It may seem like one of the scenes from the Chernobyl series, but it just happened. An employee at the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in the United States was carrying out maintenance work when he slipped and fell into the cavity that houses the reactor, submerging himself in the water intended to cool the reactions inside.
First and most important: the reactor was turned off and had not been working for years. The plant is in the process of being reactivated and, crucially, the nuclear fuel inside was new, not spent. This means that there was no active nuclear chain reaction.
The worker did not fall into a “radioactive hell,” but into a pool of cooling water. But the water inside a reactor, even turned off, is not drinking water. It may contain traces of radioactive material in suspension. The real danger to the worker was not an explosion, but two other factors. The first of these is contamination: your body, skin and clothing were exposed to these materials. And the second is that, after the fall, he swallowed an undetermined amount of that water, what is known as internal contamination, the most serious aspect of the incident.
This is where preparation makes the difference. The response was immediate and effective following the protocols. The worker, wearing a life jacket (part of standard equipment), was quickly pulled from the water and then put through a rigorous washing process. to eliminate pollution from your skin and hair.
radiation detectors They dialed 300 “counts per minute” (cpm) on her hair. To put it in perspective, this is a low reading. An airplane flight or dental x-ray can produce much higher readings. It indicated surface contamination, not a massive dose of radiation.
Although he was discharged and his total radiation dose is expected to be well below legal limits, the fact that he ingested contaminated water It is what will keep him under strict medical observation. Radiologists will determine which specific isotopes you put into your body and calculate the long-term risk, which, while it exists, is considered low thanks to early intervention.
The greatest danger, obviously, would have been falling into an active reactor, which would lead to instant death due to several simultaneous factors. The first of these is a massive dose of Gamma radiation. The core is an intense source of radiation. An exposure of seconds would receive a dose thousands of times higher than the lethal one. The central nervous system would stop functioning almost instantly, followed by death within minutes or hours from Acute Radiation Syndrome.
As if this were not enough, we must add the extreme temperatures. The reactor coolant is hundreds of degrees Celsius. It would cause severe burns all over the body. And, if this were not enough, we also have toxic chemicals: The water in an operating reactor contains boron and other chemicals to control the reaction, as well as being under high pressure. No one would survive this.