Nuclear spill risk ‘minimal’

Press, 29 August 1984, Page 11

Nuclear spill risk ‘minimal’

NZPA-Reuter Paris Salvage companies expect today to inspect the wreck of a French freighter which sank in the North Sea with nuclear material aboard. A spokesman for the Dutch firm, Smit Tak International, said that with a Belgian company it had won a salvage contract from Compagnie Generale Maritime, the owners of the sunken Mont Louis. The freighter sank off the Belgian coast during the week-end after colliding with a passenger ferry. News that it was carrying 240 tonnes of uranium hex-

afluoride, a radioactive product, came 24 hours later. French maritime officials have sought to defuse controversy over pollution, asserting that danger is minimal. “It is certain that there are radioactive products there,” the Environment Minister, Mr Huguette Bouchardeau, said. "But the danger from the products involved in this affair is much more a classical chemical danger.” A spokesman for the French Nuclear Protection and Safety Institute said the risk of leakage into the sea was “exceptionally light.”

The hexafluoride, a product which when enriched is used to make fuel rods for nuclear reactors, was enclosed in 30 containers with walls 15mm thick, he said. If the material leaked, it would form hydrofluoric acid, an extremely toxic product which attacked the mucous membranes when inhaled and caused burns. Pollution into the sea would be slow and with little radioactive contamination, he said. The international ecology movement, Greenpeace, which alerted the news media to the content of the cargo, said how-

ever that if a faulty seal allowed a single drop of water into a container, the chemical reaction would cause an immediate, violent release of energy. Claude Abraham, manager of Cogema, France’s State-run nuclear fuels company which owns the 240tonne nuclear cargo, said there was no reason for fear and pledged that the recovery operations would be a success. “This type of operation is delicate and takes a relatively long time, but it does not basically present difficulties,” he said in a radio interview, adding that the

salvage would be carried out “with utmost care”. The Mont Louis went down in 15m of water after colliding in heavy fog with the West German-owned ferry Olau Britannia, 10 nautical miles off the Belgian coast It was carrying its nuclear cargo from Le Havre to the Soviet port of Riga for enrichment under an agreement signed in the early 19705, French atomic energy officials said. The accord was signed before the French-con-trolled Eurodif enrichment plant opened in 1979. The

plant is only working at half-capacity but France is committed to the agreement with the Soviet Union into the next century. Maritime Affairs Ministry officials said two French Navy vessels were monitoring the site and analysis of water samples from the area had not revealed an abnormal level of radioactivity. Smit Tak will use divers and equipment from its base in Rotterdam and a floating derrick now working off the Dutch coast for the salvage. The Belgian company will provide tugs and pontoons.