Target: Leena Ylä-Mononen, Executive Director of European Environment Agency
Goal: Study and mitigate risks associated with marine nuclear waste disposal.
Radioactive exposure has been the stuff of comic books, horror movies, and real-life crises. While current disposal of radioactive material is taken much more seriously, for decades that was not the case. In the 1980s, for example, a radioactive capsule taken from an abandoned clinic by scrap collectors in Brazil spurred a major medical emergency for one community: an emergency that exposed hundreds of people to highly toxic nuclear material, sickened dozens, and tragically killed four community members, including a six-year-old girl. Prior to this tragedy, sea floors became a favorite dumping ground for medical and industrial radioactive waste. A recent expedition has shed some light on the effects.
Over the four decades following World War II, European nations plunged at least 150,000 tons of nuclear waste to the sea floor. The Nuclear Ocean Dump Site Survey Monitoring project launched several expeditions to determine what happened to this material. They discovered an alarming rate of decay of the containers holding the waste, which meant the waste was slowly seeping out into the ocean – and very possibly into the systems of the many sea creatures that had made a home on and around the structures. The impacts are still being studied, and a more robust understanding is important and crucial for any remedies that may need to be taken.
Sign the petition below to urge full-scale government investment in this exploration of an environmental threat to one of Earth’s last great frontiers.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Executive Director Ylä-Mononen,
According to International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines, even low-level radioactive waste should be treated with immense care, placed in the strongest possible containment, and kept in isolation for a few centuries. Yet hundreds of thousands of tons of this dangerous and deadly material was haphazardly dumped into the ocean by European countries over a span of decades. The Nuclear Ocean Dump Site Survey Monitoring project has played a significant role in bringing to light what has become of these slowly seeping cases of poison, and research is underway to determine potential environmental and ecosystem effects.
Please invest in this effort and help rectify a grave oceanic injustice.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Mucahtt Beyhan
