Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
"Would you take the garbage out?" A harmless question - well, for some a bit annoying perhaps.
But in former times, it was easier: open the rubbish bin, threw the waste inside - finished!
As been said: it was easier in former times.... By the way: as well with nuclear waste.
"Would you take the garbage out?" - back in the 60th this meant: get in on the ship and away with it into the sea. That's all.
Today we know that this was... let me say it like that: not an appropriate disposal of waste.
But now, thousends of barrels filled with nuclear waste are down there at the sea floor and corrode.
And slowly first questions show up whether it could be dangerous
if highly toxic plutonium would appear at our plates via fishing.
Thomas Reutter about the details.
A barrel at the sea floor: sunken decades ago. The content: nuclear waste.
More than 200.000 barrels of nuclear waste corrode along the coastal lines of europe.
A time bomb?
The research goes back to the 60th:
Nuclear research is running at full speed; the atomic aera has begun.
But there's a problem: Where to go with the nuclear waste?
Report Mainz reveals a well guarded secret of the Federal Government: Germany as well dumped nuclear waste into the sea.
Confidential proceedings of a meeting in 1962 explain the reason:
"Costs of interim storage very palpably decrease with a final disposal by dumping it into the sea.
(use of cheapest casks)"
The international dumping of nuclear waste - Germany had initiated it.
Proof is this official memorandum: it states that based on a proposal of a department within the Federal Research-Ministry, the first ever international dumping action takes place.
Germany, UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands collect more than 10.000 tons of nuclear waste.
The radiating freight will be dumped into the sea in 1967 coming off the "Topaz"
400 km away from the Portuguese coast, thousands of meters deep.
The test dumping, initiated by Germany, sets a precedent: further international dumpings at sea follow.
All in all, more than 114.000 tons of low- and middleradioactive waste disappear in the abyss;
ten times more radioactivity than is stored at Schacht Asse. [see comment section for details]
For decades, the public doesn't know about. Only in the 80th, Greenpeace calls attention to the problem in conducting spectacular campaigns.
Greenpeace-activist Harald Zindler was sitting in one of these dinghys.
"We were detained on board and locked at the bow, and then the dumping went on. We could hear this.
And then happened what we just saw here: a dinghy was hit again
and then the campaign was stopped. It was too dangerous
and people could have easily be injured or be killed.
This was in 1981.
One year later, the dumping stopped. It is forbidden worldwide since 1995.
But what happened to the nuclear waste on the sea-floor?
We come to know about it from scientists of the Ocean Protection Organisation OSPAR, launchend by 15 Governments and the EU.
Report Mainz exclusievely receives this actual OSPAR-document about the implications of the nuclear waste dumpings. It states:
"Elevated concentrations of plutonium-238 within the dumping areas indicating leakages of the barrels."
These recordings were made in 2000 by Greenpeace at the British Channel: rusted through and broken barrels.
A nuclear ultimate repository in the sea. Only here, 28.500 barrels are sunken.
What danger arises from these barrels?
In a dumping area in the Atlantic Ocean, scientists have found plutonium in fish that came from 5.000m deep.
Millionth gram of it in the human body are lethal.
Can the plutonium get into our food through the food chain, accumulate in fish that weren't caught at the deep sea?
Sea biologist Bernd Christiansen of the University Hamburg researched this issue.
Within a team of scientists, he studied the deep sea for years. Conclusion: The food chain reaches from 5.000m depth up to the water surface.
So, do you believe the plutonium will actually come back to us?
It can come back to us in any case, because it's passed on within the food chain
and in the end, we are the last link of the food chain, so it will arrive there eventually.
Off shore, there's a gigantic nuclear waste depository.
But since nearly 12 years, there are no measurement results from the dumping areas.
Although fishing is done there intensively, for example for mackerels - for the german markets as well.
Therefore fish wholesalers request clarification from the Federal Government as to what kind of danger emanates from radioactive waste in the sea.
We now expect the Federal Government to initiate all necessary measures within the risk management plans to make sure these barrels pose no danger to the environment.
We demand the Federal Government to fulfill their responsibility and stand up for a monitoring system in the dumping areas
which means, measurements have to take place on-site and continuous.
We asked environment minister Röttgen for an interview about this issue, but he refuses and lets us know:
According to the previous measurement results, his ministry would see no reason for a regulary monitoring of the dumping areas.
But the plutonium will reach our fish - it's a matter of time.