Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment her Department has made of recent scientific research into the condition and environmental impact of radioactive waste barrels dumped in the North-East Atlantic.

The disposal of radioactive waste in the sea was banned globally in 1993. The UK had already ceased disposal at sea voluntarily under the 1972 London Convention.

The first Nuclear Ocean Dump Site Survey and Monitoring (NODSSUM) international mission in 2025 mapped the locations of containers on the seafloor. The expedition found no significant environmental contamination.

The current NODSSUM project focuses on collecting samples of sediment and biota around some of the containers, to determine the levels of radionuclides that might have been released from the low-level radioactive waste to the surrounding marine environment.

The Department has not yet carried out an assessment of current NODSSUM expedition because the analysis of samples is still ongoing by researchers of the project.