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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Ukrainian nuclear reactor leaks radioactive water

A nuclear reactor in western Ukraine was suspended from operating after it was discovered leaking radioactive water, causing no environmental damage, said a Ukrainian official.

A senior official of Rivne nuclear power plant said on condition of anonymity that 1.3 cubic meters of water for cooling the reactor leaked due to pipe break. The leakage was restricted in an enclosed area with no spillover.

An announcement from Ukraine's state unclear power company Energoatom said the leakage "did not exceed permitted norms" and "the reactor was stopped."

"No increase of radioactivity was registered at or near the plant," it said.

Ukraine is heavily dependant on nuclear energy with half of its electricity generated by nuclear power plant despite having experienced Chernobyl reactor explosion in 1986.

(Source: Chinaview)

2 comments:

Alexandra Prokopenko said...

Interesting to hear the opinion of technical people: is his local cooling water leakage of 1.6 cubic meters an event big enough to report internationally? How often do such things happen at nuclear power plants? I have a feeling this information is used first of all by anti-nuclear activists for their agitation against nuclear power (see how dangerous it is!), or they are trying to discredit Ukrainians' capacity of running their own plants.

Anonymous said...

People could be made afraid of gasoline.. if everytime there was an explosion anywhere in the world and people were maimed or died. If everytime that happened it was reported in the international news.

It would seem like a non-stop death toll.

Makes me wonder if in Japan, the nuclear companies also own media. Like Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Hitachi.

--aa2