Greenpeace, Other Try to Block "Floating Chernobyl"

by Marcela Valente

Meanwhile, the local Fundacion para la Defensa del Ambiente (Environmental Defense Fund) brought legal charges January 9 against Foreign Minister Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini and Minister of Social Development and the Environment Graciela Fernandez Meijide for "acting with excessive delay and weakness" with respect to the passage of the ship that exposes the country to a grave risk.

Greenpeace announced that its vessel was preparing to set sail for Cape Horn to find the Pacific Swan, the British-flagged ship that set out from France on Dec. 19 with what Greenpeace described as "the largest high level nuclear waste shipment to have ever sailed."

Greenpeace has dubbed the freighter a "floating Chernobyl" -- after the 1986 nuclear plant accident in the Ukraine -- due to its potential for destruction.

The Pacific Swan must sail around Cape Horn in order to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, which means it will have to enter the exclusive economic zones of Argentina and Chile, in an area made extremely treacherous by fierce gales, strong currents and icebergs.

International legislation, which questions the transport of hazardous waste without the consent of concerned coastal states, fails to establish clear responsibility regarding the costs of a clean-up and economic and environmental damages in case of an accident.

Although the precise location of the ship is being kept secret, the Chilean navy located it yesterday 650 miles to the west of the Argentine city of Comodoro Rivadavia, in the southern province of Chubut, estimating that it would reach Cape Horn by Jan. 12.

The governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay issued a communique expressing their concern over the risks posed by the proximity of the vessel, which set sail from France without reporting the route it planned to take on its way to Japan.

However, the Argentine Foreign Ministry's decision to simply order a navy vessel to "escort" the Pacific Swan was criticised as "lax" by Greenpeace.

Pressed on the measures the government planned to take given the ship's proximity to the national seaboard, public relations officials at the Office of Environmental Affairs produced a report drawn up a week earlier by the Foreign Ministry, which states that "the Argentine government has no evidence that it [the passage of the boat through the region] will finally occur, nor does it wish to meet the challenge of the transport company.

"Argentina does not question the right to free navigation, and while from a technical point of view, such shipments appear to be in line with international regulations on safe transport of radioactive material, we must not overlook the fact that the issue has political connotations."

With respect to the political implications, the document states that "transit through the exclusive economic zone generates strong pressure from public opinion demanding government action.

"In any case, and given the difficulties presented by navigation in the area of Cape Horn, Argentina would prefer that such transport not take place in the area off its coasts," adds the report made available to IPS.

Argentine officials stated that it was not clear to them that the unit of the shipping company British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. that owns the Pacific Swan planned to send further shipments of nuclear waste around Cape Horn.

But it was not only Greenpeace that warned of future shipments. Bill Anderton, spokesman for Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd., the unit that owns the ship, told the official Argentine news agency Telam that the company planned to make approximately 20 round-trips carrying radioactive material between Europe and Japan over the next ten years years.

The Pacific Swan is the sixth freighter carrying nuclear waste from Europe to Japan since the Pacific Pintail sailed around Cape Horn in 1995, when it was forced by a Chilean warship to change course and move outside that country's 200-mile maritime limit.

The four subsequent journeys took different routes. The Pacific Teal sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1996-97, while the Pacific Swan crossed the Panama Canal in 1998 and on two occasions in 1999.

The Pacific Swan is carrying 192 blocks of a by-product of plutonium separation from Japanese irradiated nuclear fuel at the French state-run COGEMA La Hague reprocessing plant -- which is "among the most radioactive material ever produced," according to a Greenpeace communique.

"To send such a dangerous cargo along the South American coast and through such notorious waters as those that surround Cape Horn, where many ships have foundered, shows a total disregard for global safety, in a shameless pursuit of profit," added Martin Prieto, with Greenpeace Argentina.

[Editor's note: On January 10, envros won a court order blocking the Pacific Swan from entering Argentine waters. But the victory was short lived; the next day, the government of Argentina ignored the order and allowed the ship to continue on its voyage. "The sentence of the court should have been immediately carried out. The president has no excuse," Martin Prieto was quoted in an AP wire story.

Greenpeace also dropped its plans to intercept the ship citing "logistical difficulties," according to the Associated Press.]