SUVA (Pacnews) — Nuclear testing may have ended in the Pacific, but the region is not free of the nuclear threat.
The latest shipment of nuclear material through Pacific waters is scheduled to leave Japan for the United Kingdom last night and it’s shaping up to be the most controversial yet.
The route of the Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal vessels is not yet known, but environmental lobby group Greenpeace says two likely routes take the ship through the exclusive economic zones of several Pacific island countries.
If Greenpeace is right, the ships will enter the waters of the Federated States of Micronesia sometime between July 10-12. They could then enter the EEZ of Nauru before traveling either through Fiji or the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu en route to New Caledonian waters and eventually the Tasman Sea.
It could be the first of around 80 shipments over the next decade and Greenpeace says it fears that unless Pacific countries voice their opposition now, the region could remain a nuclear alley.
The Pintail and “Teal” vessels will be transporting 255 kilos of plutonium mixed oxide material—enough to make 50 nuclear bombs—from Japan to the U.K. The fuel, produced by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., was rejected by the Japanese after it was discovered that safety records on the shipment had been falsified.
The falsification was exposed by Greenpeace and led the Japanese to cancel its contract with BNFL.
Greenpeace says BNFL’s claims that the Pintail the Teal are the safest in the world are false. Both vessels are old and, unlike most hazardous waste shipment vessels, are not completely double-hulled. Between 1991 and 2000, similar nuclear cargo vessels experienced five fires, three potential fires and two collisions.
The Teal failed a maritime inspection last year.
In March this year, a BNFL nuclear transport ship caught fire in the Manchester Ship Canal in the U.K. Fortunately it had unloaded its cargo, but Greenpeace says a similar fire onboard the fully laden Pintail would be devastating.
The casks carrying the nuclear fuel, they say, are only tested for fire resistance for 30 minutes, while the average ship fire lasts 23 hours. Tests in the U.S. have shown that the casks can be breached by fire in two hours. A fire on the Pintail would send a catastrophic cloud of plutonium smoke into the atmosphere, not only threatening human health, but destroying fisheries and tourism.
Shipping nations have been negotiating compensation and liability through the Forum Secretariat, softened by a $10 million “goodwill fund” from the Japanese, but little progress has been made.
Typically, the perception is that the apparent powerlessness of small island states is linked to generous aid packages. But even this explanation, Greenpeace says, is no longer valid. On 6 May this year, the Council for Foreign and Community Relations in the Caribbean, another region accused of compliance to donor demands, announced its “implacable and steadfast opposition to the continued use of the Caribbean Sea for the shipment of nuclear wastes.”
