Environment: A Shipwreck Sends a Warning

Uranium cargo raises new fears about nuclear hazards

At low tide in the rough waters of the North Sea, it looked like a dead whale floating on its belly. But the Mont Louis, a 4,210-ton 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...

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