Ray Smuts
A NUCLEAR hornet's nest at its very best is likely to erupt over a pro-nuclear assertion that ships carrying such fuels are built to be unsinkable.
Comparisons are odious but it does rather bring to mind a similar boast 90-odd years ago about a ship named Titanic - and the rest is history.
Last week's rounding of the Cape by the Pacific Pintail, a British merchant ship carrying the equivalent of 11 tons of mixed uranium/plutonium fuel - 5% of it plutonium - raised concerns that this could well lay the foundation for a Cape Nuclear Highway.
Nuclear-carrying ships have hitherto used the route through the Panama Canal on around 200 voyages, but only a handful have come around the Cape.
However, it was recently reported that 80 such voyages were planned around the Cape over the next decade which prompted Greenpeace's Mike Townsley to respond: Accidents can and do happen and ships sink, particularly off the Cape.
John Walmsley of the Institution of Nuclear Engineers (South Africa branch) appears to be bemused at all the fuss. What is it about anything nuclear that makes people want to believe absolute nonsense?
Accusing Greenpeace of 'highly suspect methods to promote its goals, he says nuclear ships are built to be unsinkable, safety features including extra buoyancy tanks built between the skins of the double hull.
If they could sink, however, they could founder in the middle of Table Bay without the slightest harm coming to anyone.
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