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Greenpeace starts shutting French nuke waste pipe
Greenpeace starts shutting French nuke waste pipe
ROUEN, France, June 29 (Reuters) - Greenpeace divers have shut off
one of the two outlets on an underwater pipe it says a French nuclear
reprocessing plant uses to spew radioactive waste into the Channel, a
spokesman said on Thursday.
The operation, conducted overnight, closed a capping device on one
outlet but left the other one open while the environment group waited
for a conference in Copenhagen to vote on whether to ban the
reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, it said.
``The pipe is not effected and this operation does not hinder the
emissions,'' Greenpeace spokesman Jean-Luc Thierry said.
French nuclear fuels group Cogema said on Wednesday it had filed a
lawsuit against Greenpeace for allegedly damaging its property while
filming radioactive discharges from the pipe near Cherbourg on the
French coast.
Cogema accused Greenpeace of endangering company divers when it set
up a ``webcam,'' or Internet-connected camera, to transmit pictures
of an underwater pipe spewing waste into the Channel to delegates at
an environmental conference in Copenhagen.
``By the outlaw nature of their presence in the zone, Greenpeace's
behaviour has endangered the security of people and goods,'' the
state-run company said in a statement.
The statement was issued just hours after Greenpeace said it had
fixed a cable linked to the camera that was cut by Cogema divers
inspecting the pipe on Tuesday, two days after the ``webcam'' was set
up.
The company, which earlier said its divers had accidentally cut the
line, said the environmental group had flaunted basic safety rules by
motoring their inflatable ``zodiac'' dinghies over the surface while
Cogema divers worked below.
Greenpeace said the camera was again relaying images to a meeting of
ministers from the 15 countries of the Oslo-Paris Commission (OSPAR),
set up to protect the marine environment of the northeast Atlantic
Ocean.
Ministers are meeting in Copenhagen this week to discuss a proposal
by Denmark to ban sea dumping of radioactive waste from land pipes.
OSPAR has already banned other forms of sea dumping of nuclear waste -
- from ships, platforms and aircraft.
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