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| | | COSTING THE EARTH
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| | | | PROGRAMME INFO | | | |
| | | Costing the Earth tells stories which touch all our lives, looking at man's effect on the environment and at how the environment reacts. It questions accepted truths, challenges the people in charge and reports on progress towards improving the world we live in. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN Ìý30 min | | | |
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'I really enjoy working on Costing the Earth, because it has the time to get its teeth into a subject and the resources to look at it critically. I hope it manages to say something new about most of the subjects it covers.'
Alex Kirby
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| | | | PROGRAMME DETAILS | | | |
|  | | Could a UK ship-dismantling industry lift the fog on the Tyne?
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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
Around the world hundreds of obsolete ships are rusting in harbours waiting for the day they’re dismantled for scrap. Could these decaying hulks soon be heading for Britain?
Last winter four US Navy ships arrived in Hartlepool. Able UK planned to dismantle them for scrap. Local people were horrified at the thought that they might contain radioactive elements, asbestos and toxic chemicals alongside the inevitable cargo of sump oil and ballast water. A fierce argument was finally resolved by the Environment Agency which refused to grant permission for the scrapping of the ships. | |  | | The infamous 'ghost ships' docked in Hartlepool
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But these ‘ghost ships’, as the press dubbed them, could be the first of many. Shipyards around the UK are greedily eyeing up the rapidly ageing fleets of the US and Royal navies. These are just the kinds of ships containing plenty of prime fittings and high grade steel that the scrap market is crying out for.
Is this a business that can be carried out safely? Can we expect to see nuclear submarines being dismantled in the great shipyards of the Clyde and the Tyne? Will the Navy ships soon be followed by the detritus of the world’s oceans? | | |
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