The German city of Hamburg likely avoided a major technological disaster on May 1, when a freighter ship caught fire. It had several tons of radioactive material and explosives among its cargo, it was revealed.
It took 200 firefighters working for several hours to douse the
fires on the Atlantic Cartier. The ship’s most visible cargo was
some 70 cars, 30 of which were damaged in the incident. But now it
was revealed that the vessel also had highly dangerous substances
on board as well, which posed the threat of radioactive
contamination to the area.
Fire broke out the ship several hours after it arrived in the
port of Hamburg. Three tugs and two fireboats were involved in
fighting with the blaze, as firefighters unloaded shipping
containers while cooling down the hull of the vessel with water.
The ship was seriously damaged by the fire and remains in
Hamburg.
The Atlantic Cartier was transporting around 9 tons of uranium
hexafluoride, a radioactive highly violate and toxic compound most
commonly used as an intermediate material in the production of
nuclear fuel. The vessel also had 180 tons of flammable ethanol and
4 tons of explosives at the time the fire broke out.
The news of the averted disaster in Hamburg was broken by the
opposition Green Party. It criticized the city authorities for not
reporting the full details of the incident on its own
initiative.
“It is an outrage that the Senate has not informed the public
about this near catastrophe,” Greens’ member of the Hamburg
parliament Anjes Tjarks said. “Here one must speak of a
cover-up.”
The city responded by saying that the firefighters were informed
of the dangerous nature of the cargo promptly, which is the reason
why the containers in question were quickly removed from the
ship.
“Thanks to the quick intervention, the harbor and the people
in the area suffered from no hazard,” said city spokesman Frank
Reschreiter. “There was no leak of the dangerous
material.”
Hamburg regularly receives shipments of radioactive material,
German media report. It is a convenient transit point to deliver
them to the uranium-enriching facility in Lingen, Lower Saxony.
This article originally appeared on : RT