Word: uranium
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...with a West German ferry, the French container ship Mont Louis still lay on its side last week in 45 ft. of water, eleven miles from the Belgian coast. Gale-force winds and 15-ft. swells had broken it in two, raising fears that 30 steel containers filled with uranium hexafluoride, raw material from which nuclear fuel is made, might be swept out of the ship's holds into the sea. Then the bad weather broke, salvage operations resumed, and by midweek the first of the containers, originally destined for the Soviet Union, was winched to the surface...
...rest wild rumors about the nature of the cargo. A Belgian senator had declared that the Mont Louis had been carrying, among other items, arms for the Soviet Union, an allegation that was curtly dismissed by the Belgian government. By week's end 13 of the containers of uranium were aboard a salvage barge, and crews from Belgium and England were able to mop up a three-mile-long fuel-oil slick...
...French container ship that sank on Aug. 25 after colliding with a German passenger ferry eleven miles from the Belgian coast, was very much alive with frenzied activity. Three tugboats buzzed noisily around it, while black dinghies delivered wet-suited divers. The focus of their labors: 360 tons of uranium hexafluoride, raw material from which nuclear fuel is made and which is not a severe radiation danger. Three barrels, however, contained uranium that had been partly processed into fuel, a form that is more hazardous. As yet, divers taking daily readings of the water have not detected any signs...
...evasive about details of the accident. Forty-eight hours after the sinking, the Belgian government was still uncertain about the nature of the cargo on board. On the other hand, Greenpeace, the international environmental organization, had already revealed that the Mont Louis had been carrying a cargo of uranium. Confusion mounted when crew members claimed they had been told that they were shipping radioactive goods for medical purposes...
Finally, after much prodding by Greenpeace, the French admitted the true nature of the freight: uranium that was being shipped to the Soviet Union to be processed into nuclear fuel and then returned to Europe for use in nuclear power plants. Belgium, Italy and Switzerland have had similar arrangements with the Soviets since 1973, when the U.S., which then had a virtual monopoly on enrichment technology, sharply raised its prices. The French recently extended their agreements with the Soviet Union through the year...