Nuclear safety left hanging as crane dangled fuel rods (gulp!) [View All]

[Bozita]

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060318/NEWS06/603180315/1001/NEWS

Nuclear safety left hanging as crane dangled fuel rods

Michigan incident got warning but no fine

BY HUGH McDIARMID JR.
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

March 18, 2006



A 110-ton load of nuclear waste dangled for 55 hours above a cooling pool last October as two workers at a southwest Michigan nuclear power plant improperly manipulated a crane that had frozen, federal regulators concluded in a recent review of the incident.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission cited the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant for a minor safety violation but did not impose a fine -- a response considered weak by at least one former federal nuclear reactor inspector and several activists who have examined the case.

Under the NRC's worst-case scenario, if the suspended load had accidentally dropped, a fire could have ignited, leading to formation of a radioactive cloud. The cloud could have put thousands of people downwind of the plant -- all the way to Kalamazoo -- at risk of fatal radiation poisoning.

Ross Landsman, an inspector with the NRC for 25 years till his retirement last year, said that even though the odds of such a sequence were infinitesimally remote -- the scenario would have to be triggered by an unusual incident such as an earthquake -- the NRC was too lenient. "They have words now to make it seem all right. It's not. This is the worst possible place" to have an unsealed cask of nuclear fuel "suspended. To me, it's a big deal," he said.

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