Blogposts tagged 'Plutonium'

Mention Cherbourg and what springs to mind? Brigit Bardot skipping through the rain with a song on her lips, twirling one of those famous umbrellas? Sadly, that was all a long time ago and the quaint port of Jacques Demy's masterpiece is now a major link in the fuel chain for Japan's nuclear power stations.

Yesterday, a shipment of plutonium mixed oxide (Mox) fuel left France bound for Japan. It's the first shipment of Mox fuel to Japan in eight years, and the largest shipment of plutonium the world has ever seen - 1.8 tonnes of it in fact, enough to make 225 nuclear weapons.

BNFL shipment: Pacific Pintail

Japan's largest nuclear utility has announced that a safety cover-up at its nuclear power plants has been going on for decades - a devastating blow to an already embattled nuclear industry, with global implications.

MV Arneb

Greenpeace is appalled that the British government thinks that the true facts about the nuclear industry should be kept secret from the general public. We are opposed to the nuclear industry and believe that the issues surrounding the industry should be openly and actively discussed so that the general public can make their own, informed, decisions. Millions of pounds of government subsidy continue to prop up this industry, and it is only right that taxpayers have a right to know the facts.

Sellafield nuclear plant

After a total of five separate public consultation exercises, beginning in February 1997, the Government has finally approved the start of operations at the Sellafield MOX Plant. The plant will manufacture fuel (made from mixed oxides of plutonium and uranium - hence MOX) for nuclear power stations using material recovered from old, exhausted (or 'spent') fuel rods. The MOX fuel will initially be manufactured for the export market and will be dispatched on armed ships or perhaps even by plane direct from Sellafield in Cumbria.