After decades of silence, the scientific community is once again focusing on one of the most controversial underwater sites: the northeast Atlantic trench, more than 1,000 kilometers off the Galician coast, where European countries dumped hundreds of thousands of radioactive barrels between the 1950s and 1990s.
The French oceanographic vessel L’Atalante, accompanied by the submarine robot Uly X, began a pioneering scientific mission this month, named Nodssum, with the aim of locating, mapping, and evaluating the state of these nuclear waste deposited at great depths in the abyssal plain.
Science resumes a pending agenda since 1988
The last comparable exploration campaign dates back to over 35 years ago, and many previous efforts were limited to superficial sample extraction. In contrast, the Nodssum mission aims to:
- Inspect historical deposits abandoned by countries such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland
- Utilize state-of-the-art navigation, georeferencing, and underwater vision technologies
- Analyze the potential impact on the deep-sea marine ecosystem after years without systematic monitoring
Out of the more than 220,000 barrels dumped at multiple points in the Atlantic, only 1,000 have been visually detected in this initial stage.
Radioactive barrels and activism: from impunity to treaty
Between the 1940s and 1980s, European vessels dumped up to 142,000 tons of nuclear waste in this marine region.
This practice partially ceased after a civil resistance milestone in 1982, when the Greenpeace vessel Sirius —alongside Galician boats— peacefully confronted Dutch ships disposing of waste. Upon return, more than 10,000 people welcomed Sirius in Vigo, and the action marked the formal beginning of the NGO two years later.
This episode led to:
- The cessation of dumping by the Netherlands
- The OSPAR Convention of 1992, which banned dumping low and medium-level radioactive waste in the northeast Atlantic
- Adherence to the London Convention (1993), which prohibited all radioactive dumping at sea
Call to action: Greenpeace demands European and Spanish intervention
Following this new campaign, Greenpeace urged the European Union and the Spanish Government to undertake a comprehensive investigation to determine:
- The structural state of the submerged containers
- The real risk of marine contamination
- Possible environmental remediation or containment measures
“We are facing the largest radioactive dump on the planet. We cannot continue to ignore it”, stated the organization, warning that the majority of the barrels remain uninspected formally since their disposal.
What now?
The Nodssum mission is just the first step. The discovery of the first 1,000 barrels raises technical, ethical, and diplomatic questions regarding:
- The historical responsibility of emitting countries
- The potential deterioration of containers due to prolonged marine corrosion
- The transparency of data obtained in international waters
Cover photo: French Oceanographic Fleet
