OVERWHELMING POPULAR SUPPORT FOR PROPOSED BAN ON NUCLEAR DISCHARGES

25 June 2000

PARIS/COPENHAGEN -- 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 today in Copenhagen, on the eve of the opening of the annual meeting of the OSPAR Commission, at which a proposal tabled by Denmark calls for an immediate prohibition of nuclear reprocessing (1).

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 19th 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.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

- Luisa Colasimone, Greenpeace Communication, mobile +31 6 21 29 69 20 (in Paris)
- Dan Hindsgaul, Greenpeace Nordic, mobile +45 28 10 90 21 (in Copenhagen)
- Mike Townsley, Greenpeace International, mobile +31 6 21 29 69 18 (in Copenhagen)
- Remi Parmentier, Greenpeace International, mobile +45 20 92 05 92 (in Copenhagen)

Footage and stills available (+31 6 21 29 69 20)

Check our web site on OSPAR and Greenpeace's nuclear discharges campaign at:
www.ospar.org AND www.greenpeace.org/~nuclear/ospar2000

(1) The OSPAR Commission is the intergovernmental organization that regulates marine pollution in the North East Atlantic, from Gibraltar to the Arctic. For the proposal to ban nuclear reprocessing to be adopted this week, it requires a ¾ majority vote (at least 12 votes). The member states of the OSPAR Commission are: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK as well as the European Union. The meeting takes place in Copenhagen from the 26th to the 30th June.

(2) In 1993, the Contracting Parties to the London Convention, the United Nations treaty that regulates the dumping of wastes at sea, banned the dumping of all radioactive wastes from ships, aircraft, platforms and other man-made structures at sea. However, the agreement does not cover the dumping of radioactive wastes in the sea from a land-based pipeline.

(3) The opinion poll was coordinated by MORI. People were asked the following: "As you may know, disposal of radioactive waste at sea from ships has been banned since 1993. However radioactive discharges from pipelines on land into the sea remain legal. In principle, to what extent, if at all, do you agree or disagree that the law regarding radioactive disposal should also include radioactive discharges from pipelines on land?"

Answers were classified as follows and expressed in %:

Strongly Agree (SA); Tend to Agree (TA); Neither Agree or Disagree (NAD); Tend to Disagree (TD); Strongly Disagrees (SD); Don't Know (DK); Depends on Levels (DL).

Results of the opinion polls on nuclear discharges

Greenpeace, June 2000

* Polls in Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom posed three possible responses: agree, disagree and don't know

** In the UK, a slightly different question was posed: "Do you think that Sellafield should be allowed to continue to discharge radioactive waste into the air and sea as part of the process or do you think the discharges should be stopped?"