Ferry shipments of 'terror-threat' plutonium end (UK)

[jpak]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ferry-shipments-of-terrorthreat-plutonium-end-878269.html

Top-secret shipments of weapons-ready plutonium through British waters have been stopped, after their exposure by The Independent on Sunday. The Department for Transport (DfT) said last week that it had taken "regulatory action" to prohibit the shipments from Sellafield to Normandy on an unarmed old roll-on, roll-off ferry, with few safety or security features. The prohibition, the first of its kind, was imposed after complaints by the French nuclear safety authorities.

The shipments – denounced by nuclear weapons experts as "madness" and "totally irresponsible" – were carrying hundreds of kilograms of plutonium-dioxide powder, described as the ideal material for terrorists seeking to create a nuclear explosion or make a dirty bomb. Only 10kg of the plutonium, experts claim, would be needed to make a terrorist atomic weapon.

John Large, an independent nuclear expert, called it "the most dangerous and worst possible material you could ship". The first shipment – in the converted ferry Atlantic Osprey – was about to leave Cumbria for a French nuclear complex at Cap la Hague in March, when the plan was exposed in The IoS.

Peter Ainsworth, the Conservative environment spokesman, and Steve Webb, his Lib-Dem counterpart, condemned the shipment as a threat to national security and it was delayed for two months, finally taking place secretly on 21 May.

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