nuclear-news

Norway and other countries dumping nuclear waste off Somalia?

The barrels
had been dumped in the sea, a UN spokesman said, for one obvious
reason: it cost European companies around $2.50 a tonne to dispose of
the waste this way, while dealing with them properly would have cost
“something like $1,000 a tonne.”

Copenhagen Days 6-7 (“ANuclear Renaissance”  Ethiopian Review, by Carly Queen January 7th, 2010 . Mr. Monbiot told us the news of how a shipwreck containing nuclear waste was discovered off the coast of Italy.

“Detectives found the ship after a tip-off from a mafioso. It appears to
have been carrying drums of nuclear waste when the mafia used
explosives to scuttle it. The informant… said his clan
had been paid £100,000 to get rid of it. What makes this story
interesting is that the waste appears to be Norwegian. Norway is famous
for its tough environmental laws, but a shipload of nuclear waste
doesn’t go missing without someone high-up looking the other way.

“Italian
prosecutors are investigating the scuttling of a further 41 ships. But
most of them weren’t sunk, like Fonti’s vessel, off the coast of Italy;
they were lost off the coast of Somalia. When the great tsunami of 2004
struck the Somali coast, it dumped and smashed open thousands of
barrels on the beaches and in villages up to 10km inland. According to
the United Nations, they contained clinical waste from western
hospitals, heavy metals, other chemical junk and nuclear waste. People
started suffering from unusual skin infections, bleeding at the mouth,
acute respiratory infections and abdominal hemorrhages. The barrels
had been dumped in the sea, a UN spokesman said, for one obvious
reason: it cost European companies around $2.50 a tonne to dispose of
the waste this way, while dealing with them properly would have cost
“something like $1,000 a tonne.” On the seabed off Somalia lies
Europe’s picture of Dorian Gray: the skeleton in the closet of the
languid new world we have made.

“The only people who have sought
physically to stop this dumping are Somali pirates. Most of them take
to the seas only for blood and booty; but some have formed coastal
patrols to prevent over-fishing and illegal dumping by foreign fleets.
Some of the vessels being protected from pirates by Combined Task Force
151, the rich world’s policing operation in the Gulf of Aden, have come
to fish illegally or dump toxic waste. The warships make no attempt
to stop them.”

No matter how strict the regulations or how safely nuclear plants are supposed to dispose of their waste, the cost of doing this is prohibitive and will even drive power companies in the most environmentally-conscious nations to take advantage of less expensive, often illegal and immoral methods of waste disposal. Stricter regulations actually increase the rate of occurrence of illegal dumping, leaving no viable options for ensuring proper disposal of nuclear waste other than to not create it in the first place.

January 8, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, secrets,lies and civil liberties, wastes