Letter: Graveyard for Brent Spar

Sir:Your report (15 August) on disposal of the Brent Spar oil platform refers to the more outlandish proposals offered in response to Shell's trawl of ideas. Did none of the contenders suggest the cheapest solution: deep ocean sinking? Now that the hysteria which greeted the suggestion when it was originally put forward has faded, we can take a more rational view.

The essential point which was not made at the time is that the Western Approaches of the North Atlantic are a graveyard of millions of tons of ships lost through natural and unnatural causes. During 1942/43 alone about 12 million tons of merchant vessels were sunk along with a considerable number of naval ships, U-boats and aircraft. As far as we can tell no one has suffered any subsequent harm, despite the fact that those ships carried practically every form of man-made substances and artefacts.

Pull the plug, note the Navsat readings, then forget it.

G A HENWOOD

Goring,

Oxfordshire