CAIRO - There are fears that commodities imported into Egypt from Japan might be radioactive, due to the effect of the recent Japanese nuclear reactor meltdown. Although specialists disagree about this, they do agree on one thing: the nuclear safety procedures at Egypt's ports are inadequate and need to be urgently improved. The former General Manager of Environmental Protection for the Ports Authority in Port Said Mahmoud Fikri warns that Japanese goods entering Egypt could be tainted by the radioactive leaks. He says that the Ministry of Agriculture has already issued a statement saying that Egypt has already ordered the importation of foodstuffs from Japan and neighbouring countries to stop, but this is not enough, as containers in transit could also be radioactive. Fikri is also worried that the detectors used to trace radioactive materials might not be effective, while the containers that arrive in Egyptian ports aren't even screened at all. “Only products manufactured from natural, raw materials are screened,” he explains. “while containers that spend some time in Egyptian harbours before being transported to another country aren't subjected to any controls. Fikri told Al-Akhbar semi-official newspaper that the best solution is to install sensing devices on the huge winches used to load the containers on and off the ships, in order to detect any radiation, adding that one of these devices costs LE500,000 (about $85,000). However, Mohamed Shafiq, the head of the Export and Import Control Authority, stresses that they have had wide experience in dealing with nuclear leaks, ever since the Chernobyl crisis in 1986. “In the aftermath of Chernobyl, all commodities coming from Russia and neighbouring countries were carefully monitored for radiation. We're now going to adopt similar procedures to deal with the Japanese crisis,” he adds. Tareq el-Nimr, the head of the Radioactive Analysis Laboratories, affiliated to the International Atomic Energy Agency, explains that Japan has third generation reactors. “These reactors have three layers. If radiation penetrates the first layer, it might stop it penetrating the second or third one. This means that much less radiation leaks out of the reactors,” he says. Dr Ezzat Abdel-Aziz agrees, adding that the reactors in Japan were stronger than Chernobyl's, because the explosions didn't destroy the reactors themselves.
