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April 2002: BNFL NUCLEAR TRANSPORT SHIPS LEAVE UK PORT AMID CONTROVERY
London - On the sixteenth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, two armed British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) freighters left Barrow-in-Furness in northern England this morning, setting the clock ticking on the most controversial nuclear shipment in history.
Escorted from the harbour by police inflatables, the vessels are bound for Japan. On their return voyage from Japan to Sellafield, England, they plan to transport enough plutonium to build 50 nuclear bombs. The return of the material, a mixture of plutonium-uranium oxide (MOX), to the UK would be in defiance of both international and UK law.
As
Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Shaun Burnie said, "They could not have
chosen a more fitting date to remind the international community of the
arrogance and dangerous risk-taking of the nuclear industry”.
Greenpeace has written to the UK government and to BNFL this week to outline its case that the transport from Japan would be unlawful and in breach of international agreements. The return shipment would also violate an undertaking given by the UK government to the International Law of the Sea Tribunal in November 2001. Following a challenge against the newly approved Sellafield MOX Plant by the Irish government to the Tribunal, the UK told the Tribunal that no imports of MOX fuel associated with the operations of the Sellafield MOX Plant would go ahead before October 2002.
The two vessels, the Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal, one acting as an armed escort, the other carrying the plutonium, would face a barrage of international opposition if they make their global journey, the environmental organisation predicted. Demonstrations are planned in Ireland today. The ships plan to pick up the plutonium MOX material at Takahama in Japan in June, and return it to the UK in early August.
The
material is being returned to the UK solely because, after being shipped
as fuel to Japan in 1999, it was revealed that the manufacturer, BNFL, had
falsified critical quality control data during its production.
"The industry is creating a floating terrorist target and a dangerous hazard simply in order for BNFL to be able to get new contracts with its Japanese customers. This would result in yet more shipments of plutonium fuel, perhaps as many as 80 over the next decade," Burnie said.
The nuclear industry is keeping secret the route of the proposed June shipment, but is likely to take one of three possible routes from Japan to the UK. Caribbean countries have already this year voiced their "implacable opposition" to nuclear shipments through their region and Latin American countries have also voiced protest. During a shipment of MOX to Japan through the Tasman Sea last year, a flotilla of small yachts sailed from Australia and New Zealand to oppose the PNTL vessels. The flotilla protest was supported by the New Zealand government.
"BNFL
lied to the world about the falsification of safety data; countries along
the routes have every right to be concerned that a company with such a dangerous
and discreditable history should be in charge of the safety of this shipment,"
Burnie said.
There are also serious concerns about the safety of the shipment, which should also have prevented the PNTL vessel leaving. The cask in which the plutonium is to be transported has not yet been licensed by the Japanese authorities. An earlier licence was revoked when it was discovered that levels of the single largest source of radioactivity in the cask, the radioisotope Plutonium-241, will be up to twice as high as originally estimated.
"This shipment must be abandoned before it is too late. When this BNFL MOX fuel arrived in Japan in 1999, Japan was experiencing its worst ever nuclear accident at Tokai-mura. On the present schedule, the plutonium shipment will take place right in the middle of the FIFA World Cup in Japan, in spite of the enormous diversion of security resources this will take. The nuclear industry in the UK and Japan clearly has not learned from its mistakes, and are showing total disregard for public safety, the environment and international security," Burnie concluded.
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