The Pacific Pintail is currently being escorted by a British navy warship, the HMS Leeds Castle. The Pintail will be joined by the Pacific Teal, which is sailing to Cherbourg in France to take on 32 MOX elements containing 221 kg of plutonium from the La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant. Pacific Teal is expected to arrive in Cherbourg tonight. Japan plans to have 16 to 18 reactors using MOX fuel by 2010. The current shipments are the first of a possible 80 shipments.
Most nuclear reactors burn uranium and produce plutonium as a radioactive waste byproduct.
MOX fuel combines these elements into ceramic pellets that can be efficiently burned as fuel in some reactors. This reduces the amount of radioactive waste that must be disposed, and the amount of fresh uranium that must be mined for nuclear power plants. Greenpeace warns that the reactors that will burn these MOX shipments were not designed to use this type of MOX fuel. Burning MOX may reduce their operating safety margins, Greenpeace says. The group has staged numerous demonstrations around the Barrow port in protest of the MOX shipments.