Water cooler at Indian nuclear plant sabotaged

This is one of those strange but true stories, definitely worthy of some water cooler discussion:

Workers at a nuclear plant in Indian were tested last week for radiation poisoning after a water cooler at the plant was sabotaged with tritium.

Here the strange, but true, details as reported by Bloomberg:

Radioactive material found in drinking water at an Indian nuclear facility was not stolen and the site is secure, the chief of the monopoly atomic energy producer said.

“There is no question of theft” of radioactive material, Shreyans Kumar Jain, chairman of the Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd., told reporters in Mumbai today. A person inside the company most likely obtained the material from samples of heavy water that inspectors regularly take at the facility, he said.

Workers at the Kaiga nuclear plant in the southern state of Karnataka were tested last week after tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, contaminated a water cooler. Two of 50 people who drank the water were being monitored by doctors for low levels of radiation and are expected to recover, while the remaining were confirmed normal, Jain said.

“If the exposure is within or close to the limit, it’s true that it will be flushed out in two to four days and it won’t have any long-term effects,” Prabhat Munshi, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, said by telephone today. “A serious injury can occur only if the exposure is several times above the limit.”

India’s top intelligence agencies are investigating the incident, including motives such as grievances or mischief, Jain said. Security is being increased across state-owned Nuclear Power’s facilities, he said.

The water cooler, which was located outside the reactor building, has been isolated and shut down.