Ocean disposal of radioactive waste

[1] The waste materials included both liquids and solids housed in various containers, as well as reactor vessels, with and without spent or damaged nuclear fuel.

[2] Summary of pages 27–120: Disposal projects attempted to locate ideal dumping sites based on depth, stability and currents, and to treat, solidify and contain the waste.

The report of 1996, by CRESP suggests measurable leakages of radioactive material, and, concluded that environmental impact is negligible.

The first conversations surrounding dumping radioactive waste into the ocean began in 1958 at the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference (UNCLOS).

[12] The conference resulted in an agreement that all states should actively try to prevent radioactive waste pollution in the sea and follow any international guidelines regarding the issue.

[13] By this time, governments began to realize the severe impacts of marine pollution, which led to one of the first international policies regarding ocean dumping in 1972 – the London Convention.

[13][14] The most recent version of the London Convention now bans all materials from marine dumping, except a thoroughly researched list of certain wastes.

Different countries enforce the ban on radioactive waste dumping on different levels, resulting in an inconsistent implementation of the agreed upon policies.

Several methods of depositing material in the ocean floor have been proposed, including encasing it in concrete and as the United Kingdom has previously done, dropping it in torpedoes designed to increase the depth of penetration into the ocean floor, or depositing containers in shafts drilled with techniques similar to those used in oil exploration.

This is slow enough that it could potentially take millions of years for waste to diffuse through several tens of meters of sediment so that by the time it reaches open ocean it would be highly dilute and decayed.

Large regions of the ocean floor are thought to be completely geologically inactive and it is not expected that there will be extensive human activity there in the future.

Here, waste would be transported by plate tectonic movement into the Earth's mantle and rendered harmless through dilution and natural decay.

Several objections have been raised to this method, including vulnerabilities during transport and disposal, as well as uncertainties in the actual tectonic processes.