On 14 September 2013 an employee of a company for non-destructive material testing was exposed to high radiation in a refinery in Lower Saxony. The evaluation of the employee's official dosimeter showed a radiation exposure of about four times the statutory annual dose limit for occupationally exposed persons. The affected employee had a whole body exposure of 75 mSv (statutory annual dose limit for occupationally exposed workers is 20 mSv). In addition on the left hand considerable skin redness and burns have occurred. These are signs of exceeding threshold limit for hand and skin at least for a factor 10. According to estimates a skin dose of 10 - 30 Sv (statutory limit 0.5 Sv) is probably.
According to the current state of knowledge, there was a defect in the used gamma radiography device (Ir-192, 740 GBq). There was an offence against basic safety rules during fixing the defect. Furthermore, there were significant delays in reporting the incident to the relevant authorities and the medical care of the employee.
Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for artificial intelligence data centers. For those old enough […]
Kernenergie en veiligheid: A wargame sought to test if a major radiological release that would prompt the evacuation of millions of civilians in South Korea could distract key US allies from assisting and rebuffing an all-out military invasion of Taiwan. The short answer was yes. The game originally presumed that China, wanting to keep the […]
Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids The Finnish nuclear power plant Olkiluoto was finally connected to the grid last year, at an estimated cost of €11 billion compared to the original budget of €3 billion. That cost blowout forced its developer, the […]
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK's nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money...The […]
Last year, the Dutch Province of Limburg started an alliance in which, besides the local government, research institutes, small nuclear reactor (SMR) developers, utilities, industrial customers and funders cooperated. With this "Limburg SMR alliance" Limburg tried to lead the way towards an SMR in Limburg. The preferred site for a first SMR would be Chemelot, […]
