The NEA multilateral consultation and surveillance mechanism for sea disposal

Sea dumping operations of certain types of packaged low- and medium-level radioactive wastes were carried out on a national basis, from just after the war to the middle of the '60s, mainly by the United States in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and by the United Kingdom in the Atlantic. In 1967, the European Nuclear Energy Agency (ENEA), which later became the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), sponsored the first international radioactive waste disposal operation in which five European countries took part. Similar international operations have since then taken place almost every year with the result of the de facto cessation of purely ''national'' dumping operations