For decades, the U.S. military routinely dumped thousands of tons of obsolete, excess and captured munitions into U.S. coastal waters, thinking the high seas were the best place for the materials to safely decompose. The Atomic Energy Commission likewise oversaw the ocean dumping of untold thousands of drums of low-level radioactive waste from the nation’s manufacturing, research, medical and military sectors.
Nuclear Waste
Radioactivity in Pacific Ocean from Fukushima?
A recent report in The Guardian, “US sailors prepare for fresh legal challenge over Fukushima radiation,” appears to confirm radioactive releases that were not originally reported by the nuclear power plant’s owners. Similar stories give fair rise to concerns about subsequent radioactive pollution in the ocean.
“No Fukushima radionuclides detected yet”
From Woods Hole Oceanographic Insitution media@whoi.edu January 28, 2014 With concern among the public over the plume of radioactive ocean water from Fukushima arriving on the West Coast of North America and no U.S. government or international plan to monitor… Read More ›
What To Do With Nuclear Dump Sites in The Sea
More than four decades after the U.S. halted a controversial ocean dumping program, the country is facing a mostly forgotten Cold War legacy in its waters: tens of thousands of steel drums of atomic waste. From 1946 to 1970, federal… Read More ›