Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

This is an interesting story, a shipment of MOX Plutonium sent to Japan by a British company in 1999 was rejected by Japan (to be used in a power generation reactor) because it failed quality control measurements.

There has been a wrangle ever since about how to return such a product. According to Greenpeace the company that originally manufactured (refined?) the product lied about measurements and if was transported to Japan because of the deceit (ie it was originally accepted because of falsified documents.)

Apparently finally the weapons grade material is being shipped (back to Britain presumably?) via a few "lightly armed" ships and a few days ago it entered the Panama Canal.

Now we must ship nuclear materials by some method, that is not in question. Nuclear power while problematic because of fuel and waste quandries is valuable, that is unqestionable, it is clean and efficient (we dont really have any plan or idea that is sensible for nuclear waste product, we just put it somewhere and leave it for future generations to deal with.) The question in this instance is have proper safety and notification procedures taken place?

Greenpeace says no: The shipment runs contrary to various provisions of the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention. This includes lack of preparation of an environmental impact assessment; lack of prior consultation with en route states; and lack of a liability regime needed in case of damage resulting from accident or radiological sabotage.

While it does need to be shipped, if the above tasks have not been completed that is totally insane. This has not been highly publicized but one has to ask, what if? What if an accident or sabotage occured? In recent times one would think EXTRA precautions would be taken, rather than not even enough to meet legality?

I dont know how accurate the Greenpeace take is but it is quite interesting that this is occuring and there has not been more discussion.   NUCLEAR TRANSPORT VESSEL ENTERS PANAMA CANAL UNDER HEAVY GUARD TO RETRIEVE FAULTY PLUTONIUM MOX FROM JAPAN