“The problem is more serious.” It was March 2013, and a team from the INSTN (National Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology) was present in Antsiranana to assess the level of radioactivity emitted by the new container scanner operated by the company Gasynet, as required by regulations for such equipment. The radiation meters were going off the charts, leaving the technicians puzzled.
Created in 2007 as a public-private partnership between the Government of Madagascar and the Swiss company SGS, Malagasy Community Network Services S.A., commonly known as GasyNet, is tasked with improving the country’s customs performance, notably through the deployment of container scanners at major ports. The inauguration of the Antsiranana scanner was scheduled for the following month, and preparations were well underway. However, the radioactivity measurements taken by the INSTN were abnormally high, even when the scanner was switched off. These radiations appeared to come from nowhere. Before leaving Antsiranana to return to Antananarivo, the INSTN technicians offered Gasynet’s team their most plausible explanation for the elevated readings: the radiation, of natural origin, was believed to emanate from the port’s subsoil. “We repeated the measurements with our two radiometers between 4:20 p.m. and 4:40 p.m. that day, and I think the problem is more serious. Indeed, 50 meters from our barriers, we recorded the highest dose: 12 µSv/h,” alarmed a Gasynet employee in an email to his superior dated March 27, 2013.
The unit of measurement used by Gasynet’s radiometers—radiation measuring instruments—is the µSv/h (microsievert per hour), a physical quantity that measures the impact on biological tissues of exposure to ionizing radiation such as radioactivity. A radioactivity level between 7.5 and 25 µSv received in one hour is consistent with exposure to radiation in highly radioactive natural environments. Using several radiometers, the Gasynet team attempted to triangulate the source of the radioactive emissions. Suspicion quickly fell on a group of containers located in the port area managed by the Compagnie de Manutention de Diégo (COMADIE), whose main client is CMA-CGM, near a wooden shed just a few meters from the pier. The French container shipping company CMA-CGM, along with MSC, is the only operator at the port of Antsiranana. According to one person present at the port at the time, the suspicious zone contained four containers. According to another, it was rather two containers placed side by side. Immediately, Gasynet employees at the Antsiranana port were forbidden by their management from approaching the zone where the suspect containers were located, and the INSTN was urgently recalled. Pending the INSTN’s intervention, Gasynet carried out daily radioactivity measurements throughout the port.
Three weeks later, the scanner site inauguration took place as planned. The day before, on April 17, 2013, one of the containers in the suspicious zone disappeared. Gasynet continued its daily measurements after the inauguration. Thus, on April 23, 2013, at 5:50 p.m.—six days after the disappearance of the suspect container—a radioactivity dose of 63 µSv/h was measured at the scanner site, a level 126 times higher than the authorized public dose. The radioactivity level gradually decreased over the following weeks. With the source of the emissions evidently gone, the planned return of the INSTN to Antsiranana was eventually canceled. The container number had been noted before its disappearance: it was a 40-foot refrigerated model (“reefer”) bearing the identification ACMU9208282. However, this number was later found to be falsified. Indeed, no shipping company uses the prefix “ACMU.” Unsurprisingly, the phantom container had no documentation justifying its presence in the port. The gendarmerie of the Antsiranana port, which collaborated with journalists from the MALINA network on this investigation, was unable to provide the container exit logbook for April 2013, as it too had disappeared. Coincidentally or not, the container exit logbook from May 7, 2013, onward was available. A meticulous analysis of container entries and exits at the port of Antsiranana from 2011 to 2015—outside the period covered by the missing logbook—did not reveal any trace of the container.
Five years after the events, most of the personnel who were stationed at the port of Antsiranana at the time have since been reassigned elsewhere. Those who remained do not seem to recall the disappearance of this container. It is true that, before the scanner installation, the port was subject to numerous “disappearances,” according to Max Zafisolo, the current Customs Receiver at the port of Antsiranana. Trafficking was common there at the time. For instance, on April 4, 2013, during the very period when the radioactive container was present at the port, an illicit shipment of rosewood was intercepted. This disappearance, however, could not have occurred without complicity. A container cannot be moved without being handled. There are only two handling companies operating at the port of Antsiranana: CMDMD (Compagnie Malgache de Manutention de Diego-Suarez) and COMADIE (Compagnie de Manutention de Diégo), both owned by the ENAC group. The small port of Antsiranana has only one gate for container exit, making it hard to imagine that nobody was alerted about the departure of a “paperless” container. Perhaps some people paid to turn a blind eye thought they were dealing with a routine trafficking?
Many questions remain unanswered. What did this radioactive container hold? What became of it? How did it arrive at the port of Antsiranana?
Without the installation of the Gasynet scanner at the port, which revealed abnormally high levels of radioactivity, this container could have remained there unnoticed for a long time. It is chilling to imagine that this container may not even be the first to have transited through the port of Antsiranana—or other uncontrolled ports in the country.
According to a well-informed source wishing to remain anonymous, there is no doubt this is an international trafficking of radioactive waste. This is not about military waste, nor spent fuel from nuclear power plants. Many sectors generate low-intensity radioactive waste, foremost among them the healthcare sector. The treatment of such waste is particularly costly. Abandoning a container containing this type of waste in a Malagasy port known for its porosity would be an excellent way to dispose of it cheaply.
An alternative theory to nuclear waste trafficking to explain these high radioactivity measurements is measurement error. The abnormal readings could have stemmed from poor calibration of the radiometers used by the Gasynet team at the time. However, the measurement error hypothesis is incompatible with the radioactivity measurements specifically pointing to a suspicious group of containers within the port. Furthermore, a failure of Gasynet’s instruments would not explain the elevated readings first detected by the INSTN technicians.
Could the radars of certain ships present in the port have disturbed these instruments and misled the INSTN technicians and Gasynet teams? Professor Joel Rajaobelison, Director General of the INSTN since 2017, and his team of technicians do not believe in this hypothesis, nor in the measurement error one. Radar wavelengths are indeed very different from those measured by radiometers. Since the Antsiranana scanner’s operating license must be renewed every two years, the INSTN conducted new radioactivity level tests in the port in 2005 and 2007. No abnormal radioactivity was detected then, immediately ruling out the possibility that the 2003 radioactivity was of natural origin.
It may never be possible to know with certainty what happened, but this story demonstrates, if needed, that the vulnerability of Madagascar’s ports does not only open the door to the trafficking of natural resources—now sadly common—but also endangers the safety and health of its inhabitants. Thanks to a partnership with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the INSTN will soon install radiation measurement instruments at Ivato International Airport. Two of the country’s ports are also subject to regular radioactivity measurements. The INSTN works closely with the Maritime Information Fusion Center (CFIM) to monitor suspicious vessels that might transport hazardous materials. These efforts are commendable, but are they enough to protect an island with more than 5,000 kilometers of coastline?
