
Issue No 88		16 March 2001

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Environment

Nuclear Titanics

The Maritime Union has joined Greenpeace in a campaign to stop our seas becoming a nuclear highway.

Dubbed nuclear Titanics a fleet of ships carrying nuclear waste is passing Australian shores. They've been compared to the Titanic by visiting UK based marine Pollution consultant Tim Deere Jones, because like the Titanic they are said to be unsinkable and they are not. What's more, they are sailing around Cape Horn and south of Tasmania dangerously close to iceberg drifts.

They are the UK registered Pacific Class PNTL fleet built and registered as dedicated irradiated nuclear fuel carriers. Registered owner Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd is owned jointly by British and Japanese Nuclear utilities.

PNTL claim their ships are state of the art. And they were back in the early 1980s when most of them were built. They are carrying plutonium fuel and they are charting their course around Australia because no other government is crazy enough to let the ageing, substandard fleet and their lethal cargo anywhere near their coast. Not Indonesia, not Malaysia, not the Pacific Islands nor New Zealand. Only Australia.

In his report A Review of Aspects of the Marine Transport of Radioactive Materials, Jones warns that the vessels could sink and accidents could happen. If they do he says, there is no fail safe way of dealing with them.

The IMO has no training scheme for emergencies involving maritime transport of any class of radioactive materials

Jones points out that the relatively small PNTL vessels would be vulnerable in marine accidents. They are routed through heavy seas adjacent to the Roaring Forties, cyclones and tropical storms. And while they are said to withstand impact of 24,000 tonne vessel travelling at 15 knots, most merchant ships are bigger and faster travelling at up to 24 knots.

The fleet does boast a double hull around the cargo holds, but both bow and stern are single hulls.

Jones stresses that PTNL's claim the double hull is 'a ship within a ship' and therefore unsinkable, is just not true. He points to the recent sinking of chemical tanker Ievoli Sun in the English Channel in October last year. It was double hulled throughout and a much more modern vessel

Jones documents 19 incidents involving ships carrying nuclear waste in the last decade - one near miss, two collisions and five fires.

The average shipboard fire lasts 23 hours. American tests have shown that nuclear casks would only last two hours before being breached. In a worst case scenario, this leaves open the possibility of a plutonium cloud release endangering lives for thousands of kilometres.

"Shipments of intensely radioactive spent nuclear fuel and high level wastes and long lived radio toxic mixed oxide fuel (MOX) present unique risks to the marine environments they travel through and to the countries whose shores they pass," Jones says.

The effects of radiation exposure can be immediate or take a generation to manifest.

The United Nation report says: "Radiation by its very nature, is harmful to life. At low doses, it can start off only partially understood chains of events which lead to cancer or genetic damage. At high doses, it can kill cells, damage organs and cause rapid death. Radiation doses have to reach a certain level to produce acute injury - but not to cause cancer or genetic damage. In theory, at least, just the smallest doses can be sufficient. So no level of exposure to radiation can be described as safe."

Workers involved in a salvage operation after a Chernobyl-like disaster at sea for example would be exposed to lethal doses of radiation hundreds of times higher than the average received by nuclear power plant and nuclear waste workers.

The concern shared by both the MUA and Greenpeace is that Australia is not prepared for an accident at sea involving the growing number of nuclear shipments around its coastline.

The Jones report reveals major confusion and buck passing about which State or Commonwealth agency would take responsibility for an at-sea nuclear accident.

Greenpeace have been drawing public attention to the recent shipments sending a fleet of yachts into the path of the Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Sandpiper as they passed through the Tasman Sea.

At least 20 such shipments are planned in the next 10 years.

Sean Chaffer, National Shipping Campaign Coordinator for the Maritime Union of Australia, says the report has major concerns for seafarers who man tugs during salvage operations:

"We have experience with accidents at sea - accidents that they said would never happen," said Chaffer. "These shipments pose an unacceptable risk to our members, the marine environment and the Australian community."

Greenpeace Australia Pacific Nuclear Campaigner Stephen Campbell says, "The Australian Government is putting people's lives at risk in allowing the highly dangerous plutonium MOX fuel shipments past Australian shores. They are creating more nuclear waste shipments between France and Australia with plans for a new reactor at Lucas Heights."

Greenpeace yacht Tiama was in Sydney for the launch of the nationwide Greenpeace/MUA campaign and the Jones Report. It will next sail to Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart.

It's a Waste

Meanwhile Greenpeace has successfully got France to ban unloading of Australian nuclear waste

ABC Radio reports the French court has banned a ship from unloading Australian nuclear waste at the northern French port of Cherbourg.

The Australian nuclear waste remains stuck on a ship in the French port of Cherbourg following a court decision.

The ship docked in France Friday, but after Greenpeace's intervention, the court, sitting in an emergency session, imposed an order banning COGEMA, a French firm specialising in re-processing nuclear material, from unloading the waste and taking it to its nearby plant at La Hague.

ABC reports COGEMA can appeal the decision, which was backed up with the threat of a 15,244 euro ($A28,237) fine to be imposed on each article of waste unloaded for each week it remained in France without authorisation.

COGEMA was also told to give Greenpeace copies of documents the group had requested relating to the shipment or face a daily fine of the same amount for every document not produced.

The court heard that the ship, Le Bougenais, was carrying 360 used nuclear fuel rods carried in five 20-tonne protective casks.

The shipment is the second of four deliveries COGEMA has contracted to take from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's (ANSTO) reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney.

Some 308 rods were delivered between November 1999 and January 2000.

Under the contract between France and Australia, the waste is to be reprocessed in La Hague before being sent back to Australia for safe disposal.

But Greenpeace told the court that the fissile matter in the shipments, a form of 23 per cent enriched uranium, has never been dealt with at La Hague and that COGEMA does not have the technology to process it.

Greenpeace report the decision places the Australin government's contract to build anew reactor in jeopardy.

"This scandal reveals there are no workable plans for handling reactor nuclear waste," said Steve Campell, Greenpeace campaigner. "Both the Howard Government and COGEMA are either acting illegally or they're utterly incompetent."

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  Issue 88 contents

Interview: Labor Law
Shadow Attorney General Robert McClelland outlines his plans for workers entitlements, legal aid and a Bill of Rights

Unions: Poetic Justice
The ACTU kicked off its 2001 Living Wage campaign this week with a new shock tactic: poetry.

Technology: Big Brother�s Legacy
Organisations with restrictive staff email polices risk locking themselves in the Industrial Age by treating their staff as units to be monitored.

Corporate: Scumbags Exposed
On the eve of the inaugural Corporate Scumbags Tour, we look at the worst of the worst from the Top End of Town.

International: Playing Away
Pat Ranald looks at a proposal to hold Australian companies to basic standards when they invest in developing countries.

Environment: Nuclear Titanics
The Maritime Union has joined Greenpeace in a campaign to stop our seas becoming a nuclear highway.

History: Out of the Bog
Neale Towart looks at the life of big Jim Larkin, one of the heroes of an Irish trade union movement that continues to thrive.

Politics: Westie�s Macquarie Street Alert
The Workers MLC, Ian West, provides the first in a series of regular rundowns on the upcoming Parliamentary session

Review: The Next American Century?
How will the United States maintain its global power in an era when the very notion of the nation-state is under challenge?

Satire: Dollar Crashes Through Psychological 0.00c Barrier
The bedevilled Australian dollar dropped below the crucial 0.00c barrier losing its battle to avoid the humiliation of being worth less than the commemorative Bradman coins distributed by the Sunday Telegraph last weekend.

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