SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- A tractor-trailer carrying 11,000 pounds of fresh radioactive fuel for a Vermont nuclear plant crashed into a car going the wrong way on an interstate highway and burst into flames early Monday, but no radiation was released, state police said.
The accident closed busy Interstate 91 in downtown Springfield in both directions for more than 12 hours, causing massive traffic jams, while crews transferred the fuel containers to another truck and cleared the road of charred wreckage.
The driver of the car, who suffered only minor injuries in the crash, was charged with drunken driving and other violations, authorities said. The truck driver and his wife were examined at a local hospital and released.
The atomic fuel, described as 'slightly radioactive' uranium dioxide, was being transported inside bundles of zirconium rods packed inside fire-tested, doubled-lined metal cases, officials said.
State police initially reported 'some release of radiation' after the 4 a.m. accident, but firefighters said later the containers were all intact. All that burned were the wooden boxes in which the cases were being shipped from a General Electric Co. plant in Wilmington, N.C., to the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, Vt., they said.
'There is no leak of any radioactive material,' a state police spokesman said.
Officials had prepared to evacuate nearby homes and several hotels in the event of a leak, but the plans were canceled after experts from Vermont Yankee, GE, and the state Department of Public Health advised local officials there was no public danger, Mayor Mary Hurley said.
'Geiger counters brought to the scene showed no radioactivity whatsoever,' Hurley said.
The mayor said radioactive fuel is routinely trucked along the highway to and from the southern Vermont plant five times every 18 months.
The fire on the tractor-trailer, which reportedly generated temperatures of to 1,200 degrees, was allowed to burn out before the cases were reloaded onto another truck and returned to North Carolina, authorities said. Southbound lanes of the divided six-lane highway were reopened about 4:15 p.m. Traffic in the northbound lanes, where the crash occurred, was allowed to resume 45 minutes later, state police said.
The truck driver, Joseph Dunn, about 58, of Tulsa, Okla., and his wife, Janet, 43, were treated and released from the Bay State Medical Center in Springfield.
The driver of the car, John Byrne, 27, of Bloomfield, Conn., was being held at the same facility overnight for treatment minor injuries and was due to be arraigned Tuesday in Springfield District Court on charges of drunken driving and driving to endanger, state police said.
Police said Byrne mistakenly entered an exist ramp onto the northbound lanes of I-91 in Holyoke and drove south in the wrong direction for about five miles before crashing into the Dunns' truck in Springfield, state police said.
Traffic was closed for about two miles in both directions during the day as traffic was routed around the city. A section of nearby Interstate 291 was also closed.
State police said the weather was good at the time of the accident.
