Environment groups say that Japan's impending shipment of plutonium poses a grave environmental threat
according to officials of the environmental pressure group Greenpeace and the Korean Federation of Environmental Movements ( kfem ), a shipment of plutonium is set to depart Europe for Japan's west coast, posing a potentially grave environmental threat to Korea. The groups said that two Japanese ships -- each carrying hundreds of kilograms of plutonium -- are due to leave Port de Cherbourg, France, in July.
One ship will deliver its cargo of over 220 kg of plutonium to Takahama, a nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture on Japan's west coast, to be used as reactor fuel. The other shipment, also loading about 220 kg of plutonium, is destined for Fukushima nuclear power plant on Japan's east coast.
The most direct route would take the shipment bound for Takahama through the narrow straits between Japan and Korea, to within less than 50 km from the city of Pusan on Korea's southern coast around September. The officials said that any major accident involving the shipment could have disastrous consequences on the region's environment and its people.
Choi Yul, secretary-general of the kfem said: "The leakage of as little as one gram of plutonium could cause lung cancer for one million people." Calling the shipments "floating Chernobyl," the two groups called on Japan to immediately suspend the shipment plans. Choi said that the kfem , along with other local and foreign environmental groups, was embarking on a campaign to stop the shipments.
The campaign would start with alerting the Korean government and people of a potential danger and delivering protest statements to European countries. Japan decided in February 1997 to introduce mox fuel, produced by combining plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel with uranium, at the nation's atomic plants to promote the recycling of spent nuclear fuel.
Japanese electrical utilities have signed contracts for reprocessing their spent reactor fuel in Europe which is creating an enormous plutonium stockpile. "The shipment is potentially only the beginning of a deadly new phase in Japan's plutonium programme, and this time the Korean environment is more directly threatened than ever before," Choi said. Japan plans to start using mox in 16 to 18 reactors by the year 2010.
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