America Changes to Dangerous Policy

[ajwps]

Why has the George W Bush allowed the United States to change its long time policy that potentially could create a disaster of gigantic proportions.

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Plutonium shipment poses threat, critics say

The impending delivery of 300 pounds of U.S. plutonium powder to South Carolina’s Charleston Naval Weapons Station, and the government’s plan to ship it to France later this summer, has some critics concerned about the potential danger the operation poses to local communities.

“The shipment contains enough purified plutonium for 50 or more weapons of mass destruction,” said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International (Associated Press, June 22). “If someone had an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] and blew a hole in it, it could have disastrous effects.”

In recent filings, federal officials evaluated the risk of sabotage or terrorism disrupting the shipment as “not precisely knowable,” according to the AP report. But because the plutonium will be transported to the weapons station from Los Alamos Laboratory via armored trucks and will be shipped to France by armored ships, “the chance of success of any such attempt was judged to be very low,” according to the filings.

In France, the plutonium will be converted to mixed oxide (MOX) fuel and will then be returned to South Carolina, where current plans are to use it in nuclear reactors at Duke Energy’s Catawba facility. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not yet approved the use of MOX at the Catawba reactors. In Charleston, local activists are planning to protest the shipment to France by gathering a fleet of boats in the Charleston harbor and calling for a halt to all transport of nuclear materials on the Atlantic Ocean.

Not only is the shipment of plutonium powder a safety concern, but it also demonstrates the contradictory position the U.S government has taken on moving nuclear material across international borders, wrote Linda Rothstein in the January/February 2004 Bulletin.

“The [Bush] administration appears to believe that whatever the rules of international nuclear controls, it is under no obligation to follow them when it comes to its own impulses about shipping or selling American weapon materials around the world,” wrote Rothstein.

Bulletin Resources

Nukes Without Borders, by Linda Rothstein, January/February 2004


Additional Resources
Planned Plutonium Shipment Generates Fears in Lowcountry, TheState.com, June 22, 2004