Today, community service has been demanded against four scrap dealers from Drenthe, Friesland and Overijssel for transporting and offering radioactive waste without registration. Investigation services found the party after the detection gates went off at a scrap dealer in Wolvega.
At the end of May 2018, a major investigation was rigged because the party had disappeared from Wolvega. Somewhere in the Netherlands, there was a potentially dangerous batch of radioactive waste, the authorities feared. The lot was eventually found on the property of a Frisian scrap dealer and his son. At the end of January 2018, they bought a passenger ship in Antwerp, of which 25 tons of so-called ballast blocks remained after the demolition. When the material turned out to be radioactive, the Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ANVS) should have been notified. But that did not happen here, the file showed today in the court in Zwolle. The lot was offered to various scrap dealers in the north of the country.
A scrap dealer from Emmen transported the batch several times, the Public Prosecution Service said. Finally, a man from Steenwijk offered a small batch in Wolvega in May 2018, after which the detection gates went off. Because the party came from his site in Steenwijk, the police demanded his camera images. Investigation and tapped conversations show that the Steenwijker deleted those images shortly afterwards, the public prosecutor said. “The gentlemen knew that the party was radioactive, but they were looking for a cheap solution.” She demanded 120 hours of community service against the father and son from Wolvega and the man from Steenwijk. The trader from Emmen heard 180 hours of community service demanded against him. Peeding with radioactive waste is potentially dangerous, she said.
RIVM concluded that the batch is radioactive, but that the material posed no direct danger to humans, animals or the environment. “But you didn’t know that when you were dragging it,” said the chairman. Father and son didn’t realize the blocks were radioactive until later, they said. It was precisely the Emmen who had known this for some time. He in turn denied that.
The verdict will follow on June 13.