Activists Arrested In France For Blocking Nuclear Shipment To Russia

Cooling towers at a nuclear power plant (AFP) 1 December 2005 -- Some 20 Greenpeace activists were arrested in the French  Atlantic port of Le Havre today as they tried to prevent a Russian ship from loading nuclear materials destined for Siberia.

The environmental group says the shipment comprises nuclear waste that is to pass through St. Petersburg before being transferred by train for Tomsk.

Greenpeace has denounced the practice of transporting waste to Tomsk, a city it called "the world's dustbin for hazardous materials."

The French nuclear group Areva, however, says the materials being shipped are not nuclear waste, but depleted uranium that will be enriched in Russia and then returned to France.

(AFP)