The Pacific Pintail with its 14 tonnes of radioactive waste is in position (0600 GMT) is 24 degrees 47 minutes North, and 173 degrees and 14 minutes East. The Pintail's course is 285 degrees and the ship's speed is 14 knots. We are at the moment some 500 miles northeast of Wake island. For other distances to Pacific Islands please see enclosed table.
On April 17th one of the most important conferences of this decade will start in New York. Some 170 countries of our global village will meet to discuss the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons, weapons technology and materials in the context of full nuclear disarmament and global security. These aspects of our common future will be negotiated at the NPT Extension Conference. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty, or NPT, was negotiated 25 years ago as a treaty to prevent the emergence of new nuclear weapons states while obliging those that had nuclear weapons to dismantle them. The treaty institutionalises a split in our world of two classes of states --those with and those without nuclear weapons.
As a consequence some states without nuclear weapons have pursued methods of developing the necessary components to produce them, while those that had (and have) nuclear weapons increased their production and effectiveness as instruments for genocide. The emergence of Indian, Iraqi, Israeli, Pakistani, South African and North Korean nuclear weapon programs demonstrate the failure of the NPT in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons technology and materials. What is even worse, countries that have started to develop and produce nuclear weapons of their own acquired in many cases the necessary technology and materials from states that were party to the NPT, like France and the United Kingdom.
In the mean time what is about to become one of the gravest dangers to security of our planet and our society is not dealt with. The NPT encourages the commercial use of nuclear technology and under the umbrella of the Treaty, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan have started programs for the production of commercial plutonium, and are offering these to any bidder that can afford their questionable services. In this spirit, the UK offered for example to produce plutonium for South Korea. The destabilizing effects of plutonium activities is especially evident in the increased nuclearization of East Asia, in part as a consequence of Japan's commercial plutonium program. Both military-grade as commercial-grade plutonium can be used in the production of a nuclear weapon as was demonstrated by a US nuclear weapons test using commercial plutonium as far back as 1962.
The selective application of non-proliferation policies by the nuclear- weapons-states further underscores the discriminatory of the NPT. While attempts are being made to ban the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes, the nuclear-weapons-states are reluctant to also ban commercial separation of plutonium by themselves and their allies, as well as to renounce the availability of plutonium as a commercial commodity. These policies not only severely undercut the effectiveness of the non-proliferation regime, they also bind our society to a future of increased radioactive pollution.
On February 23rd, the Greenpeace ship Solo managed to begin what is soon to become a 60-day tracking voyage of a shipment of radioactive waste. The waste, transported by the British flagged Pacific Pintail, is the ultimate back-lash of the plutonium industry. It has been generated in France in the process of separating plutonium for Japan, and according to 'the contract' it has to be transported to Japan for disposal. This while to date no scientific consensus even exists around the safety of any disposal option for radioactive waste. The radioactive pollution of land, air and water around the plutonium factories in the UK and France, however already has occurred and can be measured from Ireland to Norway. The voyage of the Pacific Pintail with its dangerous cargo of high level radioactive waste is an example of the enormous problem brought onto our society by the plutonium industry. Serious nuclear proliferation problems, enormous amounts of radioactive pollution dispersed over land, and through water and air, and increased transports back and forth from one country to another of radioactive waste so deadly that no country has found a way or a place to even safely store it.
The current NPT with its outdated conceptual basis of a two-tiered structure of nations, with its discriminatory approach to national security and its sanctioning of the spread of nuclear technology as an inalienable right only jeopardizes global security. An indefinite and unamended extension of this treaty will not bring about nuclear disarmament nor will it halt the proliferation of plutonium over our planet.
For the 1995 Non-Proliferation Extension Conference this implies that the focus of discussion should be on strengthening global security by common agreement on nuclear disarmament and on effective measures that prevent the spread of nuclear weapon, their technology and the fissile materials to produce them. NPT Parties have the obligation to commence a verifiable and controllable nuclear disarmament process that can genuinely lead towards a future of nuclear weapons and increasing amounts of nuclear waste.
Greenpeace calls on all States party to the NPT to oppose the indefinite extension of the flawed and outdated Treaty.
Media and others interested in tracking the shipment's route daily should access Greenpeace World Wide Web site at: HTTP://WWW.greenpeace.org/
Best regards
and No Nukes!
Ulf Birgander (Captain)