Nuclear waste and our oceans
Thanks to Peter Sainsbury for another excellent piece “Environment: Oceans to the rescue: 7 watery ways to reduce greenhouse emissions” (22/10).
Given the latest push from the Coalition to introduce nuclear power in Australia, nuclear waste could be added to the list of toxins polluting our oceans. “The first operations involving sea disposal of radioactive wastes took place in 1946 in the Northeast Pacific, about 80 km off the coast of California. During the 48-year history of sea disposal, 13 countries have disposed of approximately 140 PBq (140 x 1015 Bq) of radioactive wastes into the oceans” (International Atomic Energy Agency). Ocean disposal has been banned by international treaties since 1993.
Except that at the nuclear plant in Fukushima, the company decided they had no more room to store the million tonnes-plus of treated waste water on land. Permission to discharge it into the sea was granted this year; the process will take 30 years to complete.
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