Kaiga incident a mischief: NPCIL

A statement from S K Jain,Chairman and Managing Director of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL),which runs all the 17 nuclear power plants in the country,said: Preliminary inquiry does not reveal any violation of the operating procedures or radioactivity releases or security breach. It is possibly an act of mischief. The related agencies are investigating.

Jain said the source of the radiation contamination had been conclusively identified to be the water cooler,placed outside the reactor building,from which all the exposed workers drank.

Plant station director J P Gupta said the water cooler was found contaminated with radioactive tritium,a heavier form of hydrogen that is produced as a by-product in a heavy water reactor. This was revealed in an investigation after routine urine sampling of all employees indicated signs of contamination in about 50 workers.

Sources in the nuclear establishment said there was no way any outsider could have succeeded in mixing tritium in the water cooler. This has to be an insider job. A thorough investigation is on and the culprit would be identified very soon, an official said.

The water samples from the cooler had revealed very low quantities of tritium. Officials said one-time consumption of such low quantities of tritium was not a health hazard even though it might raise the tritium content to over the acceptable limits in human body.

The contamination was detected within a day and therefore not much damage has been done, an official said.

NPCIL CMD Jain said contamination caused by heavy water in the human body is quickly flushed out through natural biological processes like urination and perspiration. He said following medication all the affected workers had returned to work and only one of them was carrying contamination levels close to the upper limit of safety prescribed by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB).

It may also be noted that the AERB limit is one of the most stringent in the world, he added.

Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office Prithviraj Chavan,who handles departments of space and atomic energy,said an investigation had already been ordered into the incident.

There is no question mark over the safety of our nuclear power plants. The incident at Kaiga has nothing to do with nuclear safety. It is an act of mischief by an individual,either a disgruntled insider or someone from outside. That will be revealed in the investigation. There is absolutely no reason to panic, he said.