Deep-Sixing the Atom
Deep-Sixing the Atom The deep-sea disposal of radioactive wastes is attractive to the nuclear industry in part because there are no mid-ocean farmers or schoolteachers to arouse neighbors and...
...Their opposition stems from a number of sources...
...Hydrogen bomb testing has left Bikini Atoll and other areas off limits to humans, and radioactive elements already appear in alarming concentrations in fish and other sea life...
...While the Japanese government has temporarily suspended plans to carry out the dumping, the issue is still pressing...
...But it is no use...
...Among other steps, the government joined the London Dumping Convention and the surveillance group of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency...
...petition drives were begun, and soon delegates were off to Tokyo demanding a halt to the dumping plan...
...It is a critical moment: Once the waste is dumped, it will rest on the ocean floor forever...
...Added to this is the postwar reputation the Japanese have won for themselves in much of Asia and Oceania: Tokyo's government-business juggernaut is as well known for the callousness of its development push as is the quality of Japanese goods in the West...
...As Northern Marianas Governor Carlos Camacho said on a recent trip to Tokyo: "The sea and the islands, inhabited or not, should never be thought of as a dumping site...
...John Junkerman (John Junkerman, a free-lance writer in Boston, specializes in Asian issues...
...University of California scientist W. Jackson Davis, for example, analyzed the Japanese environmental impact documents for officials in the Marianas and attacked what he considers seriously erroneous estimates of the likelihood of waste radioactivity entering the food chain...
...Long-term plans call for the burial at sea of as much as 100,000 curies annually into the indefinite future...
...So it appeared to officials of the Japanese government's Science and Technology Agency in 1972, when they began surveying the Pacific Ocean for sites to dump the mountains of nuclear wastes that have accumulated steadily on their crowded and heavily developed archipelago...
...First, the islands have already been directly exposed to the consequences of nuclear pollution...
...In the months since they learned what was in store for them, the islanders have seen reports of nuclear waste dumping elsewhere in the world's oceans and have heard scientific assessments of the attendant hazards...
...Wastes are accumulating rapidly and domestic pressure to dispose of them can only mount...
...The opposition has now infected the Japanese home islands and forced the government to postpone—but not abandon—the dumping scheme...
...They settled on a site halfway between Japan and the Mariana Islands and made preparations to begin test dumping in 1981...
...With a year's notice, the dumping could begin...
...There is a good deal of poignancy in these developments...
...With twenty-two nuclear power plants already on line and another fifteen planned and under construction, Japan has one of the highest levels of nuclear development per square mile in the world...
...For one thing, the island of Tinian, which the United States used as a base to launch the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a Japanese colony between the two world wars, and many of its men and boys were conscripted by the Imperial army for service in the Pacific war...
...By early 1980, however, word of the Japanese plans reached the citizens of the tiny islands that dot the central Pacific, to whom the ocean is front and back yard as well as farm and neighborhood...
...Absolutely no use...
...The remains of Japanese soldiers who fought and died in that war still turn up beneath the plows of farmers tilling the soil...
...The appeals of visiting islanders struck a responsive chord among Japanese fishermen this past spring: Already alarmed by two serious leaks of radioactive water from a reactor into the Japan Sea last January, fishing organizations for the first time called for a review of Japan's nuclear energy program and announced their opposition to the dumping plans...
...As the proposed charter for a nuclear-free Pacific reads, "Only one nuclear submarine has to be lost in the sea, or one nuclear warhead dumped in our ocean from a stricken bomber, and our livelihood is threatened for centuries...
...Legislatures on Guam and in the Northern Marianas immediately passed resolutions against the dumping...
...Other islands followed suit...
...Since the mid-1970s, islander sentiment to have the Pacific Ocean declared a nuclear-free zone has gathered momentum in the world community...
...In the siting of oil storage bases and refineries, the exploitation of lumber resources, the construction and operation of tourist resorts, and many other overseas projects, the enterprising Japanese have too often played fast and loose with the environment, local economies, and opposition groups...
...Vociferous opposition to the plan spread quickly throughout the islands, especially in the Marianas, which include Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, and in the newly inaugurated Republic of Belau (Palau...
...As a consequence, seventy-year-old Tinian Mayor Felipe Mendiola, for one, is wary and adamant: "I heard that the Japanese government would come [here] again and again until we accept the plan...
...They had better give up the plan since it is so unreasonable: to take its own waste to other people's places—using only the useful part of nuclear power and dumping dangerous waste into Pacific waters...
...A second source of opposition is deep-seated distrust of the Japanese—a broad and bitter memory of their colonial rule hangs on stubbornly in the region...
...Even before they were convinced of the dangers of dumping, however, islanders were ready to fight the nuclear contamination of the sea...
...There is precious little space in Japan for anything like safe disposal of the wastes of this nuclear industry, and the citizenry will not tolerate much additional environmental damage or danger in Japan itself...
...Deep-Sixing the Atom The deep-sea disposal of radioactive wastes is attractive to the nuclear industry in part because there are no mid-ocean farmers or schoolteachers to arouse neighbors and friends to backyard dangers...
...The cumulative effects of 1950s-era fallout, the basing of nuclear-powered ships and submarines in Pacific waters, and the proposed dumping represents a serious threat to the habitability of the region...
...It is for our children and our grandchildren, both in the Pacific and Japan, that we strive now...
...Japan's fishing catch is the largest in the world, and much of the tuna and skipjack the Japanese eat is netted in the central Pacific where the dumping would take place...
...Finally,, of course, Pacific opposition to the dumping is rooted in the utter dependence of the islanders on the health of the South Seas...
...The Japanese neglected to inform the people of the potentially affected islands, but the plans were reported in the regional press in February 1980, and the reaction was swift and strong...
...Having found a prospective site 900 kilometers south of Tokyo in 6,000 meters of water, the Japanese government laid plans to conduct a test dump in 1981 of 10,000 barrels containing about 500 curies of radioactivity...
...So too have campaigns calling for the prohibition of storage, testing, and deployment of nuclear weapons—and the introduction of nuclear energy in the islands...
...Large-scale dumping in the central Pacific thus appeared to be the perfect solution...
Vol. 45 • December 1981 • No. 12
