Nuclear waste ship sailing into Barents today
The nuclear waste cargo ship “Puma” is Monday morning sailing outside Troms and will soon enter the Barents Sea on its way to Murmansk.
The small Danish flagged cargo vessel “Puma” is sailing with a speed of 10,5 knots in the northbound ships lane some 30 NM outside the coast of Troms. With the current speed, the vessel will pass outside Nordkapp Tuesday morning. “Puma” will according to the schedule arrive in Murmansk on Wednesday at noon, according to the vessels trafficking data to be followed live at marinetraffic.com.
“Puma” is sailing with containers holding spent nuclear fuel from a Serbian research reactor. According to the Russian environmental group Zelenyi Mir (Green World) the uranium fuel is weighing 333 tons.
Spent nuclear fuel is highly radioactive, with isotopes like uranium, plutonium, strontium and cesium, among others.
Read also: Germany calls off disputed nuclear cargo to Murmansk - but new vessel on its way
In Murmansk, the containers will be unloaded at the nuclear powered icebreaker base Atomflot, from where the spent nuclear fuel later will be sent by special designed railway wagons towards Russia’s reprocessing plant Mayak in the South Ural.
BarentsObserver has over the last year reported about several nuclear waste shipments from Europe to Murmansk.
Read more: More European nuclear waste heading to Murmansk
The first vessel that sailed along the coast of Norway towards Murmansk did not informed Norwegian Radiation Authorities or Norway’s Coastal administration about what cargo it had.
Read also: Nuclear cargo secretly shipped around Norway
