About 50 Workers at PA Nuke Plant Exposed To Low Levels of Radiation

"YORK, PA -- Roughly 50 workers at Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station were exposed to low levels of radiation early Tuesday after a discharge of contaminated steam."



"At 1 a.m. that morning, workers were loosening a two-inch vent on top of the Unit 2 reactor vessel head when a 'puff' of radioactive steam escaped from a flange, said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Radiation monitoring alarms sounded as workers, dressed in bright yellow radiation-protection suits, hurried to close the vent. In total, the length of the release lasted about 2 minutes.

The reactor is offline for a planned refueling outage. About 2,000 contracted or outage workers at the plant will spend the next several weeks completing maintenance work and replacing nearly one-third of the reactor's fuel."

Sean Adkins reports for the York Daily Record September 12, 2012.
 

Source: York Daily Record, 09/13/2012