NEW DELHI, Nov 30 — More than 50 employees of a nuclear facility in southern India have been treated for radioactive poisoning after drinking from a water cooler, officials said.
The incident, which was discovered last week, has raised concerns about security at the plant, where a scientist and a junior employee turned up dead earlier this year after going on morning walks.
Officials at Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant in Karnataka state said radioactive tritium had been introduced into a water cooler used by plant employees.
They surmised that since water inflow into the cooler was rigorously monitored, the “mischief maker” had probably introduced the tritium through the overflow channel.
India’s Atomic Energy Commission described the radioactive poisoning outbreak as a “serious lapse”.
The incident came to light last Wednesday when workers were subjected to routine urine examinations, said plant director JP Gupta.
“A thorough survey of the plant areas did not indicate any heavy water leak from any of the reactor systems... indicating the tritium uptake of these persons was not due to plant system conditions,” he said in a statement.
“Further investigations indicated that the source of tritium uptake was due to the drinking of water from one of the water coolers, which was found to be contaminated. The water cooler was isolated and put out of use.”
Kaiga is operated by the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) of India.
Corporation officials remained tight-lipped yesterday and were conducting their own investigations.
“The plant authorities have not registered any complaint,” district police chief Raman Gupta told The Straits Times.
About 55 employees were treated for radioactive poisoning and 51 were released after being administered diuretics, Indian news media reported. Four were treated in hospital and later discharged.
The Kaiga facilities house three small 220MW nuclear reactors based on the “Candu” design that originated in Canada. A fourth Candu-type reactor is coming up on the site.
The Kaiga plant is in a wooded area situated close to Project Seabird near the city of Mangalore, which is rapidly being developed as India’s biggest naval base facing the Arabian Sea.
Further inland in Karnataka, near Mysore city, is a super-secret nuclear facility where the country’s nuclear weapons are said to go through final assembly.
The Mangalore-Mysore area, as well as state capital Bangalore, are said to be swarming with both friendly and hostile intelligence forces.
Tritium is a radioactive isotope, also known as Hydrogen-3, which is used in research, fusion reactors and neutron generators. Small amounts of tritium can be used in the trigger of an atomic weapon and in the “fusion boost” of a boosted fission weapon.
In June, Lokanathan Mahalingam, 45, a highly-rated scientist at the plant, went for his usual morning walk but never returned. His body was found weeks later in a river. Oddly, he had not taken his cellphone with him.
Medical experts at the Manipal Medical College turned in an inconclusive report on the cause of death, saying it may have been due to “internal or external trauma or by drowning in the river”.
A few weeks before Mahalingam’s disappearance, Ravi Mule, another employee at the plant, also went missing, only to turn up dead near a multi-storey building. His death was attributed to “injuries consistent with a fall”.
While Mule was not a technical hand, Mahalingam had worked at the Kalpakkam power plant outside Chennai, capital of neighbouring state Tamil Nadu. Kalpakkam is a facility at which India is developing breeder reactors using thorium, an element readily available in India. — The Straits Times
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