal proponents of the moratorium, which began in the summer of 1982.

Countries signing the London Dumping Convention treaty, including the United States, are abiding by the moratorium.