Pix: Reuters
A
nuclear research laboratory in northern Japan has reported a radiation
leak that may have affected 55 people, though none has been hospitalised
and no impact is expected outside the facility.
The Japan Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday
that the accident occurred on Thursday at a nuclear physics lab in
Tokaimura, the site of at least two previous radiation accidents.
Four researchers were tested afterwards, with
the highest radiation dose found to be two millisieverts. Nuclear workers
generally are limited to 100 millisieverts of exposure over five years.
The leak occurred when experimental equipment
overheated, causing the evaporation and release of radioactive gold.
Since the leak originally was thought to
have been contained inside the lab, the incident was not
initially reported, and workers used a ventilation fan, causing radiation
to spread. The JAEA said it was studying the potential
environmental impact from the radiation leak. Japan's nuclear industry has been in crisis
since the March 2011 accident at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear
plant, the country's worst-ever atomic energy disaster.
Most of Japan's nuclear plants remain closed
after they were shut down for safety checks.
Tokaimura was the site of Japan's second-worst
nuclear accident, in September 1999, when two workers were killed by a
radiation leak at a fuel-reprocessing plant when they tried to save time by mixing
excessive amounts of uranium in buckets instead of using special mechanised
tanks.
Hundreds of people were exposed to radiation,
and thousands of residents were evacuated as a precaution.
The government assigned the accident a level-4
rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, which ranges from 1 to 7.
Source: Aljazeera
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