-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,793828,00.html
Nuclear fuel ship returns to Sellafield Sarah Left and agencies Tuesday September 17, 2002 The Pacific Pintail, one of two ships carrying reprocessed nuclear fuel rejected by Japan, arrives in Barrow-in-Furness flanked by anti-nuclear protesters. The first of two armed freighters carrying radioactive material back to Sellafield this morning nosed past an armada of environmental protesters and docked, completing a 17,500-mile sea voyage that has been condemned by 80 countries. The Pacific Pintail pulled into the Cumbrian port of Barrow-in- Furness at about 9am this morning, as a small flotilla of protest ships - including Greenpeace's flagship, Rainbow Warrior - flew banners calling for a stop to the trade in plutonium. By 2.30pm, armoured containers carrying 4 tonnes of mixed plutonium oxide and uranium fuel (Mox) were lifted on to a freight train for the final, two-hour journey to the British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL) Sellafield reprocessing plant. BNFL's Pacific Pintail was escorted by about half a dozen armed police boats as it moved past the protesters. The environmentalists say there is enough plutonium on board the ships to make 50 nuclear weapons, if the freighters had fallen into terrorist hands during the long voyage. Along with its sister ship, the Pacific Teal, the Pacific Pintail left Takahama, Japan in July with a cargo of Mox sealed into containers weighing between 80 and 110 tonnes. The nuclear shipments were condemned by 80 governments, which denied the convoy access to waters around their countries, according to Greenpeace. Yesterday the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, and the leader of the opposition, Enda Kenny, visited the Rainbow Warrior to express their support for the environmentalists. The transport of Mox through the Irish sea, and the presence of the Sellafield plant just across the strait from Ireland, has caused widespread concern about potential contamination. The Irish government has sent navy vessels and spotter aircraft to monitor the ships as they sail near the Irish coast. BNFL said earlier that Greenpeace was entitled to protest but insisted that a terrorist attack on the shipment, or a radiation threat to other countries during transportation, was "far beyond the bounds of reality". A spokesman for BNFL said countries were entitled to their opinions, but much of it stemmed from a misunderstanding over how dangerous the shipments are. He added that the plutonium fuel on board had not been used in a reactor which meant its levels of radiation were "very low". The Mox fuel was rejected by its Japanese buyers in 1999, after BNFL admitted that five staff members had falsified quality checks on the width of the nuclear pellets. Japan's largest nuclear company, Tokyo Electric, had intended to load the fuel into a reactor to generate electricity. The Japanese rejection meant BNFL was forced to arrange the return of the fuel to Sellafield. The cost of the entire fiasco - including the ships' return journey from Britain to Japan, compensation paid to the Japanese for damaging their public image, and BNFL's legal battle over the false data - comes to £113m. This morning a small group of locals gathered opposite Piel island to watch the action unfold in the channel. Paul Smith, 44, from Barrow, said his friend's brother was an engineer on board one of the BNFL ships. "I have lived here all my life and I work in Maryport near Sellafield and it does not really bother me. "Everybody has got a right to protest haven't they? But it's [BNFL work] keeping 10,000 people in a job at Sellafield for another five or 10 years." 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