WATCH: Phil McNulty, public information officer for Halifax Regional Fire & Emergency, and Calvin Whidden, senior VP of Cerescorp, provide details of Thursday night’s dropped radioactive container.
HALIFAX – Fire crews spent a tense evening at a Halifax shipping terminal, after workers reported a container carrying radioactive materials had been dropped and broke open.
Halifax Fire’s hazardous materials team responded to the Ceres container terminal in the city’s north end shortly before 10 p.m.
Crews eventually determined that no radioactive material had leaked.
Four cylinders containing uranium hexafluoride had fallen out of their container while it was being lifted off the ship.
Fire crews took about 30 minutes to manoeuvre through the ship to reach the fallen cylinders. Their initial assessment found radiation levels three to four times higher than normal background levels.
“With background radiation readings, there’s radiation everywhere all the time,” said Phil McNulty, spokesperson for Halifax Fire. “It was just an indication that it was higher than normal. So at that point in time crews decided to step back and do a little further research to determine cause and possible effects.”
McNulty said they took precautions as if it were a worst-case scenario. Terminal workers were quarantined and individually searched for signs of radioactivity. None of the workers tested positive and nobody was injured.
The ship’s crew members were taken off-site to a nearby motel.
While the site is deemed to be under control, a team of experts is en route to assess the situation.
The emergency response action team will arrive Friday afternoon and will inform the shipping operators when the terminal can reopen, and what steps need to be taken to execute that process safely.
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