JAPAN PREPARES SECRET NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENT; GREENPEACE WARNS THAT TRANSPORT IS "FLOATING CHERNOBYL"

29 November 2001

Paris - Greenpeace today condemned the nuclear industry of France, Japan and UK for proceeding with a planned shipment of highly radioactive nuclear waste from France to Japan, which is expected to depart Cherbourg in Normandy next week.

Despite a major ongoing security alert world-wide around nuclear facilities - involving anti-aircraft missile, army personnel and the implementation of no-fly zones – the planned Japanese high-level nuclear waste shipment will be transported by an unarmed British flagged cargo ship.

"It is insane and unjustifiable to plan dozens of shipments of weapons usable plutonium around the globe," said Greenpeace International spokeperson Damon Moglen. "In its desperation to continue its business, the plutonium industry is making itself a global threat to the environment, to public health, and to the cause of nuclear non-proliferation."

The imminent high-level waste shipment as been labelled a ‘floating Chernobyl’ because it will contain more radioactivity — an estimated 76,000,000 curies - as was released from the entire Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine. In total some 152 canisters of glassified (vitrified) high-level waste will be transported on board a freighter owned by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. The nuclear transport — expected to be made by either the "Pacific Sandpiper" or "Pacific Swan" — will be one of the largest ever made. The nuclear waste is to be transported to Japan for temporary storage at the Rokkasho-mura nuclear facility in Northern Japan.

The vitrified high-level waste is a by-product of the plutonium separation from Japanese irradiated nuclear fuel at the French state-controlled COGEMA La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant on the Normandy coast.

Transport state officials are remaining silent about what route the dangerous nuclear waste shipment will follow. However, past shipments have gone via: the Caribbean/Panama; Cape Horn; and the Cape of Good Hope/Tasman Sea/South Pacific. At the beginning of this year, the last Japanese high-level waste shipment was sent via Latin America and Cape Horn and was met with vociferous protests in Chile, Argentina and throughout the region.

"The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have called for an end to these shipments through their waters," said Moglen. "It is clear that Japan, France and Britain have decided to meet this legitimate opposition with disdain and even greater efforts to make these dangerous shipments in secret The transport states are not complying with their legal responsibilities and that is why the transit states are now taking their own political and legal actions to ban the shipments."

The latest Japanese nuclear shipment will sail directly into swelling international opposition to the plutonium industry. Following on from regional declarations against the shipments at the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), the Rio Group of Foreign Ministers of Latin America, and the Central American Parliament, opposition to the nuclear transports has also been placed on the agenda of a meeting taking place today and tomorrow of the Latin America and Caribbean nations at the OPANAL Summit in Panama. OPANAL - the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean -oversees the nuclear free zone that encompasses all of the Caribbean and Latin America.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

- Damon Moglen mobile phone: +507 621 7898 and the land-line: Hotel Ejectivo: +507 265 8011, room 1108, Yannick Rousselet - mobile (France) +33 685806559