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Vanishing nukes in Iraq

Greenpeace activists anchored a large banner to a boat today, reading 'When Will the U.S. Disarm? No War' and sailed it in front of the United Nations headquarters. Enlarge Image

US to UN: Butt out

An extraordinary communication from the United States to UN representatives around the world has been leaked to Greenpeace.(Full text of the leaked document here). In it, the United States warns that the simple act of support for a General Assembly meeting to discuss the war will be considered "unhelpful and directed against the United States." They further threaten that invoking the Uniting for Peace resolution will be "harmful to the UN."

A resident of Al Wadiyah carries home a clean water barrel which Greenpeace activists exchanged for radioactive ones. Enlarge Image

Radioactive barrel swap in Iraq

For many local people, the need for water storage overrides the unseen threat of radioactivity. We took clean water containers into the communities around the Tuwaitha nuclear facility near Baghdad and encouraged people to swap them for their radioactive ones, contaminated with uranium "yellowcake".

Greenpeace delivers a container of radioactive uranium'yellow cake found abandoned in the community outside the Tuwaitha nuclear facility, to Mr Bremmer, head of US civil administration in Baghdad. Enlarge Image

US administration served Iraqi yellowcake

The "yellowcake" sample we delivered to Paul Bremer, head of the US civil administration in Iraq, is safely contained - but who knows how much is still left unsecured and unsafe in the local community. We brought Mr Bremer a container of the radioactive uranium found abandoned near the Tuwaitha nuclear facility and urged him to allow the return of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to carry out a full survey and decontamination of Iraq.

Greenpeace scientist Dr. Rianne Teule measures radioactive levels of a device from the nearby Tuwaitha nuclear facility. The device, abandoned on a roadside, contains yellow powder that is 1000 times background levels of radiation. Enlarge Image

WMD report buried

Weapons inspector David Kay - the head of the "Iraq Survey Group" and hawkish pro-war cheerleader prior to the US attack - reports that the US has failed to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A version of Kay's interim report had been expected to be publicly released. But the negative findings have driven the report behind a cloak of secrecy, with only a sanitized presentation to Congress made public. And efforts to evade public scrutiny have included evading the scrutiny by UN-mandated inspectors, still excluded from Iraq.

Plutonium shipments cross France every 7-10 days. Enlarge Image

Terror targets exposed

A standard commercial truck with a shipment of reactor-grade plutonium approaches the Versailles tunnel, 15 km (10 miles) outside Paris. The driver, who makes the North-South run every ten days, sees nothing unusual as two tanker trucks carrying fuel oil pull into the passing lane alongside his Gendarme escorts. They never see it coming. As the nuclear convoy moves into the centre of the tunnel, the tanker trucks jackknife into the right-hand lane, crushing the light police vehicles and creating a wall on either side of the plutonium shipment. A third vehicle empties quickly; young men with metal cutters and automatic weapons run toward the truck.

Greenpeace activists spend the night waiting for the imminent arrival of two BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels) ships, which are carrying 140kg of radioactive weapons-grade plutonium. The Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal left the U.S. port of Charleston, SC on September 20th. Greenpeace believes the shipment conducted by the US and France is unnecessarily threatening international security and putting the environment at risk. Enlarge Image

Nuclear shipment crosses Atlantic

LATEST UPDATES: www.stop-plutonium.org
Thanks to the Bush Administration's disregard for global concerns about nuclear proliferation, two ships carrying some 140kg of weapons-grade plutonium are en route from Charleston, South Carolina, to Cherbourg in France. The two lightly armed UK-flagged commercial nuclear ships are now somewhere off the coast of France, waiting until a possible injunction is served against Greenpeace, to dock.

Activists onboard the Greenpeace ship, MV Esperanza, wait off the coast of France for the imminent arrival of two BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels) ships that are carrying 140kg of radioactive weapons-grade plutonium. The Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal left the U.S. port of Charleston, SC on September 20th. Greenpeace believes the shipment conducted by the US and France is unnecessarily threatening international security and putting the environment at risk. Enlarge Image

Terror cargo lands in France

After weeks of cat-and-mouse antics, the Pacific Pintail slipped into the port of Cherbourg with a deadly cargo of Plutonium -- but only after a French court ensured Greenpeace would be kept out of the way.

Greenpeace 'inspectors' outside the U.S. embassy to examine whether or not the Bush Administration is living up to its commitments to eliminate its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Enlarge Image

Greenpeace finds WMDs

Since the US and the UK are having such a hard time finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we thought we'd lend a hand by providing this easy guide to the nukes we know about.

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