With several thousand teu aboard, any modern container ship could become an unwitting carrier to your port of the most hazardous of hazardous cargoes – the dirty bomb, which represents the latest weapon in the terrorist arsenal.

Consequences of the type caused by the ‘dirty bomb’ have been very real in the iron and steelmaking industry for many years.

Globally, the industry relies heavily on the use of ‘scrap’ or recycled steel as a raw material, and must continue to do so to protect the planet’s available supply of virgin raw materials and to control its costs.

It’s been screening scrap steel for radioactive sources, which have the potential to destroy a manufacturing facility, for many years. Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus has developed its own technology, and enhanced it to make it commercially available, under the brand name Redeem, to industries, notably ports, facing threats from similar sources.

Corus sales engineer Rod Crust explains that finding the rogue radioactive source in ports was potentially easier than dealing with it.

“Any radioactive source discovered in a port is actually the responsibility of the owner of the cargo. If it’s in a container, it could be any one of a number of owners, and that could involve checking over a number of continents. In reality it’s therefore likely to be the problem of the port authority, because no-one else will move it,” he says. “The first question would always be ‘where to’, and that’s a very hard one to answer.”

Some European governments have taken responsibility, but the position is not the same throughout the continent, he says. On a world-wide basis screening standards vary too: “Standards are very different around the world. The ‘super ports’ generally have much more sophisticated systems than smaller ones,” says Mr Crust. “In Dover, for example, Customs officials run checks, and anything found to be radioactive is impounded in a secure area, and all lorries carrying containers are tracked using Automatic Number Plate Recognition, so their ownership can be checked.”

The Redeem system has detectors varying from hand-held ones to portals large enough to screen containers on lorries. “It’s important that the location of any radioactive source is pinpointed as quickly and accurately as possible, which requires the use of different ‘tools’,” he added.

Over the pond, the potential for the dirty bomb threat is being taken very seriously indeed by America’s Department of Homeland Security, which has installed 1,000 Radiation Portal Monitors (RPMs) at major seaports and land ports of entry across the nation.

Reporting to the House Committee on Homeland Security, Secretary of State Michael Chertoff said: “In just two years we’ve more than doubled the percentage of incoming containerised cargo being scanned for radiological and nuclear threats at our land borders (from 40% to 97%) and more than quadrupled that percentage at seaports (from about 20% to 91%). By the end of this year, we will scan nearly 100% of inbound cargo containers for such deadly material.”

The ground covered by such scanning technology has recently been extended with the introduction of a three-year programme to provide the facility in Washington’s Puget Sound and California’s San Diego areas, where its target will be recreational and small commercial vessels. The trial will cost in the order of $10m, which serves to underline further how seriously America regards the threat. Director of Homeland Security’s nuclear detection office Vayl Oxford said: “The West Coast Maritime pilot program addresses a potential threat pathway in the maritime domain. This project reflects the priority that the department has placed on balancing risk against all potential threats.”

The trial covers vessels under 300 tonnes, and bolsters arrangements which already apply to everything larger, covered by the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 and the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code.

Elsewhere, provisions of the United Arab Emirate’s maritime code make it plain that the shipper is to be held liable for loss or damage caused to a vessel of other cargo if the nature of the cargo has not been correctly notified to the proper authorities. But there’s surely a temptation for unscrupulous shippers to fudge a description when the cargo in question may attract a considerably higher freight rate if it’s properly described – if indeed it can be carried at all.

Penalties for trying to slip through the net can be high. Undisclosed dangerous cargoes can be confiscated and destroyed at the cost of shippers, who can also face civil and criminal charges with the potential for sentences of up to 10 years in jail to be handed down – and there can be no limit to financial liability.

And that’s the way it should be. Dangerous cargoes wrongly stowed, wrongly marked or mis-declared by shippers have the potential to cause major containership casualties, and with new vessels now being built which are capable of carrying 10,000 containers, the effects of any such casualties are likely to be even more serious in the future. It is therefore in everyone’s interest to make sure all dangerous cargoes are declared so they can be dealt with in the appropriate manner.