One of four reactors at the Cruas nuclear power station in southern France was shut down late on Tuesday following a lapse in the cooling system, France's nuclear safety agency said.
French energy company EDF reported the incident at 2250 GMT and followed its emergency procedures to shut down the reactor, it added.
The cooling system for the reactors use water from the Rhone river and the incident was due to a high level of plant debris in the river blocking intake, it added.
Intake of water into the cooling system was restored by 0400 GMT.
The agency rated the incident as a two on the seven-level international scale of nuclear incidents, adding control over the reactor was maintained at all times and there was no release of radioactivity to the environment.
Showing posts with label leakage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leakage. Show all posts
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Radiation Leak Incident at Three Mile Island leads to Evacuation
A radiation leak at Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, has sent home about 150 workers, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported Sunday.
"They had an airborne radiological contamination alarm," NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci told AFP. "They evaluated all the workers, a handful of workers -- I don't have a precise number -- had contamination. They since have been decontaminated," she said.
About 150 people work in the building where the leak occurred.
Screnci said what she called a "leak... happened at 4:00 pm Saturday (2100 GMT) and they resumed work in the contaminated building" near Middletown, Pennsylvania.
"There was no impact on public health safety and it does not appear to have an impact on the workers," she said adding that "this kind of incident occurs once in a while."
So far, "they don't know the origin of the contamination," Screnci said. "There were a lot of activities going on at the time and when the alarm sounded. The engineers are working to determine what the cause was."
"It's a minor incident," she said stressing it was "under control."
Three Mile Island suffered a major accident in 1979, with the core of a reactor partially melting down. Since then no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States.
Nuclear energy supplies 20 percent of power in the United States with 104 reactors, while 50 percent comes from coal burning plants.
The rest is from natural gas, oil and renewable sources such as hydroelectric power as well as solar and wind power.
"They had an airborne radiological contamination alarm," NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci told AFP. "They evaluated all the workers, a handful of workers -- I don't have a precise number -- had contamination. They since have been decontaminated," she said.
About 150 people work in the building where the leak occurred.
Screnci said what she called a "leak... happened at 4:00 pm Saturday (2100 GMT) and they resumed work in the contaminated building" near Middletown, Pennsylvania.
"There was no impact on public health safety and it does not appear to have an impact on the workers," she said adding that "this kind of incident occurs once in a while."
So far, "they don't know the origin of the contamination," Screnci said. "There were a lot of activities going on at the time and when the alarm sounded. The engineers are working to determine what the cause was."
"It's a minor incident," she said stressing it was "under control."
Three Mile Island suffered a major accident in 1979, with the core of a reactor partially melting down. Since then no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States.
Nuclear energy supplies 20 percent of power in the United States with 104 reactors, while 50 percent comes from coal burning plants.
The rest is from natural gas, oil and renewable sources such as hydroelectric power as well as solar and wind power.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Chernobyl: The aftermath goes on!
Souz Chernobyl
The monument to Chernobyl in Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea. On its base is part of a poem about the fate of the people who were drafted or volunteered to clean up the reactor: "We thought that our Motherland was with us. We were proud of the glitter of our golden epaulets. The steps of our rubber boots took measure. Of Chernobyl's deadly testing ground."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
