geen
repugnance,
They point out that 71% of the earth's surface is
They note that the sea as compared to the land is relatively
nonradioactive,
of igneous rocks,
following:
Natural radioactivity of the seas is 1/100 that
As a result of weapons tests they report the
two days after Operation Castle was over in the spring
of 1954 there was a million-fold increase in radioactivity on the
surface waters near Bikini; that after four months 1500 miles
away it was three times the normal amount and that at
the area of surface water contamination
square miles,
13 mnnths
had spread cver a million
and that at a distance of 3500 miles from Bikini
the "artificial" radioactivity was 1/5 the natural.
They concluded that to date there has probably been no
damage to life in the sea except that at the test site proper,
They call attention to concentration of radioactivity by plant
forms in the sea and warn repeatedly against indiscriminate
dumping of radioactive wastes into the sea,
They discuss the
"flushing time" of the Black Sea 2500 years as compared with
perhaps 100 or 200 years for the shalf-deeps of the Atlantic and
Caribbean,
They stress they need to know much more about the
ocean depths and their movements,
(The International Geophysical
Year has a very large-scale study of the depths planned for
1957-58).
This committee would apparently permit "controlled"
sea disposal especlaily of short-lived radioactive materials,
They recommend that “Industrial agencles formulate conventions for
the safe disposal of atomic wastes at sea, based on existing
knowledge."
move.
This would seem to be a very logical and necessary
To date, except for small amounts of short-lived material,
the U, S, has not dumped any radioactive wastes in the sea,
are still storing all process wastes in tanks.
-~ 13 -
Enclosure ITI
We
LaeEe we
ocean and that eventually everything gets into the oceans,