Sellafield is planning to ship a cargo of dangerous plutonium under armed escort to France in the next few days. The cargo of plutonium, in the form of weapons-useable dioxide powder – a highly prized terrorist material – will be secretly transported from Sellafield in French vehicles to local docks and onto the NDA’s ship Atlantic Osprey bound for Cherbourg.
Carrying a security crew from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, the otherwise unarmed ship must negotiate the notoriously busy English Channel shipping lanes, yet lacks some basic safety features deemed vital for other plutonium ships in the industry’s nuclear fleet.
The cargo will replace the plutonium used in orders for mixed oxide (MOX) fuel that had to be produced in European facilities when Sellafield was forced to sub-contract the orders from the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) because of the plant’s failure to produce the goods on time.
CORE’s Martin Forwood said today “This clandestine shipment of highly toxic plutonium puts European waters and communities at significant and unnecessary risk – simply because of Sellafield’s inability to make SMP work. This could be the first of many plutonium-swap shipments as a number of SMP orders have had to be sub-contracted to France and Belgium.
A report by the Royal Society on the security of nuclear materials, published just this week, points to the risks of ‘suicide terrorism’ and the dangers of nuclear transports being subject of sabotage and their cargoes acquired for improvised nuclear weapons or dirty bombs.
Martin Forwood added “The shipment from Sellafield will contain enough plutonium to make a large number of such devices and it is plain stupid that, given this and other warnings in recent years, the Government and industry are still prepared to put us at risk with their cavalier attitude to security and public safety.
SMP opened in 2002 and was designed to produce 120 tonnes of MOX fuel per year. None was produced in the first 2 years of operation and to date – after 6 years – a total of just over 5 tonnes of fuel have been produced.
Unlike her sister plutonium ships, the Atlantic Osprey has a single hull and single engine and has no naval armament.