The fuel arrived at a sensitive time, following the major nuclear accident at Tokaimura nuclear plant which killed one worker and exposed hundreds to radioactive fall-out.
In 1978 an explosion at the Hackberry, La. complex that holds oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve killed one worker and burned for days with a fireball that billowed dozens of feet in the air.
Two deadly collapses in 2008 spurred reforms and even criminal charges, but another crane fell and killed a worker in the city just this past April, at a subway construction site largely exempt from city safety rules.