GP Boards N-Waste Shipment As It Approaches Panama Canal

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GREENPEACE BOARDS NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENT AS IT APPROACHES PANAMA
CANAL

Panama City (Panama), 6th February 1998 --- At approximately
4h30 this morning (Panama time), three Greenpeace activists from
Belgium, Switzerland and Chile boarded the Pacific Swan as it
approached at slow speed the Panama Canal. The British-flagged
nuclear freighter, with its cargo of highly radioactive nuclear
waste, is due to pass through the Canal this Friday, on route to
Japan. It is the first time that high level nuclear waste is
shipped through the Panama Canal, despite Panamanian protestors
and intense regional political opposition.

"We are engaged in a peaceful protest, aimed at the shipment of
nuclear waste and not at the Panama Canal Commission or at the
Government of Panama." said Tom Clements of Greenpeace. " The
plutonium industries of the UK, France and Japan are responsible
for producing this waste, and the US Government for allowing
this deadly cargo to go through the Canal and threatening the
environment of the Panama Canal and Central America".

The Swan contains 60 canisters of highly radioactive nuclear
waste packed inside three transport casks. The cargo contains a
staggering 30,000,000 curies of radioactivity--the waste is so
deadly that a person within one meter of a single unshielded
glass block would receive a fatal dose of radiation in less than
one minute. The nuclear waste contains approximately the same
amount of the dangerous isotope cesium which was released during
the Chernobyl disaster.

The "Pacific Swan" shipment is the largest waste shipment of its
kind and is part of a program to ship some 3,000 canisters of
nuclear waste from Britain and France to Japan. In addition to
waste shipments, France and Britain have clandestine plans to
ship tens of tons of weapon-usable plutonium to Japan in the
next decade.

Countries and environmental groups throughout the Caribbean and
Central America have protested the current shipment and the
Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Organization of Eastern
Caribbean States, and the Latin American and Central American
Parliaments have issued statements of opposition.

"France, Britain and Japan are turning a deaf ear to the
rightful protests of people and politicians throughout the
Caribbean and Latin America," said Clements. "It is outrageous
that there are no environmental assessments, serious emergency
response plans or adequate liability arrangements for such
dangerous shipments".

The threat of an accident involving shipments of nuclear
materials was demonstrated in December, when the ship MSC Carla,
which was carrying three cesium capsules inside medical
equipment, broke apart with loss of the nuclear material in the
North Atlantic. The ship was bound from France to Boston, US,
and Greenpeace has called on French and US authorities to
investigate the accident. French authorities have stated that
they will not salvage the radioactive material.

"It is clear that countries must take appropriate national,
regional and international action to ban these transports and
end the commerce in plutonium and nuclear waste", added
Clements.

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Greenpeace on the Internet at http://www.greenpeace.org