Surrounded by Japanese police and coast guards Greenpeace inflatables protest beneath kites from the Mv Arctic Sunrise
Similar transports of plutonium waste material have taken place
before and have been protested and condemned by en-route
governments, communities and non-governmental organisations.
However, the global outpouring of protest ignited by this latest
shipment surpasses previous levels by quite some way.
Eighty governments sent strong messages opposing the shipment
including very strong statements and support for the protests
against it from the Prime Ministers of New Zealand and Ireland,
Helen Clark and Bertie Ahern. Three groups of seafarers, united by
their love of the sea and indignation at how the sea and those that
depend on it were being risked, formed protest flotillas at
strategic points along the potential routes the shipment could
take. Many thousands more 'landlubber' individuals, as concerned as
the 'real' flotilla protestors but boatless, or without sea-legs,
joined Greenpeace's virtual flotilla to protest the oceans becoming
nuclear highways.
Also, three global events and some major industry scandals
punctuated the plutonium transport's perilous passage around the
world.
The first of these events was the Korea/Japan World Cup. We
suspect that BNFL and the British and Japanese Governments timed
the ships' arrival in Japan to coincide with the tournament, in the
hope that media attention would be diverted. We leave you to judge
whether this suspected strategy worked or not.
However, the second two events only helped to focus more
attention on the shipments. The ships passed by South Africa only a
week before the World Summit on Sustainable Development. This shone
a spotlight on the absurdity of the ships, with their cargo of
dirty and dangerous energy, passing the world's largest ever
environmental conference, which was supposed to be agreeing
timelines for 2 billion of the world's poor to receive clean, safe
energy. The final event, less than a week ahead of the ships'
arrival in Barrow, was the first anniversary of 9/11 - a time when
everybody's thoughts turned to security amidst the threat from
terrorist attacks.
In the meantime, the nuclear industry in both Japan and the UK
has been reeling from serious financial and safety scandals. TEPCO,
the Japanese utility due to load plutonium MOX fuel into its
Fukushima and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors, admitted it had
falsified safety data on its reactors for the past decade. Heads
rolled, and the impact on public confidence in the industry
resulted in the immediate announcement of a freeze in any plutonium
MOX use.
In the UK, British Energy, the major nuclear utility alongside
BNFL and a key customer for BNFL's Sellafield reprocessing plant,
announced it had joined BNFL in effectively being bankrupt and
asked the UK government for a bailout. City watchdogs are now
investigating the financial probity of the company.
Both these developments can only severely undermine confidence
in the nuclear industry's claims about the safety and need for
plutonium programs.
So what was it about this shipment that focused global concern
as never before? A combination of the following probably gets you
your answer, but we welcome further suggestions;
- a groundswell of anger from those affected has been building
up from past shipments;
- this was the first shipment of weapons-usable plutonium post
9/11, or;
- the fact that those responsible for the provision and
perpetuation of nuclear power, of which the plutonium trade is an
essential part, suffered an annus horribilis of cover-ups,
bankruptcies and insolvencies, safety lapses and failures in plant
security.
What possibly became clearer to a wider public than ever before,
as the shipment progressed, was that The Pacific Pintail and
Pacific Teal were becoming potent symbols of the nuclear industry's
failure as all of the above stories played out.
One of the results, we hope, will be that many more people will
not only question the need for further dangerous shipments to take
place, but that they will go further and question the need for
nuclear power at all. In saying this, we fully recognise that
nuclear power cannot just vanish overnight and has to be phased out
gradually. There are huge stockpiles of plutonium in the UK, Japan
and elsewhere which have to be stored safely and nuclear plants
have to be decommissioned.
What we are certain about, and hope that many more are also
aware of as a result of the global coverage the issue received, is
that any further investment in the provision of nuclear power
should be switched immediately to the provision of clean, safe
energy. The only funds invested in the nuclear industry from now on
should be spent on closing it down safely.