Eight out of ten people who live in the European countries which have spent nuclear fuel reprocessing contracts with Sellafield (United Kingdom) or La Hague (France) say they want the discharges of radioactive waste into the sea to be stopped and prohibited, according to a series of opinion polls commissioned by Greenpeace.
These opinion polls were released yesterday in Copenhagen, on the eve of the opening of the annual meeting of the OSPAR Commissio, at which a proposal tabled by Denmark calls for an immediate prohibition of nuclear reprocessing.
The polls were carried out by independent agencies, who asked a representative sample of 1000 individuals in the seven countries with contracts for spent nuclear fuel reprocessing and who are also members of the OSPAR Commission, if they thought that land-based radioactive discharges into the sea should be banned, as is already the case with dumping at sea from ships (2).
An overwhelming majority of citizens in each country where the polls were conducted expressed their support for a European ban on radioactive discharges [94% in Germany, 87 % in Switzerland, 85% in the United Kingdom, 81 % in the Netherlands, 80 % in France, 79 % in Spain and 69 % in Belgium] (3).
"The governments of the countries bordering the North East Atlantic must listen to the people who elected them, and endorse this week the proposal to stop radioactive discharges into the Atlantic Ocean", said Remi Parmentier, Greenpeace International's representative to the OSPAR Commission. "Unless nuclear reprocessing is banned this week, the governments represented in Copenhagen will have a hard time explaining to the public why they did not take action".
Each year Europe's giant reprocessing facilities at Sellafield and La Hague discharge millions of liters of radioactive waste into the sea. However, a technical alternative known as "dry storage" exists, and would avoid these discharges. Carried by ocean currents, significant amounts of radioactivity from Sellafield and La Hague have already been detected in sea life around the coasts of Ireland, Scandinavia, Iceland and the Arctic. It will continue to build up in the food chain, threatening the health of millions of people, unless these discharges are stopped immediately.
Parmentier added that it was "high time to put environmental protection first, and not the short term gains of the operators of the nuclear reprocessing facilities".
The poll shows that people reject both dumping of nuclear waste at sea and discharges of radioactive waste. On Monday 19 th June, a Greenpeace investigation team exposed the nuclear legacy left behind by nuclear dumping at sea. Thousands of barrels of radioactive waste dumped by the United Kingdom between 1950 and 1963 are rusting away at 100 metres depth in the Hurd Deep, 15 kilometres northwest of Cap La Hague.
"It is inadmissible that, seven years after dumping at sea was banned, reprocessing facilities are still allowed to discharge the equivalent of more than 100 of those radioactive barrels per day directly into the ocean", said Mike Townsley of Greenpeace International.
In a related development, Greenpeace today installed a webcam at the end of the discharge pipe of France's nuclear reprocessing facility at La Hague, where over one million litres of liquid radioactive waste per day is dumped at sea.
At 30 meters depth, 1.7 km from shore in an area known for its vicious currents, an underwater camera and a transmission station have been installed. Images of the pipe are transmitted to a van on shore and put on the Internet.(1) Greenpeace will also be showing the images live on a big screen at the OSPAR conference centre.
Two Greenpeace divers also placed a giant 6 meter banner in the shape of an arrow above the radioactive waste discharge pipe. In a direct message to the OSPAR delegates and their Governments, the banner reads: 'Ban this now!'
Greenpeace will continue to broadcast the images of the radioactive waste discharge pipe for the duration of the OSPAR meeting, until a decision on the ban is taken. A decision is expected by Thursday at latest. Web surfers can express their opinion on whether they think these discharges should be banned.
