Alarm bells are ringing furiously in South America as the Pacific Pintail, the ship carrying recycled radioactive waste from the French port of Cherbourg to Japan (Down To Earth, February 28, 1995) approaches Cape Horn. Pushed to the corner by the swelling ranks of protesting nations who refuse to allow the "explosive" cargo to enter their waters, the recylcing companies -- Cogema of France and Sellafield of Britain -- decided not to divulge the ship's itinerary. But Greenpeace International, the environmentalist group leading the anti-Pacific Pintail movement, reveals that it will pass through Cape Horn, a route fraught with a history of shipwrecks and storms. The ship is being forced to take this route as it has been banned from entering Chilean and Argentinian waters, and its movement restricted to within the international waters.
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