Dubbed as a "floating Chernobyl," the Swan Pacific ship with the largest shipment ever of vitrified high level nuclear wastes (resulting from plutonium reprocessing) successfully made it through the Caribbean on its way to the Panama Canal. The British-flagged ship "Pacific Swan" has on board 104 canisters of the toxic wastes that is on its way from the French plutonium reprocessing factory of La Hague, in Normandy, to northern Japan. The high level waste onboard the Pacific Swan contains the same amount of radioactivity as that released from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, according to Greenpeace, that is contrary to the transporting of the wastes. The wastes were slated to pass today through the Panama Canal. Local ecological groups, with the support of Greenpeace want the Caribbean governments to ban the passing of the ship, and others that are expected to follow through the Caribbean. In the possible case of a spill, the economy of the Caribbean would be devastated. Greenpeace reports that in the summer of this year (1999), the first shipment of plutonium fuel was made to Japan from the plutonium factories of Sellafield in the UK and La Hague in France on the Pacific Swan’s sister ships, the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail. Whilst the shipment was enroute via the Cape of Good Hope and the Tasman Sea, a major scandal broke about nuclear data crucial to the fuel’s safety being deliberately falsified by workers at Sellafield. Subsequently fears for the fuel’s safety has led to a cancellation of its loading into a Japanese nuclear reactor. As the plutonium fuel shipment arrived in Japan, the country experienced its worst nuclear accident in a facility linked to the Japanese plutonium industry. So far well over one hundred people have been exposed to large amounts of radiation and one worker recently died from his radiation exposure. The accident and the data falsification scandal have destroyed public confidence in the Japanese and European plutonium industries. "As the New Millennium arrives, the plutonium industry is again risking the lives of millions of people and the global environment with their lethal shipment of nuclear high level waste", said Simon Boxer, Nuclear Campaigner for Greenpeace International. "Given the recent nuclear accident in Japan and the scandal of falsification of nuclear safety data of the plutonium fuel within the latest shipment, nations along the transport routes can have no faith in the ability of the plutonium industry to transport this nuclear waste safely. The plutonium industries of France, UK and Japan have been totally discredited and shown to be untrustworthy. With a passing of a new century the world community should end the nuclear industry as a failure of the last century." The Pacific Swan shipment is the largest shipment to date and is part of a program to transport some 3000 canisters of vitrified high level waste from France and the UK to Japan. In addition to high level waste shipments, France and UK have plans to make up to 80 shipments of plutonium fuel to Japan over the next ten years. Past research has shown that if a high level waste shipment was involved in a serious maritime accident involving fire, the intensity and duration of ship fires could lead to a rupture of the shipping containers used to transport the waste. Such an accident could lead to an environmental disaster on the scale of Chernobyl. As has been shown by the oil slick hitting the coast of Brittany (France) from the sinking of the Erika, the environmental consequences of ship accidents at sea can be catastrophic for coastal communities. The governments of France, UK and Japan have not conducted any international Environmental Impact Assessment of the risks and consequences of their nuclear waste and plutonium shipments and have not consulted the nations who are at risk along the various transport routes.
