Three News reports:
Ships carrying uranium allowed to enter NZ
There’s shock at a decision to allow concentrated uranium ore to be shipped through New Zealand ports, with environmentalists worried it’ll jeopardise our nuclear-free status.
The Environmental Risk Management Authority has given the green light allowing shipments from Australia to pass through New Zealand on the way to the United States until 2014. Ports in Auckland, Nelson, Tauranga and Napier are affected.
Green MP Gareth Hughes says the party is concerned at the decision, “This undermines New Zealand’s proud nuclear-free history and the blood sweat and tears of activists in the ’80s who fought to entrench our nuclear-free status on the world stage,” says Mr Hughes. Nuclear-powered ships are banned from entering the country under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987. … “To allow the raw minerals needed for nuclear generation seems to contravene the principles of this act.
I’m with The Greens on this one. If it is not excluded by the Act in its current form, uranium is certainly in violation of its principles, and the Act needs to be amended to exclude it.
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