The decommissioned Brazilian Navy carrier NAe São Paulo, which was to have been dismantled at Aliaga in Turkey, has reversed course and was now heading back to Brazil, Turkish officials confirmed late last week.
The tug towing the carrier, formerly known as the Foch, changed its AIS signal, with it now showing that the pair would now arrive back in Rio de Janeiro on October 2nd – a two-month round-trip.
The São Paulo thus suffered a similar fate to its sibling ship, the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau, which was turned away by the Indian government in 2006, and for the same reason.
Ednan Arslan, a member of the Turkish parliament confirmed the reports that the carrier was returning to Brazil. He said that the decision was the will of the Turkish people.
The issue for the NAe São Paulo was the presence of toxic materials aboard the carrier and whether the full facts had been disclosed before its sale to the breakers in Turkey. Last year Brazil auctioned the carrier, which had been decommissioned in 2018. It departed Rio on August 4th, under tow.
It was only a short while after the vessel left Brazil that environmentalists claimed that the inspection of the vessel for environmental hazards had been flawed to a significant degree. Given that it had reported only minor amounts of toxins aboard. NGO Shipbreaking reported that only 12%t of the spaces aboard the carrier had been tested to prepare the
report. That estimated just 9.6 tons of asbestos-contaminated materials onboard. Given that the Clemenceau contained at least 600 tons of asbestos, this seemed unlikely to be accurate.
The report failed to test electrical cabling and said that there was no presence of PCBs. Finally, the NGO contended the carrier had been used by France in the 1960s with atmospheric nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific meaning that it could have radioactive contamination.
Turkey quickly called for a second inspection of the vessel before it arrived, but Brazil said that since the vessel had already left, this was impossible.
Two weeks ago, Turkey’s Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change Minister, Murat Kurum, announced that due to Brazil’s failure to carry out a second audit process that “the Brazilian navy ship NAe Sao Paulo, which will arrive at the ship dismantling facility in Izmir Aliaga, will be sent back.”
The tug towing the carrier had waited off northern Africa for the past two weeks with reports that the British authorities had denied a permit to transit the Strait of Gibraltar.
France had operated the Foch, as it then was, for 18 years up to 2000, then selling it to Brazil where it would have a 19-year career troubled by mechanical failures. After a fire in 2012 Brazil said that it would be fully reconditioned, but by 2017 it was listed as demobilized and officially decommissioned the following year.
The Clemenceau hit the headlines in 2006 when protestors blocked its entry into the Suez Canal. It was turned around after an Indian court ruled that it had to return to France. It was finally dismantled starting in 2009 at a specialized facility in the UK that met international standards for the handling of toxic materials.
