As a ship filled with nuclear waste heads for South African waters, environmental groups are concerned by the government’s lack of action, writes Inge Ruigrok
DOES silence mean permission? A ship conveying 14 tons of the most concentrated nuclear waste ever transported, including a deadly cargo of bomb-grade plutonium, is likely to sail through South African waters within two weeks — and there is no sign of a coherent government policy on the controversial cargo.
Nations such as the Philippines, Argentina and Honduras have condemned the shipment and banned it from moving through their waters. Portugal has sent a military frigate to track the ship and ensure it doesn’t enter its maritime zone.
Yet the South African government has been remarkably quiet. A spokesman for President Nelson Mandela’s office, Selby Mbatha, said he “recalls that the Japanese government has given us information about the shipment” but he was not in a position to comment on the matter.
Leon Coetzee, a member of the secretariat of the ministry of environmental affairs, said he knew about the shipment but not its route as “that was a matter for foreign affairs”.
“They are supposed to pass the information on to us. The Japanese and French government have kept the voyage secret because they fear sabotage from organisations like Greenpeace. We haven’t protested but we closely monitor the case.”
But a representative of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Jacques Malan, said the controversial shipment was a matter for environmental affairs. “Foreign affairs is not involved in this issue and we haven’t received any request from Japan to ship through our waters. We haven’t protested because it’s not a political issue.”
Senior navy staff officer Commander Stan Slogrove said the navy is monitoring the ship’s progress, but “we don’t know the route it will be taking. When it comes along our coast, we will watch it closely while it passes through. It is not very likely that the ship will come near our coast. It will go through international waters.”
The government’s silence is in marked contrast to the stand adopted by the African National Congress before last year’s elections. In June 1992, the ANC’s Professor Stan Sangweni said his organisation was committed to a “ban on the global transportation of radioactive material and nuclear waste”.
Sangweni told the UN’s Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro that “we must be aware that high seas are not risk free and an accident could expose millions of people to radioactive
At the time, the ANC’s branch in the Western Cape condemned the Nationalist government for failing to oppose an earlier cargo of nuclear waste that passed by the Cape on its way to Japan.
A statement issued by the organisation added: “As you probably know, if there is any accident the cargo of each shipment contains enough lethal plutonium to kill all people and animals in southern Africa.”
Said Liz Linsell, representative for the Environment Monitoring Group (EMG) in Cape Town: “Like any official organisation the ANC is bound by what they said until they release another statement and they haven’t done that. As a citizen I think I have the right to know.” She added it was “not acceptable that the government hasn’t released any information yet” especially in the light of a series of protests from other countries about the cargo.
“Greenpeace wrote a letter about the shipment to the South African ministry of foreign affairs in October last year. They never received any reply.
“This means that the government is not open. We had to hear about it through Greenpeace and the international
The ship, the Pacific Pintail, owned by British Nuclear Fuels, left Cherbourg, France, on February 28, carrying nuclear waste in the form of 28 “glassified” blocks. According to the EMG, the cargo contains more than 10 times the radioactivity released during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
A Greenpeace vessel is shadowing the Pacific Pintail. The organisation says the ship is now approching Madeira and can take three different routes to Japan.
It is most likely the ship will follow a route along the African coastline due to widespread protests from Caribbean and Latin American countries. A similar vessel, the Akatsuki Maru, took this route in 1993. It carried plutonium from France round the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean and round Australia, before heading north to Japan.
Japan uses enriched uranium provided by the USA in its nuclear industry. Not having the facilities to separate the used nuclear fuel, it has this shipped to France and Britain for reprocessing. Plutonium is extracted from the nuclear fuel and used in Japanese fast-breeder
Late this week Environment Minister Dawie de Villiers issued a statement saying that although the shipment was “causing growing concern”, it was being conducted under stringent regulations set by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“No conveyance of nuclear material in a manner which would be environmentally hazardous as a result of radioactive radiation will be permitted in terms of this.” The minister added that no ship with radioactive material on board could enter a South African port without a permit and that such a document had not been issued.