'Ghost fleet' faces setback

I'd like to know what's made these shipps so contaminated. But it makes me wonder why there not being decommission in the USA.

news.bbc.co.uk...

What gets me is these eco people say it's a ecological time bomb but they don't seem to have a solution.

This sounds like it could be an interesting thread if we could find out the names of the ships involved... find out what they did on their last deployment, etc.
The official word is that these ships have been "contaminated with asbestos and other chemicals..."

One could ask, how and why did they get contaminated with these substances, and does their last deployment actually reflect a duty that involved dealing with these contaminants - if not --- I'd say we have a genuine gov't conspiracy on our hands.

intelgurl

From their appearance in the pic, I'd say it's the same reason as old schools (it's what they used for insulation...(asbestos) Doubt there's a conspiracy here....just that it would cost money to strip it, reinsulate, etc. for old ships...

Garzoks right. They're just old crappy ships. The U.S is paying some yard in England to break them up, though god knows why they couldn't do it in the U.S. Probably solely because it�s cheaper. They're nearly falling to bits and can only go at 4mph. It'll take months to get them all here and there�s a lot more dangerous contaminates on them than just Asbestos. The chances of the breaking up in rough seas must be pretty high. They originally wanted to bring them round the top of Scotland through a lot of ecologically protected and fragile areas, but thankfully we managed to tell them to # off.

Originally posted by Britman
I'd like to know what's made these shipps so contaminated. But it makes me wonder why there not being decommission in the USA.

Because when it comes to dismantling contaminated ships, the UK is the worlds dustbin. Countries from all over the globe bring their poisonous rust buckets to England to be disposed of, so this US fleet is really nothing out of the ordinary.

My brother is an expert in abatement procedures and these people know what they are doing but there are not a lot of them around the world even though there is a lot of work to do.

I expect that the English have facilities and trained people to do this work and they won the contract accordingly.

It's a tough job but can be very rewarding work for those with the gonads to do it.

The fleet has now been told by the Britihs Govt that it can't enter UK waters. Apparently the company who had the contract to dismantle the ships didn't have the correct legal facilities for the job.

However, the American owners have refused to turn the fleet around. They'll probably end up just sinking the things just outside UK waters at this rate!

They can always just take the fleet to India - They do a booming trade there of d ismantling old ships - Problem is, the fleet may very well break apart in rough waters as was previously posted...

intelgurl

[Edited on 1-11-2003 by intelgurl]

Originally posted by intelgurl
They can always just take the fleet to India - They do a booming trade there of d ismantling old ships - Problem is, the fleet may very well break apart in rough waters as was previously posted...

intelgurl

[Edited on 1-11-2003 by intelgurl]

I dunno if even Indian would allow these ships. It's a specialist operation to dismantle then as apparently they're packed full of chemicals and asbestos, breaking up in rough seas seems the most likely end at present....but then the Irish sea is so contaminated with radioactivity and mercury that they sould scuttle them there without impacting noticeably on the enviroment!