Fukui Prefecture News

While steaming some 700km west of Guam on January 20, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. operated coal carrier C. S. Sunshine rescued all 24 Chinese crew members of a disabled freighter January 20. At 8:15 a.m. (local time) on January 20, the Panama-registered C.S. Sunshine, which departed Newcastle, Australia, bound for Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, Japan, received a distress signal from a Panama-flagged freighter that had lost power. The 46,700 MT, 228.4m C.S. Sunshine, manned with two Japanese and 19 Filipino crew, immediately altered course and made for the distressed vessel at all possible speed.

A nuclear fuel shipment to Japan that has stirred up protests by environmentalists is expected to reach port aboard two British cargo ships on Sept. 22, according to Japanese media sources. The ships, carrying MOX fuel, a mixture of uranium and plutonium recycled from spent nuclear fuel, will arrive at a port near the city of Iwaki, about 130 miles north of Tokyo. The armed British cargo ship Pacific Teal left the French port of Cherbourg on July 21 and subsequently linked up with the Pacific Pintail, its sister ship, for the journey to Japan. The Pacific Pintail had been loaded with MOX from Britain's Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant.