By Jim Green
Pacific islanders are organising to stop the passage of plutonium reactor fuel from Europe to Japan through South Pacific waters. Two ships carrying mixed uranium-plutonium (MOX) fuel will pass through the Tasman Sea in late August or early September. The ships will then pass through the exclusive economic zones of Pacific island states.
The Fiji-based Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC), which is the secretariat of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, says that Japan, France and Britain are refusing to discuss compensation in the event of an accident, and have failed to conduct detailed environmental risk assessments.
"We believe that South Pacific governments should work together to end all nuclear shipments through our region. Currently, these shipments of plutonium fuel are not banned by the Rarotonga Treaty for a South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, or the 1995 Waigani Convention on hazardous wastes", said the PCRC's Losena Salabula.
"We call on the 16 member governments of the South Pacific Forum to convene a review conference of the Rarotonga Treaty, to strengthen its provisions against nuclear shipments and nuclear waste dumping on land. We also believe that parties to the Waigani Convention should strengthen its provisions, to place pressure on Japan, Britain and France to halt these shipments", Salabula said.
The 1985 Rarotonga Treaty banned the testing, production or deployment of nuclear weapons, and the dumping of nuclear waste, in the South Pacific.
The treaty allows for the establishment of a consultative committee for the purpose of "consultation and cooperation on any matter arising in relation to this Treaty or for reviewing its operation". A consultative committee must be convened "at the request of any party". Therefore, any Pacific island government can ask for the committee to be convened to address the topic of plutonium fuel shipments to Japan.
The PCRC is also calling for the Waigani Convention — also known as the Convention to Ban the Importation into Forum Island Countries of Hazardous and Radioactive Wastes — to be strengthened to stop transboundary shipments of plutonium.
"In September, the United Nations will be holding a special session on small island developing states. Japan, Britain and France will be shipping plutonium through our waters at the same time. This shows their contempt for the clear wish of Pacific island people — we want to be nuclear free", Salabula said.
Action could be taken at this year's South Pacific Forum (SPF) meeting in Palau. Noel Levi, secretary general of the SPF Secretariat, said it had been unable to convince or compel France, Japan or Britain to begin discussions on a liability regime to compensate the region in the event that an accident affects tourism, fisheries or the environment.
The one SPF member that habitually turns a blind eye to nuclear shipments through the Pacific is Australia. A leaked memo from the Australian delegation to the SPF meeting in October 1993 revealed that the Labor government was lobbying to prevent a ban on the transport of nuclear waste through the region. Australian governments have shipped nuclear waste from the Lucas Heights reactor overseas in the past and plan to do so again.
In a point-scoring exercise that went wrong, Labor shadow ministers Laurie Brereton and Nick Bolkus released a statement on July 25 expressing concern about the environmental risks of "high level nuclear waste shipments through the South Pacific region". It is MOX fuel, not waste, that is being shipped to Japan.
Predictably, Brereton and Bolkus did not condemn the shipments, merely calling on the federal government to commission a scientific review of the environmental risks. The Labor government gave permission for a 1992 shipment of plutonium from Europe to Japan, and it arranged a shipment of spent fuel from the Lucas Heights reactor to Scotland which took place in 1996.