Irish Environmental Leaders Protest Plutonium Shipment 150 Miles Off South Coast

An imminent plutonium shipment from the U.S. to France looks to pass just 150 miles off Ireland's south coast, breaching Ireland's Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 miles offshore.

CHERBOURG, FRANCE– August 20, 2004 – Imagine a 12,000-mile round trip land and sea journey, across the U.S. and the Atlantic to various cities in France. It isn't the itinerary of vacationers flush with time and money. It's the planned shipping route for one of the most deadly substances known – weapons-grade plutonium.

Local boat owners on both sides of the ocean have now organized as the Atlantic Nuclear Free Flotilla to try to stop what they consider a reckless and highly dangerous shipment. Irish anti-nuclear activists John Bowler and Neil McCann have joined the peaceful protest in Cherbourg, and both have been asked to speak at protest events. Bowler is there as the team leader for Greenpeace International, who is lending support. He commented, "These ships carrying weapons-grade plutonium look to come within 150 miles of the Irish south coast. The Irish people should ask their government to protest these ships that will enter Ireland's Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 miles offshore, but also Ireland has a moral obligation to oppose this type of transport given Ireland's stand on nuclear weapons".

" The shipment is part of a joint U.S.-Russia disarmament treaty to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium by converting it into mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, for commercial use in nuclear reactors. There is currently no nuclear facility in the U.S. capable of converting the plutonium. It is scheduled to be taken to France aboard two armed British ships, the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, sometime in the next two to six weeks. The plutonium will first travel from Los Alamos, New Mexico to Charleston, South Carolina, and then to the port of Cherbourg in northern France. From there, the plutonium will be trucked to a nuclear plant in Provence that has been closed due to safety problems but will reopen to handle this shipment.

Once plutonium fuel pellets are fabricated and placed in fuel rods, they will continue on to another nuclear facility north of Avignon to be assembled into four MOX fuel assemblies and then transported back to Cherbourg. The fuel will then be shipped across the ocean again, back to South Carolina for experimental testing in a nuclear reactor there.

Neil McCann, who will have a boat in Cherbourg representing the Irish Seas Nuclear Free Flotilla, said he "found it astonishing that two governments that have expressed such concern about weapons of mass destruction should themselves be engaged in parading this horrendous weapons-grade plutonium through international waters, exposing us all to extreme levels of risk." Flotillas are gathering on both sides of the Atlantic, in Charleston, South Carolina and along coastal France, primarily Cherbourg. Information in the U.S. can be obtained at the CAP website