CHERBOURG, France (Agencies via Xinhua) -- A ship carrying 20 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste reprocessed in France left for Japan early yesterday despite protests by environmentalists.
The itinerary of the British ship Pacific Teal, which left port at 7 am (0600 GMT), was to be announced today by the French state-owned nuclear processing company Cogema and Japanese electric power companies that produced the waste.
New Zealand demanded to know the route, and whether it would pass through the country's 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
The shipment consists of 40 glass blocks of reprocessed waste weighing 495 kilogrammes each, originally from a Japanese nuclear power plant.
The shipment was secretly taken by train on Friday from nearby the Cogema processing factory at Le Havre to Cherbourg, the environmentalist group Greenpeace said.
Greenpeace criticized the train trip on Friday, accusing France of endangering people along the route.
In previous shipments last year and in 1993, blocks of vitrified waste were safely transported from Cherbourg to Japan. Greenpeace and countries along potential routes protested, some banning the ships from their waters.
French officials had in the past contended nuclear shipping routes should remain secret to prevent the vessels from becoming targets for high-seas piracy. The most apparent threat in the past, however, had been Greenpeace boats trying to tail them.
In 1993 the cargo went around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope and between Australia and New Zealand. The another shipment last year took the route around the south of South America and across the Pacific.
The plant is built into a bluff not far from where Allied troops came ashore on D-Day in World War II. It is one of the world's largest to process spent nuclear fuel, primarily from France's network of more than 50 nuclear plants that generate about 80 per cent of the country's electricity.
A study on Friday revealed that children who live within 33 kilometres of the Le Havre plant and play on local beaches are three times more likely to develop leukemia than other children.
The French Government says it will conduct its own study, checking for abnormal levels of radioactivity in shellfish and sediment near the Normandy plant.