Mr. BREAUX. Dr. Deese, I asked Mr. Long, when he testified, about the interpretation of the London convention as prohibiting the high-level waste disposal. It seems like you have a slight difference of opinion as far as whether the London convention actually establishes an absolute prohibition of any high-level waste disposal in the seabeds. Would you care to elaborate on your opinion? Dr. DEESE. I can see how you would see a possible conflict. I agree to about the 80-percent level with what was given in written testimony by the Department of State, except that it was stated in a confusing way. If from their point of view subseabed disposal appears to pose a threat to the marine environment, they are saying they would interpret it as being banned by the convention. I would call that a kind of a policy implied legal definition. From a strictly legal point of view right now, from the point of view of an international lawyer trying to read those words and figure out what they mean, it is very difficult because the people who wrote them did not know at the time that the concept of subseabed disposal would come along several years later.

Quite frankly, it could go either way. However, I agree with the Department of State position for the time being that the United States should interpret it as being banned, if it poses a threat to the marine environment.

Mr. BREAUX. What about the discussion we had about the definition of high-level waste, EPA versus IAEA? Is that a problem area? Mr. DEESE. It is not what I would call a first order problem, but it remains an important problem. There has been too much certainty implied in the various pieces of testimony that have been given, because this issue is very confused. Our whole proceeding today has reflected a confusion that exists, I think, in almost everybody's mind in this area. Not only is the United States unclear as to what low-, medium-, and high-level radioactive wastes really are or should be, but all the other countries involved use different or somewhat different systems.

There is an effort to somehow standardize these. There is a standardized set of definitions that the IAEA has promulgated, but they have not been adopted uniformly. Nor should we expect to ever have that kind of clarity.

As to the specific relevance of it in this context, high-level waste is defined officially by the United States as the first level aqueous extraction from the reprocessing operation. That is clearly out of date now. What we need is an updating of the definition of highlevel waste by the individual agencies with whatever congressional action is necessary. These agencies need to consider more specifically the differences between their definitions and the way most of the other leading nuclear nations define high-level wastes. They must also look more carefully at what all the implications are. I think it is perhaps more important than we realize. Mr. BREAUX. Thank you.

Dr. Anderson, on your project, are you looking, or is anyone in your scientific group looking, at the considerations of the effect of low-level nuclear wastes or high-level wastes on the marine environment or the seabed? We had this discussion this morning about the fact that some of the low-level wastes that we had been dumping have leaked, some of the cannisters had broken open. But I

don't think I got any kind of a clear answer as to whether that had any effect on the marine environment. Is someone considering that?

Dr. ANDERSON. The answer is yes, we are considering it. The answer also is at this time we do not have any answers for you. Mr. BREAUX. What do we have to do to find those answers? We ocean dumped low-level waste over a fairly long period. That has been discontinued. Now we have cannisters that have caused us some problems. What else do we need, other than to assess whether it has caused any problems for the marine environment?

Dr. ANDERSON. I think monitoring an existing dump site can give you a very large amount of information. Probably also monitoring a dumpsite cannot give you the information on the environmental effects on a biological community. The reason is that by law, the amount of radionuclides in the low-level waste was low. After many years of decay the level is even lower. In order to observe any changes, either the activity-quantity of radionuclide-or the rate of species turnover or both must be increased in order to get a reasonable assessment of the damage that could occur.

Dr. Naushkin has been sampling the Pacific dumpsite. At this point in time his conclusion is that there have been no detrimental effects.

Mr. BREAUX. There are no dump sites that are currently being monitored apparently at the present time other than the instance that you just cited.

Dr. ANDERSON. The monitoring activity by the NEA for the deep ocean site is just beginning. But the English have been monitoring the outflow of radionuclides from their reprocessing plant into the Irish Sea for tens of years and have answers to some of the effects on the biology and the environment effects in the shallow water regimes. I think in some cases the shallow water data we can extrapolate to the deep. We are in the process of collecting that data. But again, our program was to first identify if we had a set of barriers that were adequate and then, after identification of those barriers, to look at such things as biological bypasses, physical bypasses, and environmental impact.

The program is just beginning to address these problems.

Mr. BREAUX. Is your project also studying the problems associated with transporting nuclear wastes from wherever they are being generated to the potential dumpsite?

Dr. ANDERSON. Again, yes, we have it in our plan. But until we identify that we do have a barrier, we did not want to spend any appreciable amount of our precious dollars on the second phase, transportation, but rather to spend it on the ocean science. We are beginning at a very low-level to address the transportation problem. We plan on building on land transport knowledge that is available and developing the sea transport program from dockside, to the site, and down into the sedimentary geologic formation. Mr. BREAUX. Thank you.

Dr. Deese, do you see any problem with the fact that NEA is assuming a role of promoting nuclear technology and yet it is also the group that is primarily responsible for regulating low-level waste disposal? It looks like the group promoting it is also the group regulating the disposal of it.

Mr. DEESE. That is very true. It is a fair statement. The real questions are: What are the implications of that? How important is it for the quality of the regulation that they do? I have some misgivings about the past record which is particularly important with respect to a country's perceptions of how good the NEA is and what the quality of work is that they are doing.

The new legal framework is imposing some more qualitatively and quantitatively effective guidelines. On the other hand, there are still some serious problems. It is still essentially dumping operations conducted by individual nations with an NEA inspector who in some cases can catch things and in other cases cannot.

Mr. BREAUX. What about the monitoring itself? I have heard some comments that monitoring by the Europeans is not very extensive.

Mr. DEESE. I think that has been a point of unclear statements all day long. The waste was originally dumped starting in 1967 without any thought of monitoring it. It was based on an oceanic model that was oceanographically naive, misleading, and not done by oceanographers. The result was: Out of sight, out of mind. Since then they have been forced into a situation where they are monitoring the dumpsite at least individually. West Germany is doing some important work in this area, and the British are now being forced to think about it also.

Mr. BREAUX. Dr. Anderson, is the deep seabed drilling project under the National Science Foundation, a project you are working with or receiving any information?

Dr. ANDERSON. Yes, I am. We receive all of the publications. Dr. Hollister, one of the individuals on the program, is deeply involved in the DSDP, and we acquire all of their data. However, we are not at this time addressing in any detail the rock formations below. We just look at their data, make what assessments we can, and draw some very, very preliminary conclusions from it. The conclusion at this point in time, that we have drawn from the DSDP work, is that upper meters of the basaltic crust below the sediments are very fractured and probably are not adequate as a repository or as a medium in which to put the high-level wastes. Obviously, though, the DSDP has not drilled deeply into the basalt and therefore we have no data about the deep geologic structure of the basalt.

Mr. BREAUX. Gentlemen, the committee thanks you very much. This day's hearing is just the beginning of an assessment by this committee of the effects on the marine environment of the possible disposal of nuclear wastes in the oceans. We have also requested an assessment by the Office of Technology Assessment, which we are currently awaiting.

We appreciate very much your presentation and your testimony. It has been most helpful.

With that, the Subcommittee on Oceanography will stand adjourned until the call of the Chair.

[Whereupon, at 4:10 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned, subject to call of the Chair.]

NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL

TUESDAY, JULY 11, 1978

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON MERCHANT MARINE AND FISHERIES,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANOGRAPHY,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, in room 2253, Rayburn House Office Building, commencing at 10:30 a.m., before the Honorable John Breaux (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Breaux, Pritchard, and Forsythe.

Staff present: Wayne Smith, majority counsel; Ted Kronmiller, majority counsel; Curtis L. Marshall, professional staff, minority; and Norma Moses, clerk.

Mr. BREAUX. The Subcommittee on Oceanography will please be in order.

On May 15, 1978, the Subcommittee on Oceanography convened hearings on the subject of radioactive waste disposal in the oceans and the seabed. During the course of the hearings, several witnesses indicated that the effects of radiological pollution in the marine environment were not fully understood.

This fact, if true, concerns me. The United States and many other countries around the world are initiating stepped-up nuclear power generation programs. The Department of Energy has estimated that the quantities of nuclear waste in this country will increase by a factor of 30 by the end of this century. Additionally, the amounts of nuclear wastes being generated by foreign countries are estimated to increase by a factor of 24 by the year 2000. The United States and several member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, (OECD), are actively researching the option of placing nuclear wastes in the seabed. In addition, a group of European countries are currently disposing low-level radioactive wastes by dumping into the ocean. Considering the growing stockpiles of nuclear wastes in this country and around the world, the increasing interest in utilizing the seabed as a disposal medium for such wastes, and the fact that countries are currently dumping low-level wastes into the ocean, it is of critical importance that the full consequences of radiological pollution in the oceans and its effect on the marine environment are fully understood.

Certain wastes generated from the nuclear fuel cycle remain highly radioactive for hundreds, and even thousands, of years. If the dumping of low-level radioactive wastes is allowed to continue without appropriate safeguards to insure that the marine environment and man are afforded necessary protection, we might find

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