Greenpeace chases UK nuclear fuel ships

Greenpeace activists protest in front of the Pacific Teal

TASMAN SEA (CNN) -- Two British-based tankers carrying nuclear fuel have slipped through a Greenpeace flotilla of protest craft in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand under the cover of darkness.

A Greenpeace inflatable boat then embarked on an eight-hour chase, before unfurling a protest banner demanding a "Nuclear Free Pacific" on Monday morning.

Environmental activist group Greenpeace set up the blockade of 11 boats to protest the shipment of plutonium fuel from Japan to the United Kingdom.

Greenpeace says the two British freighters, which it says are armed, slowed down and then sneaked through the protest line overnight Sunday.

The incident took place in international waters between Australia's Lord Howe and Norfolk islands about 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of the Australian mainland.

An inflatable boat was sent after the freighters carry two protesters who jumped into the sea in front of the ships and held up their protest banner.

One of the two swimmers, Ian Cohen, is a member of the upper house of the New South Wales State parliament in Australia.

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"As an elected member of the New South Wales Parliament, representing many Australians who have expressed strong anti-nuclear sentiment, I wanted to make sure that there was no doubt in these shippers minds that they are not welcome in this region," Cohen said in a statement released by Greenpeace.

A similar protest was carried out last year when a shipment of plutonium went through the Tasman Sea en route from France to Japan.

Greenpeace says the two ships are carrying a cargo of plutonium mixed oxide which is being returned to the United Kingdom after being rejected for use in Japanese nuclear reactors because it is faulty.

The company responsible for the plutonium, British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), said Monday the protesters had recklessly endangered their own lives through the action.

The protesters threw themselves only 400 meters in front of one of the ships carrying the fuel, forcing the skipper to take evasive action, BNFL spokesman Mark Scott said in a statement released in New Zealand.

Surveillance

One ship passed within 70 meters of one of the activists.

"To throw themselves into the water in front of the vessel is the height of maritime lunacy and does Greenpeace no credit whatsoever," New Zealand Press Association reported Scott as saying.

The Greenpeace flotilla setting out for its confrontation with the nuclear freighters

BNFL says the plutonium fuel pellets on the ships pose no danger to the environment, saying that even if they were dropped into the sea they would take thousands of years to dissolve.

The pellets are loaded into fuel rods made from zirconium alloy which are corrosion-resistant and able to withstand depths of several thousand metres of water, the company says on its Web site.

Meanwhile, New Zealand has sent an air force maritime surveillance plane to monitor the ships' passage through the Tasman Sea, NZPA reports.

The left-leaning New Zealand Government, which maintains a strong anti-nuclear policy, has told Japan and Britain it expects the ships to stay clear of the Pacific nation's 320 kilometer (200 mile) exclusive economic zone.