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International controls on nuclear waste dumps

01 January 1991

International controls on nuclear waste dumps
artdoc March=1992

At the Third North Sea Ministers meeting in The Hague in March
the UK Environment Minister, Mr Christopher Patten, refused
demands from other North Sea countries to ban the burying of
radioactive waste in the seabed.

With the Swedish Government already using its nuclear waste
repository, which has been drilled under the Baltic Sea at
Forsmark, and the NIREX plans for a huge UK repository at either
Sellafield or Dounreay (See page 1) the burying of nuclear waste
in or under the seabed is to be raised again at meetings of the
London Dumping Convention and the Paris, Oslo and Helsinki
Conventions (which control marine pollution of the North Sea,
Baltic and Atlantic oceans).

At present it is unclear if any of these international maritime
conventions cover waste dumps under the seabed, but reviews are
currently underway and will be considered at meetings later this
year.

NENIG Briefing no 39, April 1990