on Saturday in the yearly Emergency Measures Exercise in Dockyard.

British Ministry of Defence and Royal Navy experts supervised the exercise in which Police, Fire, King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, and Bermuda Regiment teams responded to a mock radioactive spill on an imaginary submarine.

Other Government agencies, including Marine and Ports and Bermuda Harbour Radio also participated.

Since the departure of the Royal Navy in the mid-1990s, Bermuda has had responsibility for such disaster preparedness and response -- necessitating the yearly exercise.

Deputy Governor Tim Gurney said last night: "This was a regular contingency planning exercise. At first glance, it did go well.

"But exercises are for learning things and it is too early to say yet, really,'' he added. "Obviously this is about lesson learning and revising, but at first glance it went well.

"It is a contingency plan which has been in place for some years. It is in the unlikely chance a foreign vessel gets into some difficulty in our waters.'' As part of the exercise, firefighters tested "workers'' who had been to the sub with the Service's own radiation monitoring equipment.