The Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal
The Pacific Pintail (left), and the Pacific Teal docked stern to stern.
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Pacific Pintail will carry the nuclear material Built 1987 |
Pacific Teal Built 1982 |
Both ships:
- British flagged.
- Length - approximately 104 metres.
- Beam - approximately 16 metres.
- Dead weight tonnage - between 3,702 and 3,865.
- Power source - two 1,900 horsepower engines.
- Owned by Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd. (PNTL) and managed by the UK company Fisher and sons. PNTL is jointly owned by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., French nuclear company COGEMA and ORC (Overseas Reprocessing Committee - comprised of representatives from Japan's nine private nuclear utilities).
- Are the only armed commercial ships it the world. Each ship has three 30 mm (1.3 inch) cannons - one forward and two aft.
The safest ships today are built with double hulls. Ships have been designed this way so that should the first hull be damaged the second hull will reduce the chance of the ship sinking.
The PNTL ships do not have double hulls throughout the vessel, only around the cargo hold.
The ships carry large amount of ammunition, increasing the danger of explosion in the event of an on board fire.
Lloyds of London records show that between the years of 1990 - 1999 ship board fire / explosion was the most common cause of ship losses.
An on board fire is one of the greatest risks to the plutonium MOX cargo. In March 2002, a BNFL ship, the Atlantic Osprey, caught fire in its engine room.
The casks that contain the plutonium MOX are tested to withstand a fire burning for just half an hour, yet shipboard fires often last many hours and even days.
US tests have shown that a fire could breach the cask containing the plutonium MOX within two hours. Smoke could then carry radioactive material into the atmosphere, and in the case of the ship sinking contaminate the ocean over large areas.
