AS the glare of the world's media turned away after Tuesday's dramatic protests against two Sellafield-bound freighters loaded with plutonium fuel, local campaigners are turning up the heat against nuclear reprocessing in Cumbria, reports Jennie Dennett.

Martin Forwood of CORE - Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment - said every shipment of mixed oxide fuel (Mox) from the British Nuclear Fuel at Sellafield would incur the wrath of protestors.

"It seems to us nonsense that at a time when the Government is saying we must stamp out sources of materials that can be used by terrorists, BNFL should be shipping this stuff around the world."

A flotilla of around 20 protest vessels accompanied by veteran Greenpeace campaign ship The Rainbow Warrior followed the BNFL's first vessel, The Pacific Pintail, into Barrow's Ramsden Dock on Tuesday morning.

The environmental campaigners - mostly hailing from Ireland and Scotland - argue that Mox shipments are vulnerable to catastrophic accident or terrorist attack, which could lead to a large-scale contamination of the sea and coastal communities.

A force of eight police powerboats kept the protest boats clear of the freighter along with water cannons fired from Pintail.

Police helicopters patrolled from above and armed security forces lined the freighter railings.

However, the only direct confrontation of the day occurred when veteran Kendal protestor Martin Wyness was ejected from the BNFL media base by police after attempting to make a citizen's arrest of Captain Malcolm Miller, head of BNFL Marine Transport.

The action followed another Wyness protest last week when he dumped a barrow-load of what he described as "West Cumbrian cow poo" on the doorstep of Sellafield's new £6.5 million visitor centre.

The two ships that had ignited the protests carried more than 200 kilos of mixed oxide nuclear fuel which had been sent back from Takahama in Japan after safety records at the plant operated by BNFL were exposed as false in 1999.

The firm's chief executive Norman Askew said the safe delivery of the shipment's cargo was an important milestone for BNFL: "This now draws a line under the Mox quality assurance issue.

I promised our Japanese customers that we would return the fuel in 2002 and we have delivered on that promise."

BNFL hopes Mox traffic will become a regular occurrence with at least two voyages a year between Barrow and Japan carrying fuel from Sellafield's new reprocessing plant.