Navy SEALs Inspecting Radioactive Ship
Off New Jersey

September 12, 2002

NEWARK, N.J.  — Pentagon officials confirmed to Fox News Thursday that Navy SEALs had been, and were still, involved in the inspection of a possibly radioactive container ship off the coast of New Jersey. 


The Liberian-flagged M/V Palermo Senator was ordered back to sea by the Coast Guard Wednesday after traces of radioactivity were found in the hold during a routine inspection at the Port of Newark. 

The 708-foot freighter, owned by a German subsidiary of South Korea-based Hanjin shipping, was anchored in an exclusion zone six miles from shore. 

U.S. Navy radiation specialists from the submarine base in Groton, Conn., were heading to the ship, the Pentagon sources said. 

Sandra Carroll, a spokeswoman for the Newark FBI office, told the Associated Press that investigators from the U.S. Department of Energy were to conduct testing either on or near the ship Thursday. 

The Palermo Senator had stopped in Singapore, Malaysia and Egypt, among other destinations, before docking at Newark on Tuesday. 

Authorities would not say what the readings were, or whether they were at levels considered dangerous. 

Inspectors had hoped to test the ship Wednesday, but high seas whipped by 55 mph winds made that impossible, Carroll said. 

It was not immediately known what form the tests would take, or whether they would be carried out on board the ship or from vessels near it. Officials at the Energy Department did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday. 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62897,00.html