15 May 2003– Although the US looks increasingly likely to break out of the moratorium on shipbreaking because the administration believes scrapping in the US is economically unfeasible, some experts believe that, if the ban remains in place, a viable, environmentally friendly shipbreaking industry could still be developed in the US.

Dr Michael Powers of the National Environmental Education and Training Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which is funded by NEETC Inc, organisers of the recent Ship Recycling 2003 conference, told Fairplay that much of the discussion at the conference had centred on how to develop a viable, safe ship recycling industry in the United States, and, secondly, what effect the export of federally owned ships would have on such an industry. "The decaying state of the James River Reserve Fleet (the NDRF ships) was also a major topic of discussion between sessions, and lent a sense of urgency to the proceedings," he explained.

"Many of the conference participants are currently working on developing a domestic ship recycling industry, and as such they were quite concerned about the possibility of exporting federally owned ships for scrap," Dr Powers told Fairplay. "They were joined in that concern by the environmental groups present. These concerns stemmed partly from the possibility of losing the economic benefits of domestic spending of ship recycling money, and partly from the expectation that scrapping in Asia would be more dangerous both for the workers who do it and for the environment."

Dr Powers noted that MarAds other options for disposal, short of scrapping such as turning the ships into reefs met with a more receptive audience. "Many contractors felt that there would still be a role for them in preparing ships for sinking," Dr Powers explained. "Participants understood that there are still technological, economic, and safety issues to be resolved for a domestic industry to thrive, but the overall outlook was that these obstacles could be overcome were the export ban to remain in place."

As Dr Powers explained, IUP-NEETC has a significant amount of expertise in worker safety, health, and instructional design. Its main contribution to the NEETCs ship recycling project is to publish the IUP-NEETC Ship Recycling News (www.neetc.iup.edu/srnews) on a monthly basis and, in October, IUP-NEETC will begin conducting safety and health reviews of new technologies to be used for ship recycling.