The Oslo Paris Commmission - Committed to Zero Discharges?

While the dumping of nuclear waste at sea was banned worldwide in 1993 by the 75 States members of the United Nation's London Convention, Britain and France demanded that radioactive discharges from shore-based installations were permitted. It is paradoxical, to say the least, that, whereas liquid reprocessing wastes cannot be dumped from ships, it is still possible to pump the same waste into the sea from a plant's discharge pipe!

Radioactive discharges from land-based sources in the North East Atlantic, from Gibraltar to the Arctic, come under the jurisdiction of the OSPAR Commission. The Commission meets annually to adopt measures necessary to comply with the Oslo Convention of 1972 (covering the dumping of wastes at sea from ships, aircraft and other human-made structures), the Paris Convention of 1974 (covering the prevention of pollution from land-based sources) and the OSPAR Convention of 1992 for the Protection of the North East Atlantic. OSPAR Commission members are: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the European Union.

While the Commission has pledged to decrease and eventually eliminate radioactive discharges to the marine environment, in fact, discharge rates have soared. In 1992, OSPAR formally recognized "the need to reduce radioactive discharges from nuclear installations to the marine environment and agree[d] to work towards such discharges by applying Best Available Techniques." However, both the U.K. and France have refused to apply retention technologies and have opened new reprocessing plants that dramatically increase radioactive discharges. Moreover, both countries may soon grant new permits to further increase discharge levels at their facilities.

An intergovernmental meeting of the OSPAR member states will be held in September 1997. Given the dramatic increases in reprocessing discharges, this issue will loom large on the agenda. Unless the Environment Ministers of OSPAR take clear and decisive action, contamination from the British and French plutonium factories will continue to endanger the lives of present and future generations.