NEW YORK -- Greenpeace on January 17 released a report documenting Britain's diversion of other countries' commercial plutonium into its nuclear weapons program.

The Greenpeace report, “Sellafield and the Bomb: Civil Plutonium in the UK Military Program”, details how, on almost 100 occasions, the UK has withdrawn civilian nuclear material and used it for unspecified military purposes. Since the early 1970s, the UK has received plutonium from Japanese and Italian civilian nuclear plants for reprocessing at the Sellafield facility.

Greenpeace presented copies of the report to delegates at the United Nations, on the first day of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) preparatory meeting. The report condemns the discrimination of the NPT, which allows the official nuclear weapons states to use civilian nuclear material in their military programs.

“It is clear that the UK cannot be trusted with other countries' plutonium”, said Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International, co-author of the report. “Clients of the UK's new Thorp facility, including Japan and Germany, have no guarantee that their plutonium will not end up being used in the British nuclear weapons program, as it has in the past.”

“Inequality is inherent in the NPT. The Nuclear Weapon States accuse countries like North Korea and Iraq of removing nuclear material from civilian control, but are quite prepared to do it themselves”, Burnie said.

Greenpeace is demanding that the UK renounce its right under the NPT to use civil nuclear material for military purposes, and called on the clients of Thorp to cancel their contracts. Greenpeace campaigns for a comprehensive ban on all separation and use of plutonium.

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