The position was taken by the Bishops of the Antilles Episcopal Conference of the Roman Catholic Church.

"The Antilles Episcopal Conference pleads that no more shipment of plutonium or any similarly hazardous material be undertaken through the Caribbean," they said in a statement.

"While appealing for an end to shipments through our region, we are not unmindful of the fact that such shipments are potentially dangerous for countries in other regions. Given this, and the fact that there are serious environmental dangers from fossil fuel, we urge Caribbean governments and other governments, to encourage the use of already existing renewable sources of energy and seriously to undertake the necessary research for other, and less expensive, renewable sources of energy."

Caribbean Community governments have already opposed the transit of the deadly waste through the Caribbean Sea but there is no way of stopping Japan, France, and Britain.

The bishops' statement came on the heels of an alert from Greenpeace that the British ship Pacific Sandpiper with a load of high level nuclear waste had left the port of Cherbourg for Japan. The spent waste from Japan is reprocessed into usable nuclear fuel at plants
in Britain and France. About 75 per cent of Japanese power needs are met from nuclear power. Fending off charges from Greenpeace, Japan has insisted that its nuclear material is strictly for domestic power use.