Two Barrow-registered nuclear ships are gearing up to sail to France in the next few days where they will load a consignment of plutonium MOX fuel at Cherbourg for shipment to Japan. The armed nuclear ships Pacific Heron and Pacific Egret belong to Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd (PNTL) and are currently loading stores and making other sea-going preparations at Barrow’s Ramsden Dock in advance of the 6-week voyage from France to Japan.
The consignment of plutonium fuel – in the form of 20 MOX fuel assemblies containing over half a tonne of plutonium – is expected to be loaded onto the ships at Cherbourg this coming week with departure from France to Japan expected no later than 19th April. Fabricated some 3 years ago by French company AREVA, the plutonium fuel should have been delivered to Takahama power station – owned by Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) – in 2011, but the shipment was postponed after the infamous tsunami and the melt-down of the Fukushima reactors.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said to day ‘Given that the upcoming shipment is being made at the request of AREVA because it has become tired of storing the fuel in France – and that KEPCO is reported as being undecided as to whether the MOX fuel will ever be used* – these Barrow ships are doing little more than playing ‘Pass the Plutonium Parcel’ with a batch of unwanted and dangerous fuel.’
With no end in sight to the on-going problems at Fukushima, Japan’s increasingly unpopular plans to use MOX fuel in its dwindling number of reactors have virtually come to a standstill. The implementation in July this year of new post-Fukushima regulatory safeguards to reactors in Japan is likely to see the Takahama nuclear power station’s Unit 3 – for which the 20 MOX assemblies are destined – remain closed until 2015 or later. The construction of a new ‘tsunami-proof’ sea wall is itself not scheduled for completion until March 2015.
The Pacific Heron and Pacific Egret, built in Japan and delivered to Barrow in 2008 and 2010 respectively, are fitted with 20mm naval canon and carry an extra security crew of fully-armed police officers drawn from the national Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC). Both ships carried out sea-trials in the Irish Sea earlier this year and the Pacific Heron returned from several weeks in dry-dock at Falmouth on 6th April. Whilst the overall route that the ships will take from France to Japan has not been divulged, they must enter the Sea of Japan to reach Takahama on Japan’s western coast – a maritime area under increasing tension caused by the escalating rift between North and South Korea.
Martin Forwood added: ‘On top of the risks of maritime accident and environmental damage, this foolhardy shipment exposes the absurdity of an industry prepared to transport a sham and unnecessary batch of unwanted MOX – a plutonium fuel defined by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) as ‘direct-use nuclear weapons material’ – through increasingly troubled waters.’
* as reported by the Japan Times and Kyodo news on 21st March 2013.
Note for Editors: CORE is a co-signatory of a letter condemning the shipment to US Secretary of State John Kerry (expected in Seoul, S.Korea this weekend) from NGOs in the UK, US, Japan and S.Korea.