Mainichi Daily News Feb 25, 1998 Page 2

OPINION/ANALYSIS

Perspectives of Mainichi Shimbun reporters nuclear waste shipments require greater openness

By Hiroyuki Yoshida

Calm in the face of protests by environmentalists, deaf to the concerns of neighboring countries, a tanker transporting reprocessed radioactive nuclear waste from France back to Japan cruised through the Panama Canal on Feb. 6. Japan's failure to explain its opting for the Canal route, and its refusal to address widespread misgivings about the safety of such shipments, are typical of a pattern of secrecy that only deepens the apprehensions it seeks to dismiss.

The maritime transport of reprocessed nuclear waste back to Japan is unavoidable as long as Japan relies on other countries to reprocess the spent fuel generated by its nuclear power plants. That being the case, Japan should at least take seriously the safety concerns of countries along the shipment route, and respond in good faith to requests for information.

The Japan-bound ship that steamed through the Panama Canal earlier this month is the 5,000-ton British-registered Pacific Swan. It left the French port of Cherbourg on Jan. 21 laden with 60 bundles of highly radioactive glass-encased waste that had been reprocessed at nuclear fuel plants in France and Britain. Now heading westward across the Pacific, the Swan is due to arrive in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, sometime in early March.

The Pacific Swan will be the third ship to dock in Japan with a cargo of reprocessed Japanese nuclear waste. The first arrived in 1995 after rounding Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. The second went around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope in 1997. Why the Panama Canal route was chosen for the the vessel is not clear, but lower shipping costs appear to have been a key factor in the decision.

Caribbean nations raised a chorus of protest. On Jan. 2 the Dominican Republic expressed concerns over the ship's passage through the Mona Strait separating its east coast from Puerto Rico. Joining the Dominicans in opposition ranging from "concern" to demands that the shipment be canceled were a federation of eastern Caribbean nations, American lawmakers representing states and territories bordering the Caribbean and the Pacific, the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, the Virgin Islands (a U.S. territory), the Bahamas, Jamaica and New Zealand.

Antigua and Barbuda, in its official statement, criticized Japan's failure to notify it regarding the day and time of the Pacific Swan's passage, and demanded "further discussion regarding safety measures and fuller prior consultation." In Puerto Rico, an environmentalist group is seeking a court order to bar the ship from the Mona Strait. Hearings began early this month.

All this commotion leaves Japan curiously unmoved. The responses by the Japanese power companies directing the shipment have been curt almost to the point of rudeness: "The shipment route is the Panama Canal route" and "Expected time of arrival in Japan is early March 1998." Over and out.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry's position is that international law guarantees the right of "harmless passage" to any ship posing no threat to the peace, order and security of the countries along its route. This is the legal basis for Japan's refusal to release information regarding navigational routes and on-board safety measures.

But why insist on secrecy in the face of worldwide anxiety? The reason most often cited is "navigational security." In my opinion this is a red herring. It might be different with a cargo of plutonium, which could conceivably tempt nuclear hijackers. But reprocessed waste presents no such temptation.

That aside, it's hard to imagine Japan as the target of sabotage on the high seas -- if only because those in charge of the shipment have taken so few precautions against the contingency. Early on the morning of Feb. 6, three members of Greenpeace succeeded, as part of their protest, in boarding the ship while it was in the canal. Their infiltration met with surprisingly little resistance. The entire crew was asleep at the time.

This little incident makes nonsense of the supposed necessity of keeping the route secret for security reasons. Secrecy is not a necessity but a luxury, and its real purpose, one suspects, is to fend off the protests of Greenpeace and the countries along the ship's route. Even if security is a genuine concern, the logical approach would be to inform the governments in question of the ship's course in return for their cooperation in preventing sabotage.

The uneasiness a ship with radioactive cargo generates can hardly be dismissed as paranoia. Oil tankers, after all, have accidents all the time, all over the world. Tankers transporting nuclear waste are not exempt from the common hazards of the sea.

Japan has offered assurances to the effect that the shipping containers have been tested for resistance to pressure and fire, but as to details regarding how a serious accident would be dealt with, Japan has so far offered none.

And Japan's nuclear safety record is not confidence- inspiring. The series of mishaps arising at plants operated by the governmental Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp. (Donen), not to mention their subsequent bungled cover- ups, have put the hazards of Japan's chronic secrecy on worldwide display.

The stubborn refusal to disclose the Pacific Swan's route is the same thing all over again. In today's international society, no country can say to the rest of the world regarding a matter of international concern, "It's none of your business."

Most Caribbean nations are small countries, islands nestled in a beautiful sea that earn their livelihoods from tourism and fishing. A tanker laden with nuclear cargo is the most unwanted of guests. Seen in that light, the protests and demands of the Caribbean nations regarding the Pacific Swan's passage are hardly out of line.

If Japan persists in its unwillingness to release information concerning the transport of nuclear material, the distrust it has engendered will only grow.