WRAP Greenpeace protests against nuclear ships

Описание: (4 Oct 2004)

1. Wide shot of naval base with Greenpeace demonstration outside
2. French flag
3. Various of activists climbing gate of naval base
4. Various of activists displaying Greenpeace banner
5. Various of activists being arrested
6. Security
7. Brigitte Appare, wife of one of arrested men from Greenpeace vessel, talking to naval officers at gate
8. SOUNDBITE: (French) Brigitte Appare, wife of arrested man:
"The paperwork is going well and in one or two hours we should see them coming out."
9. Arrested activists being released
10. Demonstrators
11. SOUNDBITE: (English) Tom Clements, Greenpeace spokesperson:
"President Bush in the debate last week said that non-proliferation was one of the biggest concerns of the United States government, but at the same time as he said that, he's engaged in a shipment of weapons material to France and we think that he is totally undermining his own position by continuing with this shipment."
12. Various of soldiers on site

13. Pan of Greenpeace boat getting ready to leave harbour
14. Greenpeace leaving harbour
15. Greenpeace sailing boat sailing towards the Cherbourg Military Harbour
16. Larger Greenpeace sailing boat and banner reading: "Irish Sea Nuclear"
17. Greenpeace boat and surfers pretending to surf
18. Military patrol stopping Greenpeace boat and forcing crew to leave the boat and the military harbour, the boat stays in the military harbour
19. Greenpeace flags flying

20. Plutonium drums
21. Sign reading: "Radioactivity, Stop Plutonium"

STORYLINE

French police said on Sunday they had arrested five men who were protesting against the shipment of plutonium from the United States across the Atlantic to the military harbour in Cherbourg.

Two protesters were detained on Sunday for climbing the gates of the military dockyard in Cherbourg where two plutonium ships are expected to deliver a shipment on Monday.

Earlier on Sunday, three men, including veteran yachtsman Eugene Riguidel, were arrested aboard a small Greenpeace boat in Cherbourg, said a spokesman for French police.

The Greenpeace ship was also forced out of the military harbour.

The environmental activists in France had originally expected two US ships hauling plutonium oxide from US nuclear warheads to arrive on Saturday and unload their cargo in the Napoleon III Basin inside the military harbour.

Yannick Rousselet, a spokesman for Greenpeace France, said that the activists had lost the signal to the ships and were basing the ships' arrival time on other sources.

Rousselet said another Greenpeace ship, the Esperanza, was waiting in the English Channel for sign of the two vessels.

Campaigners argue that the radioactive cargo could be seized to create a "dirty bomb" in a terror attack.

The ships - the Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal - left Charleston, South Carolina last week with 140 kilogrammes (310 pounds) of plutonium oxide destined for the port in Cherbourg, France.

The plan is for the plutonium to be reprocessed into mixed plutonium-uranium oxide fuel for experimental MOX nuclear reactors, before it is shipped back to the US next year.

The cargo was expected to arrive in Cherbourg, near Normandy, where it was to be loaded onto a train bound for a recycling facility in Cadarache.

Critics have described the cargo as "weapons-grade," but the cakes of plutonium oxide powder on board have been made from metallic plutonium taken from decommissioned nuclear warheads.


It must be smelted before it can be used to make nuclear warheads.


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