3 Workers Exposed To Radiation At Cooper Nuclear Station In Nebraska

WASHINGTON - The U.S. nuclear safety regulator said on Monday it is investigating how three workers at a nuclear power plant in Nebraska were accidentally exposed to radiation last week.

The three workers triggered radiation alarms by incorrectly moving a radioactive tube on April 3. They immediately set the tube down and fled the area.

Nebraska Public Power District, which operates the Cooper Nuclear Station, does not believe the workers were exposed to radiation above regulatory limits, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a release.

"We want to understand why normal work practices were not followed, resulting in unplanned radiation exposures to three workers," said regional NRC administrator Elmo Collins.

NRC inspectors will calculate the workers' exposures and look at how the incident occurred and was handled. Its report on the event will be available within 45 days.

The plant is located near Brownville, Nebraska, 75 miles south of Omaha.

Nuclear safety has been under the spotlight since a massive earthquake and tsunami damaged nuclear reactors in Japan and released radiation into the surrounding area last month. Japan is still struggling to contain the leaks.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Greg McCune)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[patches12]

03:33 PM on 04/15/2011

NEWSFLASH.... millions of Americans exposed to radiation from X-Rays and CAT Scans

get some perspective

[ThinkCreeps]

06:35 PM on 04/13/2011

Hey, Homer! Look at my new nukular flute.

[trumphent]

05:13 PM on 04/13/2011

This sounds like the avoidable occupational hazard. Procedures weren't adhered to thus, the incident. Human error. People will take shortcuts whenever possible. Other factors include the required overtime at times. This puts additional pressure on the worker to get the most done.

[vmf211]

04:38 PM on 04/13/2011

Ok Well my friends nobody on this blog site or what you read in the newspaper will top my info.
I was at Cooper the night this event happened and I responded to it when it happened.
The shuttle tube that fell down in the drywell when the I& C dept working on it .
A shuttle tube is basically a tube were in incore detectors go up thru into the reactor to check power levels and neutron flux in the reactor.
It was highly radioactive yes it was but,as far as any of the workers getting an and over exposure is absolulty false.
Nobody over exceeded there dose limit set points on the RWP that the were working under. Rwp stands for "radiation work permit"
One worker got 108 millirem which did not exceed any of his limits.None!
Of course they put unplanned because it wasn't planned for it to happened the way it did.
This happened on nightshift about 3 am.

The shuttle tube later that day was cut up with a 12' long handle cutter put in a lead pig and disposed of with no more unplanned exposures.

[Tyyne Andrews]

10:36 AM on 04/13/2011

We need a new plan ASAP... http://greatwavesofchange.org/

[lowery2008]

04:38 PM on 04/12/2011

Before Japan's nuclear crisis this wouldn't have made it into the news.

[yukonsam]

02:02 PM on 04/12/2011

No need to panic. The NRC has dispatched their top nuclear spin doctors to the scene and they have determined that there's no long-term health risk to the utility's share price. All is well.

[AllAmericanAmericanBoy]

06:22 PM on 04/13/2011

Bravo!

[vmf211]

02:44 AM on 04/22/2011

I was there when it happened,so none of these bloggers know better than me what really happened.

[Gemmer]

01:56 PM on 04/12/2011

there can be unplanned anything. Unplanned fires, unplanned chemical spills, unplanned oil rig leaks...unplanned only means that it wasn't intended and shouldn't have happened. This information is sensationalized and if you want the real answers of what happened and the ramifications of the event, then view the NRC website as the article suggests and then the answers will be available. This is so lacking in pertinent information that we can't determine if it's significant or not. It might be as bad or worse than decribed... Just as time goes on we get more information about the plants in Japan, we realize that it's getting worse...

We didn't know the impact of Chernobyl back in 1986 as we do today. Only time will tell...maybe it is as bad as this ariticle portrays, but I'm willing to bet not.

no, I don't work for the NRC (webstie NRC.gov) but I have worked in the USN nuclear fleet and at a nuclear power plant. You get more radiation living in Denver than living next to a nuclear plant. Just learn the facts before you determine what you think about it. If you don't know...you don't know.

And yes, what is happening in Japan is terrible and certainly demonstrated that even with all the safety systems, nothing is certain. The world didn't think this could happen. No one thought anything like 9/11 could happen before it did...

Think about it...

[vmf211]

04:42 PM on 04/13/2011

I was there the night it happened and responded to it.
It was not as bad as people make it out to be.
Please read my latter post on what happened that night.
your fanned

[Living ECO]

01:28 PM on 04/12/2011

Surprise surprise, the pro-cancer for profit lobby is in the news again....

[vmf211]

04:42 PM on 04/13/2011

you don't know what happened

[Living ECO]

02:57 PM on 04/14/2011

I do know that radiation causes cancer though, and for the environmental cost of Fukushima alone we could put a hell of a lot of solar panels out there with nowhere near the risk. You can't talk about the cost of coal, nuclear, oil and natural gas without acknowledging the devastating impact that they have on human health and the environment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/17/coal-costs-us-study_n_824004.html

$500 billion a year for coal alone.... For $500 billion dollars we could put $50,000 dollars worth of solar panels on 10 million homes per year. If you had $50k worth of solar panels on your roof, chances are you'd be profiting from it because you could sell your power back to the grid. Not only that, if you used that energy to power an electric car, you would be more free than you are now.. Free from having to go to the gas station to fill up your car. You could just plug it in at night.

So, solar power is better for the environment, it turns you into an electric company, so that means it's capitalist, it's pro freedom, because it frees you up from having to spend money on gasoline, oil, oil filters (electric car drive trains have 3 moving parts - much easier to fix, less likely to break down), and it's more 'conservative'.

[shortandwide]

12:55 PM on 04/12/2011

" resulting in unplanned radiation exposure"
Is one of these guys named Homer? Doh!

[Victoryin2008]

12:53 PM on 04/12/2011

If our government says nuclear energy is safe, then I believe them....NOT.

[India1148]

12:19 PM on 04/12/2011

As I live close to this plant, it's a frequent wonder when something like this might happen. Since it wasn't reported, as far as I could tell, just how much they were exposed to, it's hard to say whether this level of exposure was "dangerous" to them or not. But I am not crazy about any unnatural radiation I have to be exposed to. I understand that sometimes it's necessary (x-rays, CT scans, etc) but I'd still like to think that our government is keeping the public safe. I am just not naive enough to believe that.

[vmf211]

04:43 PM on 04/13/2011

Well I can promise you the public wasn't even close to being in ay type of danger from this so sleep well.

[jenposer]

11:26 AM on 04/12/2011

Correction to last line of this article: the Fukushima Daiichi plant is still spewing radioactivity, which is why the Japanese government has finally placed the ongoing crisis there at the highest level, level 7, on the international scale.

[Gray J Collins]

08:12 AM on 04/12/2011

I find very coincidental about all this news about radiation and Necular Energy

[rockyrococoAZ]

12:20 PM on 04/12/2011

Thank God you can find it at all...

[Rattlecan]

02:29 AM on 04/12/2011

Elmo said those were "unplanned" exposures to workers. I'm guessing that sometimes they plan to expose them to radiation?

[broovy]

04:34 AM on 04/12/2011

Yes, that is part of the job.

[vmf211]

04:45 PM on 04/13/2011

Yes the do everyday we work at them.
You find your limits for your jobs in your radiation work permits