Paper Section And Page: 32A
Paper Date: Wed, April 25, 2001
Byline: Roy R. Morris
Last week, the international environmental watchdog, Greenpeace, warned Caribbean Governments to be on the alert for the Pacific Swan, a ship loaded with highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, on its way from Japan to Britain, where it will be reprocessed.
While Greenpeace did not mention it in its statement, at some time in its future, Pacific Sawn, or one of its three sister ships, will more than likely pass back through the Caribbean with the reprocessed material. According to the agency, that shipment of spent fuel originated at the Tokai Nuclear Power Facility in Japan, the scene of a major accident in 1999 that killed two persons.
The following day, Minister of the Environment Rawle Eastmond described the continued shipment of the waste through the Caribbean as "deplorable and deadly".
"We deplore the continuing transport of nuclear waste through the Caribbean Sea. In more ways than one, the Caribbean Sea is highly susceptible to environmental threats and degradation and as Minister of the Environment I call on those who are engaged in this activity to desist ... because of the threat to human health and eco-systems generally," he said.
He also hinted that Government would look at the possibility of taking legal action to block future shipments.
There is no doubt that these shipments raised much concern across the region. There is also probably little doubt that all Eastmondıs colleagues in CARICOM share his views.
Of even greater certainty, however, is that these shipments will continue through the region and there is very little, if not absolutely nothing, that any regional government can do, realistically, to stop them. As far as Japan's government is concerned, the economy and social well being of the Japanese people are tied to a network of more than 40 nuclear power generating plants that guarantee a reasonable level of energy security. These plans dot the coastlines of the islands that make of the nation of Japan and date back to the 1960s. They are firmly established on the Japanese landscape and provide almost half of all the power used. In essence, Japan has long passed the stage of survival without nuclear fuel.
But nuclear fission, which produces electricity in the world's cleanest power generation process, has the distinction of producing a most deadly by-product, referred to as spent fuel. Unfortunately, less than five per cent of the raw material that goes in the process is consumed. The world's nuclear power industry has also recognised for decades that with reprocessing, valuable uranium can be extracted from this 95 per cent, to be returned to the reactors to produce even more nuclear power.
This is where the Caribbean's headache begins. With more than three dozen
plants, in Japan, a lot of spent fuel is produced, but there is no facility in
that country to reprocess it, hence the trips through the Caribbean. Koichi Ai,
a diplomat, and deputy director of the Science and Nuclear Energy Division of
the Foreign Policy Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accepts that
shipping nuclear waste around the world has been at tremendous diplomatic cost.
"We have been shipping spent fuel overseas at very high diplomatic costs to
Japan and we are anxious to end it. It has been necessary because 40 per cent of
electricity in Japan is produced from nuclear reaction and the energy security
of the country is dependent on us not increasing the volume of oil now imported.
"We value our ties with the Caribbean. We know that the Caribbean votes at
the United Nations have been of value to us in the past, and often we have to
say that except for the matter of the shipment of nuclear waste through the
Caribbean we have excellent relations with the governments," he said. But
when all is said and done, Ai says Japan is satisfied that it is doing nothing
illegal in making the shipments through the region since it vessels always
remain in international waters.
In a sense, the Caribbean is a victim of its own achievement. Its political
stability, coupled with proximity to the Panama Canal, has brought it a number
of unwelcomed guests in recent years, including the Pacific Swan.
Koichi Nakazono, manager of Transport Headquarters for Japan Overseas
Reprocessing Committee, the agency responsible for shipping spent nuclear fuel
through the Caribbean for processing in England and France, and then back along
the same route as processed waste, said while a number of factors influenced a
ship's course, it was very important to security that ships travel where there
are stable governments. Unfortunately, the Caribbean happens to be blessed with
many.
"This kind of international transportation has been done for about 30
years," said Nakazono. "There have been about 160 such voyages,
all of them safe. We have travelled more than three million miles without major
incident."
The most frequently used route takes in the Panama Canal and the Caribbean.
A second passes around South America, down the Atlantic Ocean and around Cape
Horn. The third route passes around South Africa, through Australian waters and
between Australia and Tasmania.
"The important thing in selecting a route is that the ships can sail
smoothly. We cannot allow them through narrow straight or through the waters of
states that are politically unstable. Those environments are a potential threat
to our ships... We have evaluated the route through the Panama Canal and
Caribbean as the safest.
"The total cost of transportation depends on how many days are spent at
sea. Through Panama Canal tends to work out to be the shortest, thus the
cheapest most of the time."
Japan's nuclear power producers started shipping spent waste to Europe in 1995,
and has traversed Caribbean waters at least six times. They will continue to do
so for another five years, that is until 2005 when a multi-billion dollar
reprocessing plant is scheduled to be completed in Japan.
After that opening, Japan will cease shipping spent fuel to Europe. That will
not be the end of worries for Caribbean people, however, since the reprocessing
takes years, and it will be at least a decade after 2005 before all the waste
shipped to Britain and France has been treated and returned. Japan is apparently
committed by treaty to taking back all the material it ships to Europe.
While Nakazono provided convincing evidence that Japan will have no radon to
ship its spent fuel to Europe after 2005, the question remained: How long will
it be before the giant of industry gets into the billion dollar business of
treating other people's waste, again opening up the region's waters to such
shipments, albeit in the opposite direction.
He responded: "There is no plan for that plant to handle anything except
fuel used in Japan. The annual capacity of the plant is about 800 tonnes of
uranium, but already Japan uses about 900 tonnes, so there is no capacity to
handle spent fuel from outside the country."
Diplomat Ai, agrees. He said that there was absolutely no chance of the Japanese
plant entering into commercial competition with the European processors, because
residents of northern Japan accepted the reprocessing plant in their midst with
much reluctance, but with the clear understanding that it would handle only what
the country's own power plants produced.
He believes that it was important to the country's international reputation and
diplomatic relations with foreign governments that the waste shipments end as
soon as possible.
But when the issue is stripped of propaganda and emotion, the question that
remains is: Does the Caribbean have any real reasons to fear these shipments?
Clearly the material being handled is potentially dangerous, but are the
precautions and handling procedures enough to safeguard the region's people and
eco-systems?
All the information available shows clearly that the spent fuel is not sloshing
around the cargo holes of the ships. The used fuel rods are housed in thick
metal flasks weighing several tonnes, which had been subjected to rigorous
crash, fire, water and other tests.
The ships on which they are transported are among the most modern in the world,
with the most safety features found on any vessel on the high seas, including
dual power and navigation systems, elaborate fire fighting apparatus and a
unique systems of independent cargo holes and double hulls that would allow the
ships to remain afloat even after major collisions. The ships are also designed
with sophisticated monitoring and tracking equipment that would remain operation
up to eight years "in the unlikely event that a ship was to sink".
These elaborate safety systems, I suspect, will do little to ease the fears of
Caribbean people, when they remember what happened when the Chernobyl nuclear
facility in Russia failed, and when they consider that we are talking about a
substance with such force in it that a pellet the size of the plunger on the
average ball point pen could meet nearly all of Barbados' energy needs for a few
years.