After a three day trial at Preston Crown Court, CORE’s Campaign Coordinator Martin Forwood was found guilty by the jury of obstructing a railway engine at Barrow Docks earlier in the year. The police had brought two charges under the Malicious Damage Act 1861, one of which was dropped by the prosecution at the outset of the trial. A plea of not guilty had been entered.
In handing down what he referred to as ‘a modest fine’ of £250, Judge Peter Openshaw, QC, said that whilst the defendant’s actions could not be lawfully excused, he did not doubt the sincerity of the campaigner’s views. He added that he had been impressed by the defendant’s dignity and restraint during the trial, and that his behaviour whilst padlocked on the railway line and afterwards had been of credit to him. He ordered the campaigner to pay £1500 towards his legal costs, but made no order to pay any of the prosecution costs. He allowed 6 months to pay.
On 15th April this year, Martin Forwood locked himself onto a railway line inside Barrow docks as a protest against the arrival of a consignment of Italian nuclear waste destined for reprocessing at Sellafield’s THORP plant. The court heard that his actions had delayed the Sellafield bound train by around 2 hours.
The controversial shipments have already been targetted by activists in Italy, with attempts by local groups to halt the first shipment in April, and an action by Italian Greenpeace activists in September which resulted in the arrest of 27 protestors. This summer, a petition calling for a ban on any further transport and reprocessing of Italian fuel was presented to the European Parliament by political groups in the region where the waste has been stored. Three further shipments have arrived at Sellafield since April and nine more are expected over the coming year.
Italy’s nuclear power stations were permanently shut down by 1990 following a ‘post-Chernobyl’ public referendum held by the Government in 1987 in which 87% of the Italian public voted against nuclear power. With no nuclear power programme, Italy has no use for the plutonium and uranium recovered from any fuel reprocessed at Sellafield. Similarly, with its plans to locate a national waste dump currently in a high state of turmoil, Italy is unlikely to take back the nuclear wastes produced at THORP as required by the reprocessing contract signed with BNFL in 1980.
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Following his conviction, Martin Forwood said “ I feel no guilt for an action that has drawn public attention to the illegal import by BNFL of foreign nuclear waste. The protest was just the start of a campaign to get this trade banned “
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note: The 53 tonnes of waste currently being imported into the UK comes from the Garigliano power station which closed down in 1982. The waste has been stored with other nuclear materials for the past 20 years in the Fiat Avogadro store near Vercelli, between Turin and Milan. If reprocessed, the Garigliano waste will yield approximately half a tonne of plutonium, 50 tonnes of uranium, 400 cubic metres of Low and Intermediate Level Wastes and 5.3 cubic metres of vitrified High Level Waste.