A British newspaper has reported decommissioning of the Pacific Pintail, a 341-foot cargo ship used to carry nuclear material around the world, will be postponed for at least three years.
A document obtained by the Guardian indicated the ship, renamed the Oceanic Pintail, is back in service and will continue to make deliveries until at least 2015. The newspaper reported the vessel had been in a British port awaiting decommissioning for two years until the costs of a planned new boat were deemed too high.
A favorite target of seaborne anti-nuclear protestors, the ship is one of only a handful in the world designed to transport casks of nuclear material by sea. The newspaper reported that last month the Pintail transported 3 kg of plutonium from Sweden to the U.S., and that the ship will transport waste from the UK’s Sellafield site to other countries in Europe.
The ship is part of a nuclear-transport fleet owned by PNTL, an International Nuclear Services (INS) subsidiary whose owners include INS, Areva and nuclear companies in Japan. According to PNTL, its ships have moved more than 2,000 casks over more than 5 million miles without a single release of radioactivity. The ships are managed by Serco Group.