A leak on Saturday at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania saw 150 workers sent home after the sounding of an airborne radiological contamination alarm.
According to the Associated Press the leak of radioactive dust occurred when maintenance workers were cutting a pipe
A leak on Saturday at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania saw 150 workers sent home after the sounding of an airborne radiological contamination alarm.
According to the Associated Press the leak of radioactive dust occurred when maintenance workers were cutting a pipe at the plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, which was the scene in 1979 of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
The incident in March 1979 involved a partial meltdown of the second reactor on the site in Pennsylvania. That second reactor has not been in operation for the three decades since the accident took place, no workers at the site or members of the general public were injured as a result of the meltdown, and as Xinhua News Agency reports no nuclear power plants have been built in the U.S. during the intervening years.
Once the operating license for the Unit 1 reactor, where Saturday's radiation leak occurred, expires both it and the redundant Unit 2 reactor will be decommissioned. CNN confirms that the Unit 1 reactor is owned and operated by Exelon Corporation, which monitors the Unit 2 reactor for its owner FirstEnergy. Exelon Corporation has its headquarters in Chicago and FirstEnergy is based in Akron, Ohio.
As for the leak at Unit 1 on Saturday - the reactor has been shut down since late October to allow for maintenance w