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Serbia stops Bulgarian train over radioactive cargo: customs
Belgrade (AFP) Nov 3, 2008 Serbia has denied entry to a train from Bulgaria after discovering a carriage laden with radioactive material, the customs service said Monday. "Serbian Customs found radioactivity 3,000 times over permitted levels inside one of the carriages of the train and 300 times on the (outer) surface of the carriage," it said in a statement sent to AFP. The train, which was stopped at a checkpoint in Dimitrovgrad, a town on the border between Serbia and Bulgaria, was travelling towards Macedonia on Friday when the discovery was made. It was later ordered to go back to Bulgaria, said the customs statement, which did not elaborate on the origins of the radioactive material. Bulgaria's nuclear regulation agency confirmed it had measured heightened radioactivity in one of 15 carriages of a scrap-laden train. But agency official Marina Nizamska told AFP that the radioactivity found was 200 times over the permitted levels and not 300 as the Serbian customs said in their statement. Nizamska said that she herself had measured radioactivity levels of 50 mSv/h on the outside of the waggon, compared to the natural level of 0.2 mSv/h at the border station where it was held after the Serbian authorities turned it back. "Radioactivity of over 200 times the natural level was detected in a 30-centimetre-long levelling instrument that contained Radium 226, while the other 54 tonnes of metal scrap (in the carriage) were not radioactive," Nizamska said. Bulgaria's civil defence earlier said that the waggon's radioactivity level was within the norms and that a possible error in measuring was the reason for its return by Serbia. Nizamska also said that gadgets with excessive radioactivity were often found among scrap metal and that Bulgaria had also returned potentially dangerous train loads to Serbia and Romania. She added that the radioactive instrument would be treated according to the rules for disposing of such material, while the rest of the metal was already returned to the company that ordered its export. The Serbian authorities let the rest of the train through the border to Macedonia where it was initially headed, she added. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Share This Article With Planet Earth
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