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126 Chapter 5 No Atomic Graveyards When oceanographers came to Göteborg, Sweden, in 1957 to plan the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58, they knew they were on the cusp of a scientific opportunity about which generations of their predecessors could only have dreamed. For the first time in history, the IGY gave oceanographers a chance to pursue a scientific ideal: global studies involving simultaneous multiple observations in various locations around the world. Some sixty nations were to take part, including the Soviet Union and the United States, with full cooperation and funding from their governments. Lev Zenkevich, one of the Soviet Union’s leading marine biologists, pointed out that the IGY would allow them to develop a truly global picture of the biggest problems confronting marine science, such as the circulation of water masses and the biological structure of the oceans. Everyone was excited: not only was it an unprecedented opportunity for scientific study, it was also a powerful sign that the scientists might play a role in transcending cold war divisions. Yet at least one American oceanographer, Roger Revelle, wanted to focus this enthusiasm toward the future. After all, the money and international opportunities would dry up after 1958. Their only hope for keeping a viable international oceanographic community alive would be to work together, targeting practical problems that would serve their mutual interests as scientists and attract funding from governments. He suggested that they attach each of their scientific goals to a problem facing humanity: instead of talking about the circulation of water masses, for example, they might speak of the effects of radioactive wastes in the oceans.1 It seemed like a brilliant idea, and the strategy of tying science to practical aims would form the basis of future international cooperation in oceanography . But for all its wisdom in attracting government interest in research, No Atomic Graveyards 127 incorporating radioactive waste disposal into the IGY proved the catalyst for a sharp divergence of views about the use of the oceans as sewers for the atomic age. Whereas Revelle innocuously hoped that radioactivity might become an oceanographic tool, scientists from other countries—notably the Soviet Union—took the IGY as an opportunity to scrutinize the deep ocean for evidence of water circulation. And they found it. The fact that even the deepest parts of the sea showed evidence of circulation seemed to imply that there were no dead zones into which high-level radioactive wastes could be put with any expectation of long-term isolation. In fact, Soviet scientists in particular began to question whether the oceans should receive any waste at all. The IGY thus became a vehicle to overcome the existing international consensus, formed by American, British, and United Nations reports, that the development of atomic energy should proceed, in a rational and controlled way, with the seas as the best place to put dangerous waste materials. Compounding this criticism were new reports coming out of the United States, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. The highlevel support for the IGY gave American oceanographers the means to assert an even greater role in atomic energy affairs, beyond their panel for the BEAR committees. Now there was a permanent committee under the academy devoted explicitly to the oceans: the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Oceanography (NASCO). These reports not only pointed out that highlevel radioactive waste should not be put in the sea (following the IGY results), but also took issue with the attitudes of the (American) Atomic Energy Commission and the policies of the (British) Atomic Energy Authority. One study on nuclear-powered ships took aim at the British discharges at Windscale, provoking consternation and outrage from the British health physicists who already had blessed the practice. Another study on disposal sites caused a political uproar all along the Atlantic coast of the United States and, in a withering blow, undermined not only the academy’s credibility but also led ultimately to the United States abandoning the oceans as repository for even its lower-level packaged wastes. A third report, on waste disposal in the Pacific, was hotly contested—the deliberations over this report, discussed here, revealed growing frustration at oceanographers’ opportunism and the politicization of an issue that atomic energy establishments seemed helpless to overcome. No Evidence of Dead Zones The IGY was the first international scientific project to include both the United States and the Soviet Union, following the goodwill of the...

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