The plutonium fuel will be carried by two British flagged ships, the "Pacific Pintail" and the "Pacific Teal", owned by Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited (PNTL) but operated "on government service" to the UK. It is expected one of the ships will leave Barrow docks, near Sellafield, with a cargo of eight MOX fuel elements containing some 225 kgs of plutonium. The other will leave Cherbourg, near La Hague, with 32 MOX fuel elements containing 221 kgs of plutonium. They will then rendezvous at sea, off the French Atlantic coast, and continue together on the 20,000 mile voyage to Japan without naval escort along a still secret route.
Greenpeace revealed that the secret Japan-bound transport could leave as early as next week (July 12-19). The combined plutonium cargo of some 446kg is greater than that contained in India's nuclear weapons programme and is sufficient to build some 60 nuclear weapons.
The shipment and the plutonium programme behind it threaten to undermine international nuclear non-proliferation efforts, environment protection and public health and safety. "Japan's drive to amass weapons-usable plutonium not only threatens regional stability in East Asia but fatally undercuts international efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons," said Mike Townsley of Greenpeace International.
The plutonium has been produced in the nuclear reprocessing factories at Sellafield in Britain and La Hague in France. These plants take burnt reactor fuel from nuclear power plants and, through a highly polluting process, isolate the plutonium from the other radioactive elements. It is later combined with uranium to form mixed oxide (MOX) or plutonium fuel. The French and British nuclear industries are currently seeking government approval to massively expand the capacity of their MOX production facilities.
"The British Government claims to have an ethical foreign policy. If this cargo is allowed to leave, that policy will be in tatters. It is not ethical to annually pump millions of litres of radioactive waste into the sea. It is not ethical to impose this dangerous transport on the enroute states, threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. It is not ethical to be a world leader in the sale of weapons usable nuclear material," said Townsley.
"If it really wants its claims of an ethical foreign policy to be more than just rhetoric, then it must: immediately ban this transport; reject British Nuclear Fuels' (BNFL) application to begin operating a massive new MOX production line; and end the separation of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel at Sellafield."
Instead of a military escort the two vessels, recently fitted with three 30mm cannon each, are expected to protect each other against potential attack. A security force, consisting of 26 officers from the UK Atomic Energy Agency Constabulary, who normally patrol British nuclear facilities, will also be onboard the ships. This has been approved by the US government, a requirement because most of the original uranium fuel came from the U.S.
In Japan the plutonium fuel will be loaded into conventional nuclear power reactors operated by Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) at Takahama and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) at Fukushima. These reactors were never designed to use this type of fuel and it will reduce their operating safety margins.
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