TL: GREENPEACE STATEMENT on the Imminent Plutonium Waste Shipment 
    from France to Japan
SO: Greenpeace International (GP)
DT: February 15th, 1995
Keywords: greenpeace nuclear power plutonium waste transportation
france japan europe fareast /


In the next week, a British nuclear freighter will arrive in
France to receive a cargo of highly radioactive nuclear waste. 
This unprecedented transport will inaugurate a program of
global "plutonium waste" sea shipments from France and Britain to
Japan.

This first transport will carry one cask of 28 glass blocks of
nuclear waste arising from "reprocessing" or plutonium
separation.  The cargo will contain some 13,000,000 curies of
radioactivity.  If all the blocks are transported at this
rate, over 100 sea shipments will be required by the year
2010.  At the same time, if the ships are fully loaded with
nuclear waste, a single transport could contain more than 10
times the radioactivity released during the reactor explosion at
Chernobyl.  

These shipments involve calamitous risks to the environment and
public health.  The waste is so deadly that a person
within one meter of a single unshielded glass block would
receive a fatal dose of radiation in less than one minute.
An accident releasing even a small quantity of plutonium waste 
from one of these cargoes could contaminate marine or
terrestrial areas for tens of thousands of years.  

These widely recognized risks have fuelled increasing
consternation at both national and international levels. 
National and regional governments have taken action to ban the
shipments from their territorial or economic zone waters. 

Japan, France and Britain have remained obstinately and
inexcusably silent in the face of this growing international
protest.  The silence of British, French and Japanese
authorities is a direct denial of the right and responsibility of
other sovereign states to protect the environment and
public health.  The arrogance and anti-democratic behavior of the
countries involved amounts to a "nuclear colonialism"
which threatens public and political health world-wide.

Greenpeace therefore calls on nations around the world to take
all actions necessary to stop these inexcusable shipments.  At
the same time, if this first plutonium waste transport does leave
France for Japan, Greenpeace pledges to make all efforts to
follow the shipment in order to provide nations along the
transport route with the information they require to protect
human health and the environment.
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