N-waste dumping protest suspended

Press, 13 September 1982, Page 9

N-waste dumping protest suspended

NZPA Amsterdam The ecologist movement Greenpeace has announced that it is suspending its attempts to prevent the dumping of nuclear waste off north-west Spain. The announcement said that the decision was taken after an accident in which one of its members, a Dutchman. was injured. The organisation said that the man narrowly missed being crushed - by a drum containing nuclear waste weighing several tonns. dumped from the Dutch vessel Rijnberg into the Atlantic. 700 km north-west of the Spanish coast. He had approached the ship in a rubber dinghy from one of Greenpeace's two chartered vessels, the Sirius and the Cedarlea. according to the organisation. ' Meanwhile, three members of Greenpeace — an American. a German and a Spaniard — were reported held aboard the Rijnberg. They had managed to climb aboard under cover of night and had chained themselves to the ship's three cranes to prevent further dumping. On orders from the captain. according to Greenpeace, they were disengaged from the cranes at the week-end. On orders from a Dutch magistrate, they were then kept aboard, the organisation added. It specified that the action had been ordered to end. and the magistrate's warrant was void. The Rijnberg and another Dutch vessel are engaged in dumping 7000 tons of Belgian and Swiss nuclear waste into an Atlantic deep-sea trough also used for the same purpose by the Netherlands and Britain. Last Monday, an estimated 25.000 demonstrators protested the dumping in the Spanish coastal region of Galicia. Meanwhile, at Le Havre, northern France, the launch* ing of a special nuclear fuel transport ship was disrupted at the week-end by a group of ecologists who entered the ship before being forcibly evicted by the police.

The French and Swedishowned 1900 ton-ship was christened the Sigyn.