Nuclear waste ship sets sail despite protests
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A SHIP carrying 25 tons of reprocessed nuclear waste was steaming to Australia yesterday despite protests from activists about an “environmental disaster waiting to happen.”
The “BBC Shanghai” left the northern French port of Cherbourg after approval from local officials, who carried out an inspection on Wednesday, and it is due to arrive in New South Wales at the end of the year.
It is laden with radioactive waste from spent nuclear fuel that Australia sent to France for reprocessing in four shipments in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) said yesterday.
The reprocessing involves removing uranium, plutonium and other materials, with the remaining substances stabilized in glass and stored in a container.
“The container will be placed on a nuclear-rated ship, brought to an Australian port, and trucked to Lucas Heights (nuclear facility) with an appropriate security operation,” ANSTO said in a statement.
“The ship was selected by (France-based nuclear company) Areva, and after a full inspection by both French maritime safety authorities and by the French nuclear safety regulator ... the ship’s seaworthiness was confirmed and certified.”
Greenpeace, French environmental campaign group Robin des Bois and a green lawmaker called for the shipment, sent by Areva, to be halted.
“Areva, almost bankrupt, are using a dustbin ship to carry waste, without any serious inspection,” tweeted Denis Baupin, a senior lawmaker with the French green party.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific said the ship, which is owned by German firm BBC Chartering, was an “environmental disaster waiting to happen,” claiming that it was “blacklisted by the United States because of its safety record.”
However, Areva’s external relations director Bernard Monnot said the ship was “not banned from ports in the United States, but banned from transporting material for the American government.”
Nathalie Geismar from Robin des Bois said other ports had found it had a “staggering number of flaws.”
Authorities in the English Channel region, who inspected the ship, said they found no problems to stop it sailing.
The two containers of waste came from Areva’s reprocessing plant in Beaumont-Hague. ANSTO said the material would be kept at the Lucas Heights facility in Sydney until a nuclear waste dump site, which has yet to be chosen, is found and constructed.
Greenpeace called for assurances from the Australian government that the waste would be safely stored.
“We want to know what safety precautions ... will put in place when this ship arrives on our shores,” Greenpeace Australia said in a statement.
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