Protests against nuclear waste shipment
By Pip Hinman
The WA Greens have issued a protest against the secrecy and misinformation surrounding a highly dangerous shipment of nuclear waste travelling from France to Japan.
"Any mishap would require Australia's aid on a scale which would make the recent rescue of two yachtsmen in the same waters look like a picnic", said WA Greens Senator Dee Margetts.
The nuclear waste is being transported through the Indian Ocean around the south of Australia, through the Tasman Sea to Japan. The cargo is made up of 40 glass blocks of high level reprocessed nuclear waste, which has 100 times the radioactivity of one Moruroa nuclear test.
The Howard government said it had no knowledge of the Pacific Teal, even though the Senate passed a Greens resolution to publish the route.
Margetts said the former Labor government knew the routes of previous shipments of reprocessed nuclear waste, and the shipments came far closer to shore than expected.
In 1992, a nuclear waste shipment violated the exclusive economic zone of several South Pacific nations and Spain, and in 1995 a shipment violated South Africa's EEZ.
Margetts said that NZ, Fiji, Malaysia, South Africa and Portugal have protested to France and Japan about the shipment and having to bear responsibility for any clean-up should a leak occur.
The Australian government didn't issue a protest. "This will mean that Japan and France see Australian waters as the line of least resistance for a planned increase in shipments, including future plutonium shipments", warned Margetts.