Nuclear waste

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 14

Nuclear waste

Sir,—The Labour Party supports a wholly nuclear-free Pacific. The Social Credit League advocates a nuclear weapons-free Pacific. We have suggested that it oppose all nuclear activity, including the use of nuclear reactors by land and sea, and the dumping of nuclear waste. This disposal problem seems insoluble. Hundreds of thousands of drums of waste have been dumped into the Pacific since 1945, and Japan plans to dump another 250,000 drums. Dr Jackson Davis, environmentalist at the University of California (Santa Cruz), says this action would violate the London Dumping Convention of 1972 because the waste would be dumped in commercial fishing waters. It would be better, he adds, to store it in warehouses in Japan i j . . ji

itself. Dr P. W. Burbidge, professor emeritus of physics at Auckland University, told a recent seminar that nuclear reactors could endanger land and livestock as well as human beings. That was a main reason why our Government had decided not to promote nuclear power plants. — Yours, etc., A. G. LONG, President. Auckland Branch. U.N. Association of N.Z. March 17, 1981.