ABSTRACT
The general principles of law applied in the Trail Smelter case could and probably would be applied to any case involving pollution of the marine environment consequent upon a nuclear ‘incident’. Oil pollution of the world’s oceans perhaps constitutes the biggest single threat to that particular environment. The lessons of the age of oil power are plain and its problems too will be paralleled as the world moves ever more rapidly into the nuclear pow era. The UK has twice had to deal with proposed voyages to its territories of a non-military nuclear ship, the n.s. Savannah. Intimately connected with the question of access is the fear of coastal States of the effects of any operational discharges of radioactive matter whilst the vessel is passing through their territorial seas and adjacent waters. The problem considered is the dumping at sea of containerised radioactive waste, the by-product of nuclear industry.
