Radiation leak at US nuclear power plant

The incident happened on Saturday, when the Pennsylvania plant — the same one that went to the brink of meltdown in 1979 — had what officials called an “unplanned exposure” and sent home 150 workers, media reports said.

John White, a spokesperson for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), said federal experts sent to the plant found “nothing that indicates safety was ever in jeopardy”.
Diane Screnci, another NRC spokesperson, told CNN that there had been a leak within the reactor building that created minor contamination which was “well below regulatory limits”. She said the incident began when containment radiation alarms sounded.

Federal experts have been sent for investigation. The country’s worst civilian nuclear accident to date occurred at Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979, when the cooling system malfunctioned in one of the towers, causing a partial meltdown of Unit 2.
For days, many in the central Pennsylvania region around Harrisburg, near where the plant is located, slept with bags packed and boots on in case of disaster and forced evacuation.

The accident, which released radiation and krypton gas, put a decades-long moratorium in many countries on building new nuclear plants that was reinforced with the ensuing 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.