The MOL Presence is the ship on which Chinese officials detected radiation.
Two Japanese travellers were taken to hospital this week with elevated radiation levels after arriving in eastern China on a commercial airliner from Tokyo, the Chinese government said yesterday.
The country’s safety watchdog also said in a separate statement that radiation was detected on a Japanese merchant vessel that berthed in the southeastern port city of Xiamen on Monday.
The two cases are likely to fuel fears over radiation contamination from Japan’s stricken Fukushima plant, which sparked panic-buying of salt in China and led the government to tighten checks on incoming passengers and goods.
A spokesman for the Beijing-based safety watchdog told the official Xinhua news agency that the Japanese bulk transport vessel that docked at Xiamen was still in the port yesterday and said that authorities needed to “take more measures”, without elaborating. The spokesman did not say whether the ship itself or the goods onboard were showing abnormal radiation levels, Xinhua said.
Dow Jones Newswires reported that Chinese authorities had asked the vessel, owned by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd, to keep out of the port.