Greenpeace to protest over Sellafield waste shipment

Activists from the environment group Greenpeace are arriving in Dublin this week to prepare for a protest against a shipment of radioactive waste which will travel through the Irish Sea to Sellafield.

The group’s boat, the Rainbow Warrior, is set to dock in Dublin from where campaigners will plan their campaign.

The material - claimed by some to be enough to create 50 nuclear bombs - is being sent back from Japan after the authorities there refused to accept it from the Cumbrian nuclear waste processing plant.

Politicians have also voiced outrage that the radioactive material will pass within miles of their coast.

Greenpeace has vowed a peaceful protest and the Rainbow Warrior will be among a flotilla expected to greet the two heavily armed cargo vessels when they arrive in the middle of next month.

Campaigners are set to brief journalists about their protest plans on Wednesday and may also launch a flotilla to demonstrate on September 1.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party has called on the Government to prevent the shipment.

Marine spokesman, Eamon Gilmore, called on Marine Minister Dermot Ahern to “use every international convention on marine safety to prevent this shipment from travelling through the Irish Sea”.

He said: “The Minister must assert Ireland’s rights to protect its citizens from dangerous shipments in neighbouring waters, and prevent this shipment, which contains enough material to make up to 50 nuclear weapons.”

He added that there had been “numerous warnings about the unsafe condition of nuclear storage facilities at Sellafield”.

The Japanese authorities demanded that the waste be shipped back to Sellafield after it arrived in their waters in 1999 amid the revelation that safety records at the Cumbrian facility had been falsified.

A spokesman for British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), which operates Sellafield, said: “These transports are safe and secure. The standards that we meet are laid down by the International Maritime Organisation.”

He said safety authorities had found storage facilities to be in-line with all required standards, which had been reviewed since the September 11 terrorist attacks on America.

“It is not weapons grade material. People would find it almost impossible to separate the material out to make any form of nuclear device,” he said.

He added that the radioactive material was in 100 tonne flasks aboard heavily armed ships.