Didn't get away with it!

"Toxic" aircraft carrier returns to Brazil

Officials in Turkey have confirmed it: the decommissioned Brazilian Navy aircraft carrier NAE São Paulo, which was due to be scrapped in Aliaga, has changed course and is on its way back to Brazil. The tugboat of the aircraft carrier has changed its AIS signal and now indicates that it will arrive back in Rio de Janeiro on 2 October. The two-month round trip follows a similar pattern to the odyssey of its sister ship, the French aircraft carrier "Clemenceau", which was also turned away in 2006, then in India.

As with its sister ship, the issue with the "São Paulo" was whether there were toxic substances on board the carrier and whether a proper inspection had been carried out before it was sold to the Turkish scrappers. Last year, Brazil auctioned off the warship, which was decommissioned in 2018. The ship left Rio on 4 August 2022.

Environmentalists then began to protest. Only 12 per cent of the rooms on board the ship had been inspected. At least 600 tonnes of asbestos are suspected to be on board. Turkey then demanded a second inspection of the ship while it was still in Brazilian waters, but Brazil explained that this was not possible - the ship had already sailed. A fortnight ago, the Turkish Minister of Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change, Murat Kurum, announced that the Brazilian ex-navy ship would be sent back.

The tug has been waiting off the North African coast for the past two weeks, as the British authorities had reportedly refused permission to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar. According to the media, Brazil had agreed to the ship's return, but it remained stranded off the Moroccan coast.

The 32,800-tonne carrier, which entered service in 1962 under the name "Foch", was a sister ship to the "Clemenceau". France operated the ship for 37 years and sold it out of service to Brazil in 2000, where a career plagued by defects followed. After a fire in 2012, Brazil said it would be completely overhauled, but the carrier was officially decommissioned in 2018.

The "Clemenceau" became the centre of world attention in 2006 when protesters blocked its entry into the Suez Canal after an Indian court ordered its return to France. From 2009, the ship was finally dismantled in a specialised facility in the United Kingdom that complies with international standards for handling toxic materials.

Read the first report from 26.08.22: https://marineforum.online/brasilien-die-naechste-umweltkatastrophe-mit-ansage/