Posted by bex — 30 August 2002 at 8:00am
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BNFL shipment: Pacific Pintail
Japan's largest nuclear utility has announced that a safety cover-up at its nuclear power plants has been going on for decades - a devastating blow to an already embattled nuclear industry, with global implications.
British Nuclear Fuel's (BNFL) controversial plutonium fuel programme (MOX) suffered another blow when Japan's largest nuclear utility announced last night (29/8/02) that there has been a major safety scandal at its nuclear power plants. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the world's third largest nuclear power operator is a key potential customer of BNFL's MOX fuel manufactured at its plant at Sellafield, Cumbria.
Greenpeace has caught up with a deadly cargo of plutonium off South African waters and mounted a high-seas protest, just days before the start of the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.
Despite attempts by the two armed vessels to evade public scrutiny by altering course, the Greenpeace ship, MV Esperanza, located them late Sunday night and radioed an intention to peacefully protest, but received no reply.
Greenpeace reveals that the BNFL plutonium ships breached the Federated States of Micronesia's 200 nautical miles Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) at 9.50 am local time this morning in direct contravention of that nation's stated wishes. The shipment of rejected plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel is in transit between Japan and the United Kingdom.
Government plans announced today, to deal with the rapidly increasing radioactive waste mountain could make the problem much worse Greenpeace warned. The creation of a new authority to bail out the nuclear industry from the £8 billion bill for cleaning up waste and decommissioning old power stations, will free the bankrupt British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) to expand its nuclear business and create more deadly radioactive waste.
