GREENPEACE BOARDS NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENT AS IT APPROACHES PANAMA CANAL

6 February 1998

Panama City (Panama),

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 Governement 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 threathening 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.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Tom Clements (English), in Panama, mobile +507 614 61 56 or +507 264 3333 - Gina Sanchez (Spanish), in Panama, mobile + 507 614 61 57)
Micheal Kuehn (German), in Panama, mobile + 507 614 00 65
Damon Moglen, in Washington, t. +1 202 319 25 13
Luisa Colasimone, in Amsterdam, t. +31 20 52 49 546 or mobile +31 6 53 66 29 70
Stills available from John Novis, Amsterdam, mobile +31 6 53 81 91 21 or +3120 52 49 580
Footage available from Mim Lowe, Amsterdam t. +31 20 52 49 543