ABSTRACT
From 1949 the dumping of radioactive waste in the north-east Atlantic was started by the UK, and later other European nations such as Belgium, France, the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland also took part. Thus for more than thirty years the UK had been ocean dumping; it had also been disposing of low-level waste into coastal waters, e.g. at Sellafield. Those disposal practices had attracted considerable criticism, not least from the Greenpeace organization.
