Good news of the day :
From: Sandy Perle [mailto:sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET]
Sent:
Tuesday April 03, 2001 10:16 AM
To: nuclear news list;
radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Subject: France overturns ruling on Australian
n-waste
France overturns ruling on Australian n-waste
PARIS,
April 3 (Reuters) - France's state-owned nuclear reprocessing
company Cogema
said it would start unloading a cargo of spent fuel
rods from Australia on
Tuesday after winning an appeal against an
injunction.
A court of
appeal in the Normandy town of Caen overturned the
injunction, which the
environmental group Greenpeace had obtained
from a lower court on March 15, a
Cogema statement said.
The injunction had prevented Cogema from unloading
and reprocessing
360 spent nuclear fuel rods at the port of Cherbourg from
the
container ship Le Bouguenais.
"Unloading of the Bouguenais...will
be carried out today. The spent
fuel rods will be transferred to the Cogema
plant in La Hague for
reprocessing," Cogema said in the statement.
The
injunction had placed in doubt the future of Australia's High
Flux Australian
Reactor (HIFAR) at Lucas Heights in Sydney, run by
nuclear reactor operator
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology
Organisation (ANSTO)
In Canberra, Australian Science and Resources Minister
Nick Minchin
welcomed the Caen court's ruling.
"This decision will
allow ANTSO to proceed with its policy of
sensibly managing fuel rods from
the HIFAR reactor through
reprocessing in France," Minchin said in a
statement.
Greenpeace had argued that Cogema did not have
proper authorisation
to take the waste.
Cogema said the Caen court had rejected that argument and
ruled that
the lower court had not been competent to judge the
matter.
Greenpeace said it planned to return to court to
try again to block
the reprocessing operation.
---------------
Comment : I hope Cogema sues the Greenpukes for every penny of extra shipping expenses incurred while the ship was stuck in port, unable to unload its cargo.
Hmmm - could it be that that was the lower court's plan to begin with - one way to put them out of business ? ...but they could be sued too, no ?
Jaro