The Greenpeace ship SV Rainbow Warrior arrived today in Cherbourg to protest the imminent shipment of weapons-usable plutonium fuel from France to Japan, the first-ever of its kind. Warning that Japan's drive to amass plutonium threatens regional stability and international nuclear disarmament efforts, the international environmental group labelled the imminent shipment a "recipe for disaster" and called on the French, British and Japanese government to cancel the transport.
In a press conference onboard the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace revealed that the secret Japan-bound transport -which will carry enough nuclear weapons-usable plutonium to construct at least 60 nuclear bombs- is scheduled to leave the port of Cherbourg on July 15 or 16.
"Japan's secretive program to amass weapons-usable plutonium not only threatens regional stability in East Asia but fatally undercuts the cause of international non-proliferation," said Damon Moglen of Greenpeace International. "Rather than competing to be the world's two biggest traffickers in plutonium, France and Britain should shut their reprocessing plants down and prohibit this deadly industry."
The controversial plutonium fuel shipment is to be made on two ships, the Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal, owned by Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited (PNTL), but operated "on government service" to the UK. One of the ships will leave Britain with a cargo of 8 MOX (mixed plutonium/uranium oxide) fuel elements containing some 225 kilograms of plutonium. The othership will leave France with 32 MOX fuel elements containing an estimated 221 kilograms of plutonium. The two freighters, presumably each under naval escort, will then rendezvous at sea, off the French Atlantic coast, and continue together on their approximately 20,000 mile voyage to Japan without naval escort along a still secret route.
At the Cherbourg press conference, Greenpeace revealed that French, British and Japanese officials are seeking to cover-up a number of serious safety and security shortcomings :
- - the plutonium fuel will not be transported in the specially designed and constructed containers normally used in Europe. It will instead be packaged in old casks designed for the transport of quite different nuclear material, which are inadequate to the stresses of serious maritime accidents
- - the plutonium transport from France will not be escorted by a dedicated naval vessel. It will instead be made in tandem with another lightly armed freighter carrying a similar cargo of plutonium
- - both British-flagged freighters used for the transport will contain an estimated 7 tonnes of high explosive ammunition, and 1100 tonnes of fuel oil in conjunction with its plutonium cargo
"This shipment is a recipe for disaster. What madman would consider mixing highly explosive ammunition, a massive amount of fuel oil and 60 weapons worth of nuclear bomb fuel", said Moglen.
"With its massive discharges of nuclear waste into the sea and air, COGEMA has proven itself a world-leader in environmental contamination. With this shipment, it will resume its drive to become a world-leader in trafficking in weapons-usable plutonium," said Jean-Luc Thierry of Greenpeace France. "Standing at the threshold of a new millennium, the French government should be looking to end nuclear proliferation as begun in the last century rather than guaranteeing its growth in the next."
The French government is currently considering a number of key decisions regarding the future of its state-controlled plutonium industry. These include a request to massively increase plutonium fuel fabrication at the MELOX factory and a new discharge authorisation for the la Hague reprocessing plants. France's Environment Minister has pledged to require public reviews of both decisions.
The imminent plutonium shipment can also be expected to reawaken significant opposition on the part of the dozens of enroute nations put at risk. The 1992 plutonium shipment from France to Japan onboard the ship Akatsuki Maru fostered strong protest from over 50 countries around the globe. Opposition to that shipment, and subsequent shipments of high level nuclear waste from France to Japan, has lead to demands from enroute nations that they be involved in route planning and receive guarantees of emergency response, salvage and liability coverage. French, British, and Japanese officials have instead prepared the imminent plutonium fuel transport in secret, without enroute state consultation.
In the meanwhile, another Greenpeace vessel, the MV Greenpeace, is due to leave Dublin today and will steam to Barrow, the British port from which the British fabricated MOX will be transported. The MV Greenpeace leaves Dublin following official statements by the Irish government that they reject the plutonium shipments in the Irish Sea and call on the British government to discontinue reprocessing at Sellafield (the plutonium factories at Sellafield annually discharge hundreds of millions of litres of nuclear waste into the Irish Sea).
Further information:
Contact:
Greenpeace press office on: 020 7865 8255
