The Pacific Sandpiper's lethal cargo consists of five casks
holding 124 canisters of deadly glassified nuclear waste. It
departed from Cherbourg, France, on February 17, and is expected to
travel through the Tasman between Australia and New Zealand as
early as this weekend.
"This waste is the most radioactive material ever produced and,
if released into the environment, would be around for thousands of
years. The release of even a small fraction of this cargo from
either an accident or a deliberate attack could lead to an
environmental and public health catastrophe," said Cindy Baxter,
Greenpeace Campaign Manager.
The waste is a by-product from plutonium reprocessing at La
Hague, France, using Japanese irradiated nuclear fuel. It is being
transported through the Tasman by British Nuclear Fuels.
The nuclear industry is touting nuclear power as the answer to
climate change, but the reality is that the safety, security, and
proliferation costs of high level waste are enormous compared with
clean, renewable energy such as wind.
"Nuclear power is no solution to climate change. It swaps one
environmental nightmare for another. Nuclear power produces spent
fuel, which contains nuclear weapons usable plutonium and high
level radioactive waste such as this. Not only is it a huge risk to
the environment but it's also a security risk through such
shipments and from the plutonium it produces."
Moreover, while financial costs for nuclear power continue to
increase, costs for renewable energy are falling rapidly. In the
last ten years, the cost per kilowatt hour of wind energy fell by
50% and solar from photovoltaics by 30%.
Nuclear energy is a total non-starter in New Zealand. Aside from
the unresolved issue of how to deal with the highly toxic waste it
produces, New Zealand has neither the huge and costly
infrastructure nor the skill-base to handle nuclear energy.
Moreover, the size of nuclear reactors would be too big for our
electricity system.
Greenpeace has alerted the New Zealand Government and Pacific
Island countries to this shipment. Pacific Island countries have
repeatedly called for a stop to such shipments, yet no country
along the route has been told about the Pacific Sandpiper.
(1) Japan currently has a plutonium stockpile of more than
38,000kg of plutonium. As little as 5kg of this would be sufficient
for one nuclear weapon. Both Areva of France and British Nuclear
Fuels are trying to secure new plutonium fuel (MOX) contracts with
Japanese clients which would lead to many tens of plutonium
transports over the next 20 years, most likely to transit the
Tasman Sea and South Pacific. Greenpeace is campaigning for
comprehensive fissile material treaty that would prohibit all
production of weapons usable material - plutonium and highly
enriched uranium.