Uranium ore concentrate on ship
2003-08-21 20:19
Cape Town - There are 50 tons of uranium ore concentrate on board the grounded Sealand Express in Table Bay, the Nuclear Fuels Corporation of South Africa confirmed on Thursday.
The material was being shipped from South Africa for processing in the United States, where it was destined to be turned into nuclear fuel, Nufcor operations director Paul Fitzsimon said.
The revelation coincided with a threat by the national department of environment affairs to arrest the ship if its cargo was not fully disclosed.
The Sealand Express, which has 1 037 containers on board, was blown into sandy shallows in foul weather on Tuesday morning, and has firmly resisted attempts since then to refloat her.
'High integrity containers'
Fitzsimon told radio station Cape Talk that the uranium was packed in "high integrity drums" which in turn were inside industrial containers.
It would take a "fairly catastrophic" event to breach the containers, he said.
Asked if Capetonians should be worried about the presence of the uranium, he replied: "Not in the grand scheme of things.
"It is radioactive insofar as uranium obviously is radioactive, but just in the same way as all rocks are radioactive because they contain uranium. It's a natural form of radioactivity."
Nufcor is the marketing organisation for uranium produced as a by-product from South Africa's gold mines.
NNR 'knew nothing'
Earthlife Africa spokesperson Liz McDaid told Sapa her organisation was concerned that the statutory National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) knew "nothing" about the uranium until Earthlife phoned it on Thursday morning.
"They are supposed to be responsible for monitoring and safeguarding nuclear material," she said.
"Our other concern is simply that there is a whole lot of uranium oxide sitting on the beach, albeit in a ship, at the moment.
"We are no salvage experts, but we hope they are going to move the uranium as a precaution against the ship's breaking up, particularly because the next cold front is coming on Saturday and they can't float her off for eight days."
The NNR could not be reached for comment on Thursday night.
No need for concern
President of the South African branch of the Institution of Nuclear Engineers John Walmsley said he was quite sure there was no need Capetonians to be concerned, because even pure metallic uranium was not highly radioactive.
"It would be more embarrassing than hazardous if one of those containers was to be breached," he said.
Earlier, director general of the national department of environment affairs Chippy Olver said his department is taking "all necessary steps to monitor and prevent any negative environmental impact that may arise from the incident".
The department had asked the vessel's owners to provide all information on her cargo.
"Should the requested information not be forthcoming, the department will consider taking such steps as may be necessary to obtain the information including the possible arrest of the vessel", he said.
Salvors were on Thursday readying equipment to pump some 4 000 tons of fuel oil off the vessel.
South African maritime Safety Authority operations manager Bill Dernier said another attempt to refloat the lightened vessel would be made in about eight days, at the next spring tide.
No voice recordings
Dernier also revealed on Thursday that there are no voice recordings of exchanges between Cape Town port control and the Sealand Express.
He said "something went wrong" at Port Control, which normally records all ship-to-shore and shore-to-ship exchanges on its multi-million rand, state of the art communications system.
Dernier said port control did however have the vessel's radar plots stored in digital form, and he was going to view these on Thursday afternoon.
Asked whether the ship had in fact received repeated warnings from port control that she was headed for danger before she grounded on Sunset Beach early Tuesday morning, he said: "I can't comment on that."
A two-person US Coast Guard investigative team has arrived in Cape Town, and has already made contact with the master of the vessel, which sails under an American flag.
Salvors
Clare Gomes, spokesperson for salvors Smit Marine, said a string of hoses several hundred metres long to pipe off the fuel was being assembled at Smit Marines' quay in Cape Town harbour.
If the operation could start on Friday, two tugs, the Pacific Worker and the Pacific Brigand, would be used to take off the fuel.
Otherwise an oil tanker would be available from Saturday.
Three anchors had been placed as "ground tackle" to secure the receiving vessels.
Under ideal conditions, the pumping could take place at about 50 tons an hour, but Smit's experience with the Ikan Tanda was that it was an operation that would take time.
People should not be surprised if it was still continuing seven days down the line.
"You can't play around with oil: we don't even begin pumping if the weather is not in our favour," she said.
- SAPA