Pacific Pintail "Nuclear Waste"

An anti-nuclear group has urged the South African government to make sure that two vessels carrying what is reportedly the biggest ever shipment of plutonium stay out of its waters.
"What we don't want is an accident at sea where we as a country have to carry the consequences," said Mike Kantey, chairman of the Coalition Against Nuclear Energy, on Tuesday. The heavily armed Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Heron left Barrow-in-Furness in the north-west of England last week. They will collect their freight - a load of MOX nuclear fuel containing what environmentalists say are 1800kg of plutonium - at Cherbourg in France, then head for Japan. The route around the Cape is one of a number of possible routes the ships -which have been barred from the Suez Canal - may use.
In previous years the Pintail has used the Cape route when carrying nuclear materials. Kantey said Cane called on the government to ensure that the vessels stayed outside South Africa's 200 nautical mile economic exclusion zone.

Chain of events, the high level nuclear waste was transported by road haulage truck via the public highway system from the reprocessing facility at Cap La Hague to Cherbourg, France. After weeks of campaigning to stop highly radioactive waste from being shipped from France to Japan, Greenpeace launched an all out effort to prevent the transport vessel Pacific Pintail from being loaded for departure.

Greenpeace activists joined dozens of local French citizens in protesting the import, reprocessing, storage and disposal of nuclear waste in their community. Together they built a monument representing the nuclear waste left behind in France as part of this deadly plutonium trade

Greenpeace vessel, MV Moby Dick arrived in Cherbourg to provide a public platform for protest against reprocessing at La Hague. On the 23rd February, activists on board the Moby Dick, and four inflatable boats, moved to the docking area of the port of Cherbourg and placed themselves between it and the "Pacific Pintail" moving in to recieve its dangerous cargo. For 30 minutes the Moby Dick and its crewed inflatables delayed the docking of the freighter and prevented the plutonium waste from being placed on board.

The protest ended when a French military tug boat rammed the "Moby" and French naval commandos boarded the vessel, cut its anchor line and towed the ship out of the Cherbourg harbour. The inflatable boats were seized and removed from the area by commandos. Ten protestors were arrested, one injured and four left on the Moby Dick which was tethered to a buoy outside the harbour.

The Pacific Pintail, operated by Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd. (PNTL) of the UK, arrived in Cherbourg under cover of darkness to load its cargo of some 14 tonnes of plutonium waste. The first shipment contains 28 glassified blocks of highly radioactive nuclear waste in one large packing container. The material is so intensely radioactive that a person standing near a single unshielded glass block would recieve a lethal dose of radiation in less than 60 seconds.

Greenpeace crew were waiting on board a second vessel, the "Solo" and met the "Pintail" when it departed the harbour. They continue to track the shipment to alert countries along the route of the potential danger. Despite legal efforts to stop Greenpeace from tracking this shipment of nuclear waste, they will continue to shadow the vessel for as long as is possible en route to Japan.

TheTamshee says: Governments need to act responsibly, the first shipment to Japan in 1999 ended in fiasco after the producer, UK state company British Nuclear Fuels, admitted it had deliberately falsified vital quality control safety data. After an 18,000-mile voyage, the rejected fuel was shipped back to the UK. Two more cargoes, one delivered in 1999, the other in 2001, were opposed by local citizens and regional governments. Both shipments remain in storage with no prospect that they will ever be used. Enough already, stop the Nuclear madness!