LONDON: Dozens of workers were evacuated from an oil rig in Britain’s North Sea after a vessel carrying radioactive waste caught fire and started drifting towards it, officials said yesterday.
Some 52 workers were taken off the platform by helicopter late on Tuesday night after a fire on the Danish-registered Parida, which was transporting material from Dounreay — a nuclear site in northern Scotland which is being decommissioned — to Antwerp in Belgium. The ship’s cargo was low-level radioactive waste encased in concrete, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said. Having lost engine power, the vessel drifted off the northeastern Scottish coast about 25km from the platform.
AFP
