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Dozens of people had to be evacuated from an oil platform overnight as a radioactive ship drifted off the Scottish coast.
A fire in one of the Parida’s funnels forced the cargo ship to cut its engines in the North Sea on Tuesday evening.
The blaze was extinguished with no injuries to the 15 people on board, the coastguard said, and the crew attempted to put down its anchors to stop being forced nearer land by rough seas.
As the Parida began drifting towards the Beatrice oil platform in the Moray Firth, it was shut down and evacuated as a precaution, Shetland Coastguard said.
The incident, around 20 nautical miles south-west of Wick, started at 7pm.
originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Lady_Tuatha
So if this radioactive waste is safe and secured, fire is out and crew apparently all OK why evacuate the platform?
originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Lady_Tuatha
So if this radioactive waste is safe and secured, fire is out and crew apparently all OK why evacuate the platform?
originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: mortex
Must be true then if the article says so. I mean it's not like the dangers of radioactive waste have ever been downplayed or downright lied about.
It is owned by Belgian authorities and was transporting waste back to Belgium after collecting it from Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness, where it had been reprocessed.
A spokesperson from the plant said it is the lowest form of waste and had been cemented in 500 litre drums.
A small fire broke out in part of Dounreay's Prototype Fast Reactor facility in the early hours of Tuesday. Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) said the alarm was raised at 01:30. The Caithness site's fire brigade extinguished the blaze in the PFR's sodium tank farm within 30 minutes.
DSRL said no-one was hurt in the incident and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and regulators had been informed. The reactor ceased operating in 1994 and is more than halfway through a process of being decommissioned.
The material, which was sent to Dounreay from Belgium for reprocessing in the 1990s, was being shipped back to Belgium.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said the Parida was carrying two containers called flasks each holding three 500-litre drums of intermediate level waste.
Link
In 2011, it was announced that more than 150 tonnes of intermediate level waste would be transported back to Belgium in 21 shipments over the next four years. The Belgian material had been at Dounreay for reprocessing, but is being returned because the Scottish site is being decommissioned and demolished.
Also in 2011, bosses at Dounreay started discussion on the return of several hundred tones of waste to customers in Australia and Germany.