Ship docks in to transport nuclear waste
CHERBOURG: The British cargo vessel Pacific Pintail maneuvered through protesters and docked here early yesterday to begin taking on 15 tonnes of radioactive nuclear waste for a controversial voyage to Japan, witnesses said.
The vessel was met by the Moby Dick, a boat belonging to the ecological movement Greenpeace that discharged several rubber rafts, which then tried to encircle the Pacific Pintail.
But French maritime police intervened and escorted the Moby Dick and the rafts away from the cargo ship, local officials said, adding that some 20 protesters would be taken into custody for questioning.
Authorities had earlier mobilized several hundred armed police officers to escort a convoy carrying 28 blocks of waste sealed in glass and weighing 500kg each from a nearby reprocessing plant to this northwest French port.
The waste had been reprocessed in The Hague.
Greenpeace plans to use the Moby Dick to shadow the cargo vessel on its secret route to the Japanese port of MutsuOgawara, on the island of Honshu.
Greenpeace said on Tuesday it would appeal against a court order imposing heavy fines in the event its activists tried to prevent the loading or departure of the ship.
About 20 mostly Pacific Ocean countries have expressed concern at the voyage — and some have warned they will the prevent the ship from entering their territorial waters.
Over 4,000 residents of the Japanese village of Rokkasho submitted a protest petition yesterday to the governor of Aomori province in the far north of Honshu island.
They have demanded that the Japanese government halt its plan to store the waste there, saying in a letter to Science and Technology Agency director-general Makiko Tanaka the material contains radiation estimated to be 1,000 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The non-governmental Citizen’s Nuclear Information Centre said the "secret voyage . - violates international law," given that its itinerary had not been made public, and was likely to the cross territorial waters of several countries.
Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Terusuke Terada, cited by the Kyodo news service, said Japan would continue to try to allay concern over the planned shipment. —AFP
Source : The Star, February 24, 1995
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