They arrived on the island like any other container. Sent into no man's land without any control, traveling along roads across half of Italy, crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea and landing with impunity in the land of Sardinia. It is late at night when one of the ferries moored at the Ponente pier of the commercial port of Cagliari opens its unloading door. The landing "tractors" are ready for the challenge of time, unloading as quickly as possible the infinite garages of those cargo ships full of everything and more.

“Heavy” hold

Those port workers in charge of the transition from the ship to the mainland are the first, without any protection, to enter the "hold" to attach those steel boxes with a capacity of 36,000 kg each. Those gray containers like death, here, in the customs outpost, have been known for years. Some have perceived the danger, others ignore it completely. The only code of recognition are those powders that pervade every crevice of that container that came from far away, sometimes from northern Italy, sometimes from abroad. The black “R” printed in large letters on a yellow background is the only recognizable banner: waste.

Poison dump

Everyone knows that they can't get to Sardinia, except for those "cursed" steelwork fumes, the scraps of scraps, all coming from the large steel producers who see the island as a "cure-all" for them and their budgets. , to dispose of, literally making those processing wastes full of every poison disappear. Between Friday night and Saturday morning, however, the alarm goes off. The radiometric unit reports an anomaly in a first container which even manages to arrive in Portovesme.

812 km unpunished

It had left two days earlier from Cremona, a steelworks in the Lombardy hinterland, in a contingent of twenty containers overloaded with industrial "dust", red alert waste, with a well-known destination: the Glencore plant, the global lead and zinc giant , which, after the divestment of the mining sector, had converted a large part of the plants, in the industrial heart of Sulcis, into a sort of landfill-incinerator for steelworks fumes coming from all latitudes. With all the risks and dangers, starting from the nuclear-radioactive ones. Delivery at all levels is that of silence, in the factory and above all in port. The order is that of confidential communications: Prefect, Mayor of Portoscuso, perhaps the Commissioner of the Municipality of Cagliari. There are certainties about the first two, but not about the third. The news arrives verbally to the mayor of Sulcis: there is a load of non-standard radioactive substances at the port of Cagliari.

One in Portovesme

And then an " addendum" : one of those loads has already arrived in Portovesme, it has been isolated within the plants, in a "quarantine" area. For the rest, the suspicion is that the entire load of twenty containers could be contaminated by radioactive substances such as Cesium 137.

“Radioactive” experts

To ascertain this, however, we need the Arpas technicians and above all the "NBCR Unit", Nuclear - Biological - Chemical Radiological, a specialized group of the Fire Brigade called to intervene in exceptional situations when there is a well-founded danger of contagion from nuclear substances, biological, chemical or radiological. The intervention of the "radioactive" code unit is almost immediate, after the prefectural alert. The operation is delicate, complete with gas masks, detectors of dangerous substances, electrochemical sensors, capable of identifying the danger of chemical and nuclear agents.

Eight containers out of twenty

The finding, never made official and kept in the strictest secrecy, is alarming: out of 20 containers, as many as 8, including the one already arrived in Portovesme, were found to be contaminated with radioactive substances. According to those in the know, it would be Cesium 137, a real medium-term biological-radioactive danger, given that its "potential" is around 30 years. A substance with devastating effects that is concentrated in the muscles and is suspected of being the number one suspect in the increase in the incidence of lethal pancreatic cancer. It is therefore easy to understand the state of alert that silently arose in the port of Cagliari.

Seven confined

Most of the containers landed the night before were lined up in the heart of the square in front of the Ponente pier, but the seven "radioactive" containers would have been confined to a marginal and distant area awaiting the decisions of the relevant authorities. This is not a first episode, but never with this relevance, if we exclude the ship loaded with steelwork fumes which in November 2021 was sent back to Great Britain due to radioactive findings which had revealed a serious exceeding of the contamination thresholds . On that occasion, all that load of industrial fumes coming from the "Celsa" steelworks remained blocked in the port of Sulcis for a full two weeks, isolated inside the ship Calypso. The entire cargo was sent back to London, precisely because it was a ship dedicated to that transport. It was the Prefecture, with an official communication sent to Portovesme srl, that gave the green light to the return of the fumes. On that occasion, strict measures were imposed to avoid any risk of exposure of people and contamination of the environment. For the load isolated yesterday in the port of the capital it will not be so easy, considering the danger already encountered in the transfer from Cremona to Cagliari.

Criminal findings

It cannot be denied, in fact, that that load crossed roads and highways to be loaded in one of the ports of northern or central Italy to reach the main port in the south of the island. A very serious risk given that the "radioactive" cargo, according to the declared route, would have even traveled on board a commercial ship. Sending it back, as it should, requires an operation capable of eliminating any danger for the people involved in the "return". Of course, it would be unheard of to confine that radioactive waste to Sardinia.

Public nuclear portal

This new, very serious episode raises in immediate and urgent terms the need for a "public" radiometric portal, not managed by "Portovesme srl", but by a regional agency that "protects" the island in every way entrance. Added to this is the issue of strict, punctual and error-free control of every product shipped to the island in continental ports. It is unheard of, in fact, that the checks should be carried out only in Sardinia, failing to reconstruct the chain of responsibilities, including criminal ones, of those who allowed the loading and disembarkation of those substances without guaranteeing the minimum safety and security of the people , the workers involved and public health. Too often, silences, omissions and serious responsibilities are synonymous with unsustainable complicity. “Silence” is always unacceptable and should not be tolerated.

© Riproduzione riservata