MORE than 60 anti-nuclear protesters were arrested yesterday after
breaking into the Sellafield reprocessing plant and blocking a main
access road to the site, but Greenpeace claimed last night that five
activists were still hidden inside the plant.
Around 100 campaigners breached security at the site on the Cumbrian
coast, but British Nuclear Fuels Limited, which runs the plant, denied
claims by Greenpeace that plutonium production had been halted.
Further claims by Greenpeace that activists had shut off a discharge
pipe at the Aldermaston nuclear weapons facility in Berkshire were
neither confirmed nor denied last night.
Police arrested 61 demonstrators during the six-hour Sellafield
protest, timed to coincide with the start of talks in New York yesterday
to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Those arrested were taken to Whitehaven police station in West
Cumbria, where eight were charged with offences including criminal
damage and obstruction and released on bail. The remaining 53 were
''being processed'', said police.
Greenpeace, which blocked a road into Sellafield with a 20ft
container, claims the plant is one of the world's leading producers of
plutonium -- a key component of nuclear bombs.
It also claimed to have anchored one of its ships, the Moby Dick,
close to a discharge pipe at the plant which, according to Greenpeace,
pumps high levels of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea.
Police confirmed that three protesters had tried to parachute into
Aldermaston -- but only one managed to get near the base.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said it was impossible to concrete the
base's main discharge pipe without entering the base and there had been
no reported trespassers.
However, Greenpeace spokeswoman Janet Convery said activists had shut
off valves on a 10-mile water pipe from Aldermaston by striking at a
point near the Kennet and Avon Canal which is outside the base. An MoD
spokesman confirmed that a valve had been ''tampered with''.
Mr Bill Anderton, for BNFL, stressed that the Sellafield protest had
not affected plutonium production at the site's Thermal Oxide
Reprocessing facility (THORP).
Mr Anderton was unable to explain how the protesters entered the site
but said: ''Sellafield is about a mile by a mile-and-a-half and has a
wire fence around it. It's not possible to patrol every inch of it.'' In
a statement, BNFL criticised Greenpeace for linking the THORP plant with
the non-proliferation talks.
''THORP is a civil reprocessing plant and the uranium and plutonium
recovered from its operations are a valuable energy source.''
The THORP plant extracts uranium and plutonium from nuclear waste from
British and foreign reactors.
Its construction was fiercely opposed by anti-nuclear groups, who
claimed it would turn Sellafield in the ''world's nuclear dump''.
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