GREENPEACE SHIP ARRIVES TO SUPPORT PLUTONIUM FACTORY DISCHARGE

Cherbourg/Amsterdam, 15 June 1997

The Rainbow Warrior ship equipped with a radiological laboratory, left the French port of Cherbourg today and will motor to the west coast of Cap La Hague, where it will support ongoing efforts to sample the radioactive contamination generated by COGEMA's nuclear waste discharges.

The Rainbow C has been brought to France following Greenpeace's publication yesterday of new data showing severe radioactive contamination of the ocean floor and around the pipe. The ship, equipped with a laboratory and decontamination equipment, will help the environmental organisation to provide the public with real information about the nature and extent of COGEMA's contamination of the marine environment.

Sediments so far analysed by Greenpeace show that the sea bottom has been so severely contaminated that it falls within EC guidelines for controlled nuclear waste.

La Hague's reprocessing factories discharge annually some 230 million litres of nuclear waste into Atlantic waters of the Normandy coast. Water conditions around the nuclear discharge pipe, near the Nez de Jobourg, are notoriously difficult with unusual tides and savage currents. The discharge pipe lies at a depth of 20 metres and is some 1.7 Km off the French coast, within miles of the Channel Islands and Southern English coast.

"It is incredible that COGEMA has called these findings `irrelevant' --- this attitude shows shocking disregard for environmental protection and public health" - said Damon Moglen of Greenpeace International. "The dumping of nuclear waste into the sea is criminally negligent behaviour and must be stopped immediately".

On nearly a daily basis, the La Hague plutonium separation or "reprocessing" factories owned by COGEMA pump radioactive contamination into the air, land and sea. The plant is in fact the single largest source of radioactive contamination in the European Union. Some of the radioactive contamination from the plants remains in the marine environment of the French coast - dangerous traces retained in crabs, clams, fish and seaweed. Other contamination has been mapped spreading northward along the North Sea coast of Europe and up into Nordic and even Arctic waters.

FOR INFORMATION:

Damon MOGLEN, mobile + 31 6 53 41 79 47

Luisa COLASIMONE, t. +33 2 33 94 80 22 or moblie +31 6 5312 8907