Small Boat Armada Confronts Nuclear Ships at the End of £113m Across-the-world Saga

The French have faced peace flotillas at Mururoa against atom bomb tests, the Americans have been embarrassed by New Zealand's protests at nuclear armed ships in its waters, but never before has Britain been faced with an armada of small boats in the Irish sea objecting to its plutonium trade.

Two armed British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL) transports, carrying rejected plutonium fuel from Japan, escorted by two British naval vessels and shadowed by the Greenpeace flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, were met off the Welsh coast by 20 assorted yachts demanding the closure of Sellafield.

And even if the nuclear convoy manages to shake off these unwelcome attentions in the night, four more yachts are waiting at Barrow-in-Furness so that this morning, when the two transports arrive on the morning tide after their two month, 17,500 mile voyage from Japan, they can be told again that their activities are not welcome.

It is an embarrassing moment for BNFL and the government. It has cost more than £113m to return 40 tonnes of unused mixed plutonium oxide and uranium fuel (Mox) from Japan, all in an effort to generate a new trade in providing fuel for Japanese reactors which looks increasingly unlikely to happen.

BNFL hopes that once the Mox fuel is safely back in the Sellafield plant in Cumbria it can go back to Japan and secure large new orders for fuel to power the Japanese nuclear industry. The problem is that the nuclear industry in both countries is in deep trouble.

In Japan, a scandal has erupted in the last two weeks about a cover-up of potential safety flaws in the reactors in which BNFL hoped its fuel would be loaded. The Tokyo Electric Power Company, BNFL's largest customer, has admitted it failed to accurately report 29 cracks found in a 15 year period in eight reactors. An investigation has been ordered and board members of the company have resigned.

In Britain, the financial viability of the nuclear industry is under scrutiny. BNFL went technically bankrupt less than a year ago and all its assets are to be taken over by a government quango and around £1.5bn a year in liabilities borne by the taxpayer. The company's largest contributor, British Energy, paying £300m a year, is fighting for its life. It is being bailed out by the government with £470m, but the money will only last until the end of this month.

The saga which led to yesterday's unprecedented protest began 10 years ago when BNFL decided to build a £200m plant to turn tonnes of unwanted plutonium stored at Sellafield into fuel that could be used in nuclear reactors. British Energy refused to have any part of this deal. The idea was to return uranium and plutonium from reprocessed spent fuel to BNFL's big customers in Switzerland, Germany and Japan. For BNFL it would solve the problem of how to return potential bomb making material in a potentially useful form.

There were protests from environment groups and from 80 countries that object to plutonium being transported near their territorial waters.

Despite the diplomatic fallout, all went well until October 1999 when the first Mox fuel from a demonstration Mox plant at Sellafield was found to have falsified quality control documents. BNFL made the mistake of trying to bluff it out, which antagonised the Japanese even more, and the nuclear industry and then the government demanded the British take the fuel back.

Attempts by the UK government to intervene on behalf of BNFL failed and two years ago a £40m compensation package was agreed so the fuel could be returned. There were high hopes, on the part of BNFL at least, that once this had been done the Mox trade could start again.

For more than two years the government dithered about whether to give the already built Mox plant the right to operate. Employing what were described as "voodoo economics", the £239m cost of the plant was written off to show that it would make a modest profit in its first 10 years of operation. These calculations were based on the belief that the Japanese would provide contracts.

Although German and Swiss utilities have confirmed orders for Mox, the Japanese have not. The events of the last two weeks make it increasingly unlikely.

Aboard the Rainbow Warrior, Shaun Burnie, accompanied by Irish rock star Jim Corr, said: "We have radioed to the two armed nuclear transports and to their navy escorts that we are a peaceful protest and we will not interfere with their right of passage. We want to make it clear that they and their trade are not welcome in the Irish sea or anywhere else because it is too risky."

Nuala Ahern, an Irish Green MEP, in one of the yachts moored off Barrow, said: "We want to make a visible message that BNFL and its trade is not welcome and the Irish sea should be nuclear free."

Captain Malcolm Miller, head of BNFL's marine transport business, said: "I very much welcome the public assurances given by Greenpeace that they will not interfere with the safe navigation of our ships. I hope they will be true to their word and respect the rules of the sea."