The Oceans in the Nuclear Age Legacies and Risks

About this book

The advent of the nuclear age in 1945 fundamentally altered the course of human events. The oceans are not the focus of the nuclear age, but the affairs of the oceans are deeply woven into the history of that age. Knowledge of what the nuclear age has meant for the oceans, however, is highly fragmented and there exists a surprising gap in research on the impact of the nuclear age on the oceans and on ocean law and policy. Ranging from dumped wastes to transportation to security, this study frames the complex multidimensional set of relationships between the oceans and the nuclear age and illuminates patterns of impact and response in ocean law.

This timely expanded edition includes a new chapter by Lt. Todd Hutchins, USN, on "Nuclear Risks in Coastal Areas: Legal and Regulatory Responses." It provides a full discussion of the 2011 coastal Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster, together with analysis more generally of the challenges to the environment and to the legal order globally that are posed by coastal siting of nuclear power plants.

Contents

CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgements
Preface to the Expanded Edition
List of Treaties and Other Official Acts
List of Cases

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
Chapter One Assessing the Impact of the Nuclear Age on the Oceans and Its Legal Regime by David D. Caron and Harry N. Scheiber

PART TWO: RADIOACTIVE WASTES IN THE OCEANS: MANAGING THE PAST AND CONSIDERING THE FUTURE
Chapter Two Deep Sea Impacts by Hjalmar Thiel
Chapter Three Risk and Vulnerability at Contaminated Sites in the Pacific and Australian Proving Grounds from a ‘Long-Term Stewardship’ Perspective: What Have We Learned? by Thomas M. Leschine
Chapter Four Legacies and Perils from the Perspective of the Republic of the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal by Philip A. Okney
Chapter Five The Legacy of French Nuclear Testing in the Pacific by Laurence Cordonnery
Chapter Six Hazardous Substances and the Baltic Sea by Malgosia Fitzmaurice
Chapter Seven New Opportunities and Deep Ocean Technologies for Assessing the Feasibility of Sub-Seabed High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal: The Application of 21st Century Oceanography to Solving Outstanding Problems by Daniel J. Fornari
Chapter Eight Sub-Seabed Disposal of High Level Radioactive Waste: The Policy Context Then and Now by Edward L. Miles

PART THREE: THE OCEAN TRANSPORT OF RADIOACTIVE FUEL AND WASTE
Chapter Nine Ocean Transport of Radioactive Fuel and Waste by Jon M. Van Dyke†
Chapter Ten Transportation of Radioactive Materials through the Caribbean Sea: The Development of a Nuclear-Free Zone by Luis E. Rodríguez-Rivera
Chapter Eleven Ocean Transport of Radioactive Fuel and Waste: A Japanese Perspective by Masahiro Miyoshi
Chapter Twelve Navigation of Ships with Nuclear Cargoes:Dialogue between Flag and Coastal States as a Method for Managing the Dispute by Tullio Treves

PART FOUR: NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND WEAPON GRADE MATERIAL ON THE OCEANS
Chapter Thirteen Maritime Terrorism and the International Law of Boarding of Vessels at Sea: Assessing the New Developments by Ted L. McDorman
Chapter Fourteen The Proliferation Security Initiative and Asia by Mark J. Valencia
Chapter Fifteen The Proliferation Security Initiative: Amending the Convention on the Law of the Sea by Stealth? by Donald R. Rothwell
Chapter Sixteen Cargos of Doom: National Strategies of the U.S. to Combat the Illicit Transport of Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sea by Craig H. Allen
Chapter Seventeen Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones and Maritime Transit of Nuclear Weapons by Scott Parrish
Chapter Eighteen Oceans in a Nuclear Age: Security Concerns of the United States by Michael J. Matheson

PART FIVE: NUCLEAR ACTIVITIES AND RADIOACTIVE WASTE IN THE ARCTIC
Chapter Nineteen Canada, The United States and the Northwest Passage by Elizabeth B. Elliot-Meisel
Chapter Twenty The Russian Approach to the Protection of the Arctic Seas from Radioactive Wastes by Alexander S. Skaridov
Chapter Twenty-One Arctic Nuclear Pollution by Lakshman D. Guruswamy
Chapter Twenty-Two Nuclear Transport along the Northern Route and Nuclear Waste Dumping in the Barents and Kara Seas by R. Douglas Brubaker

PART SIX: CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
Chapter Twenty-Three Reflections on the Theme of the Oceans in the Nuclear Age by Bernard H. Oxman
Chapter Twenty-Four The Oceans in the Nuclear Age: Challenges, Questions and Possibilities by David D. Caron
Chapter Twenty-Five Nuclear Risks in Coastal Areas: Legal and Regulatory Responses by Todd Emerson Hutchins

Abbreviations
Selected Bibliography
A Note on Radioactive Materials and their Measurements
List of Contributors
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Professor David Caron is Dean of The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. He relocated to London in May 2013 from California, where he was the C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley and Co-Director of the Law of the Sea Institute. He currently serves, among other things, as a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Rule of Law, member of the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on Public International Law, and as a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law.

Harry N. Scheiber, M.A., Ph.D. (Cornell University), D. Jur. hon.c. (Uppsala) is the Stefan Riesenfeld Chair Professor and Chancellor's Professor, Emeritus, in the School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. He is Co-Director of the Law of the Sea Institute at UC Berkeley and is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, honorary life fellow and former president of the American Society for Legal History, and twice a Guggenheim Fellow. He has published extensively on ocean law, marine fisheries management, history of American constitutional law, and law and economic policy. He also heads the UC Berkeley Law School's Sho Sato Program in Japanese and U.S. Law and is Director of its Institute for Legal Research.