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A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
- system2 1y agoThe rest of the event reports are also very active. Reactor sites are fun places to work.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nojs 1y agoApparently it’s fine according to this xkcd: https://youtu.be/EFRUL7vKdU8 https://youtu.be/EFRUL7vKdU8
- Centigonal 1y agoIt's the reactor cavity in this case, not a nuclear waste storage pool.
- mlindner 1y agoHow is that different from the accident point of view. They're both quite radioactive and both sit in deep pools of water.
- Centigonal 1y agoThe water in a nuclear waste storage pool should not be particularly radioactive unless something has gone wrong and contains mostly regular H2O. The reactor vessel can contain heavy water or water with boric acid in it, neither of which are good for you. Additionally, neutron radiation from the reactor will cause the formation of radioactive tritium in the vessel water, so the liquid itself becomes radioactive.
- tapland 1y agoDoesn’t seem like the same pool if you measure 300 counts/min from their hair afterwards.
- hshdhdhehd 1y agoThat makes it sound like a feature! Might get some rods for my pool to keep her warm.
- christina97 1y agoRelevant xkcd content: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
- parker-3461 1y agoSo if I understand this correctly (solely from reading the xkcd), then the person might actually be okay?
- LeifCarrotson 1y agoThey're totally fine. I find it highly informative that the required PPE for working in that location is a life jacket so you float in case you fall in, rather than a tether and fall arrest harness so that it's not possible to fall in. 300 CPM is nothing, background levels might be 150.
- _blk 1y agoBackground is probably a bit lower depending on where you're at. My counter went through airport security luggage scans 'cause they wouldn't let me wear it through the metal detector. It beeps for a few seconds and then comes out about a days' dose of natural radiation higher. The count was higher than 300 CPM, but obviously only shortly. That poor bloke might stay at 300 (if ingested and he can't scrub it off) for a while but it's still not very discouraging long-term. Pilots have about that at cruising altitude.
- kevincox 1y ago> Plant officials today confirmed the worker sustained minor injuries from the fall and has already returned to work. - https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-worker-had-to-be-decontaminated-after-falling-into-reactor-pool.html https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-wo... He went back to work the next day. They don't provide much detail about the minor injuries but it seems that the biggest issue is maybe a bruised shin from the fall.
- arresin 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- piinbinary 1y agoDoes anyone have a sense for how significant of a dose of radiation this person got?
- kibwen 1y agoIf it was just swimming in it that would be one thing. Ingesting the water could be very bad, depending on what's in it.
- PaulHoule 1y agoThey keep the water in an LWR pretty clean to avoid corrosion problems. Thing is the slightest almost of tritium in the water will light up a portal detector like a pinball machine on tilt.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tofof 1y agoRadiation units are fiendishly tricky to convert between. Here, the only indication is that after decontamination their hair was still reading 300 counts per minute. CPM are instrument-specific and doesn't mean that's the correct number of disintegrations per second, nor easily converted to absorbed dose units, and this is after decontamination, and disregarding the amount of water they ingested. All that disclaimer aside: a banana produces about 15 Bq (which is s^-1), i.e. 900 cpm.
- ls612 1y agoWater is a pretty good radiation shield so probably not too much. Certainly not good for your health but probably not seriously threatening.
- specialp 1y agoNot at all. My scintillating counter will do 300 cpm as background. The most concerning thing here will be the ingestion of the water. Even low level emitters can be very bad when the are inside the body
- Hobadee 1y agoI have SOOO many questions, and this report answers SOOO few of them.
- hshdhdhehd 1y agoLike what is a reactor cavity? HN title makes it sound like they fell into the reactor but maybe this is some sort of moat or something? what did they fall into and why?
- PaulHoule 1y agoAlmost certainly a refueling outage, this video will give you a good image of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCfapqYy00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCfapqYy00
- Centigonal 1y agoooh, thank you for this!
- SoftTalker 1y agoPalisades is not an operating reactor. It has been shut down since 2022. It's in the process of being recommissioned/restarted.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- JasonSage 1y agoMy question is what happened between when they went in the water and when they got off-site medical treatment. 7 hours seems like a long time. Is there on-site medical that would be doing something during that time?
- _qua 1y agoRealistically, there is little to do besides decontamination which I'm sure they're equipped to do on site.
- hshdhdhehd 1y ago> Non Emergency I guess in a nuclear reactor there is a lingual shift and the word emergency cant be used for just any old 911 call. Like how Australians apparently call a jellyfish bite "uncomfortable"
- anakaine 1y agoAussie surfer here, the stings typically are uncomfortable. Some of the deadlier ones can be close to painless and only result in itching and result in you dying from respiratory failure 24 hours later. Others are downright painful with even strong opiate based pain killers struggling to cut through the pain.
- cal_dent 1y agoHahaha eeesh that 2nd sentence took a turn
- viraptor 1y agoAlso it's in a way normalised to happen in a few places with beaches. There are vinegar stations every 100m or so. Basically a "yes, it will happen to a few of you". https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fvinegar-station-for-jellyfish-stings-at-australian-qld-beach-v0-n7mclDJtP5dOOibi3bZZGI2qSab22coTfDeFGOqDQyU.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D95b798301b523d64f8f669ad11a91c80d08552c6 https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...
- thomasfromcdnjs 1y agoJust fyi, they don't put vinegars at the beaches anymore, apparently it makes it worse (well I haven't seen any for a long while) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-08/vinegar-makes-box-jellyfish-stings-worse-aust-researchers/5374274 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-08/vinegar-makes-box-jel...
- viraptor 1y agoTownsville's Strand has a number of them for example. (Really bad lighting, but I believe it's that green board: https://maps.app.goo.gl/x7gggCjGwxVqDBx79?g_st=ac https://maps.app.goo.gl/x7gggCjGwxVqDBx79?g_st=ac) I went down the Qld coast a couple of weeks ago and they're still very common.
- jasonjmcghee 1y agoObligatory xkcd (ish) https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
- tt_dev 1y agoThis is bad but cavity water radiation is usually very weak. Ingestion could be bad but its not like he swallowed a uranium isotope which would be catastrophic.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoThe Uranium Isotopes would also not be that terrible. It's the fission products that get you.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mlindner 1y agoI wouldn't even call it bad. Reactor pools have basically zero radiation at the surface. The water is constantly filtered and kept very pure to remove contaminants that can be activated by neutrons. Even drinking it I would think would be completely fine. The water itself doesn't get activated.
- golem14 1y agoObligatory what-if: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
- happyopossum 1y agoThen where did their radioactive hair come from?
- roenxi 1y agoThe pool. But it isn't necessarily a problem - your hair, right now, is radioactive. Presumably wouldn't trip a measuring device because it'd be background levels. The linked report doesn't say how radioactive his hair is or give any indication of whether the person in question is threatened by this reading. Could be bad, could be nothing, we just know it is higher than normal.
- sigmar 1y agoIt doesn't say worker, just "person." I could understand falling in with some freak accident where you trip. But they ingested the water?!
- pixl97 1y agoI mean that's something that happens commonly when people fall into things like pools. When you jump into a pool you tend to take a breath before you do so, so you don't suck in water. When you fall into water it's much more common for people to aspirate or swallow water from the surprise.
- viraptor 1y agoDepending on a velocity, it also doesn't matter if you took a breath or not. Fall in quickly enough and at just the right angle (you can even do that from a fast water slide) and the water will be forced through your nose into lungs/stomach. (Unless you hold it closed)
- rtpg 1y agoprobably likely just a thing that happens when you suddenly fall into a pool of water?
- andy99 1y agoKnowing nothing about nuclear reactor design, why would there ever be a dangerous pool that people could walk by that wasn’t covered? Hard to believe it’s like some kind of Bond villain complex with open pools everywhere. This must have been in the course of some kind of servicing that required opening something that normally stays closed?
- donatj 1y agoBecause it's generally speaking, not that dangerous. Water is very good at blocking radiation. That's part of the reason why the pool is filled with it to begin with.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoYour periodic reminder that coal is deadlier than nuclear. https://cns.utexas.edu/news/research/coal-power-killed-half-million-people-us-over-two-decades https://cns.utexas.edu/news/research/coal-power-killed-half-...
- arresin 1y agoMore radiation released also which is hard to get your head around.
- Zak 1y agoNot really hard: nuclear power generation uses radiation and radioactive material, but tries very hard not to release it. Coal power generation burns a substance that contains a small amount of radioactive material, and makes no effort not to release radiation.
- mlindner 1y agoIt's not that surprising. We're burning a rock we dug out of the ground and turning it into a vapor. Rocks found underground contain some amount of natural radioactive material, for example granite/marble tend to be higher in radiation. If you burn that into a powder and put it into the atmosphere it'll spread around and expose the nearby area to very slightly radioactive pollution.
- _qua 1y agoInteresting page overall. Didn't realize reactors get scrammed that often.
- fwlr 1y agoScrolling up and down the list, just how onerous is this reporting regulation? It seems almost cartoonishly excessive, even for critical safety applications.
- aaomidi 1y agoHaving the infrastructure for reporting incidents is the expensive part. Doing it often doesn’t really add to the cost. More reporting is helpful because it explicitly makes it clear even operational issues can have lessons to be learned from. It also keeps the reporting system running and operationally well maintained. WebPKI does this as well.
- ang_cire 1y agoLiterally no amount of incident reporting is excessive when it comes to nuclear power. Not just because of the safety of the plant itself, but because so much is reliant on it. It's important to identify even small defects or incidents so that patterns can be noticed before they turn into larger issues. You see the same breaker tripping at 3x the rate of other ones, and even though maybe nothing was damaged you now know there's something to investigate.
- pembrook 1y agoAaaand it’s this alarmist attitude which is why we don’t have abundant cheap nuclear energy. Sea-drilling rigs (oil) have far more potential for environmental damage than modern nuclear plants Yet they have no federal public register for when a worker falls overboard (an incident far more likely to result in death).
- antonvs 1y ago> Sea-drilling rigs (oil) have far more potential for environmental damage than modern nuclear plants Key word: "modern". A key aspect of a modern nuclear plant, that supports its high level of safety, is the required incident reporting and followup. The relevant issue is not really about a single worker being injured or dying. It's about detecting safety issues which could lead to a catastrophe far beyond what a sea oil drilling rig can, at least when it comes to human life and habitability of the surrounding area. For example, after Chernobyl, much of Europe had to deal with contamination from cesium 137. The entire planet's geological history shows when the nuclear age started, because humans are irresponsible in aggregate. (See also global warming.) > Aaaand it’s this alarmist attitude ... You're providing an object lesson in why humans can't really be trusted to operate systems like this over the long term.
- iamronaldo 1y agohttps://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
- BobbyTables2 1y agoObligatory XKCD: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ (Not exactly same but close)
- Animats 1y agoPalisades MI reactor. Currently shut down and de-fueled but a restart of this reactor is apparently underway, with new fuel assemblies being delivered.[1] Worker was wearing a life vest.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Nuclear_Generating_S... [2] https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-worker-had-to-be-decontaminated-after-falling-into-reactor-pool.html https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-wo...
- croemer 1y agoArchive of [2] (blocked me): https://archive.ph/0pzuY https://archive.ph/0pzuY
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wiz21c 1y agodunno if the life vest bit comment of yours was sarcastic, but it is a funny remark for sure :-) it sounds like "guy felt down in a volcano, but fortunately, he had a life vest"
- tialaramex 1y agoRather more like "Guy fell over looking into the volcano but fortunately there's a metal fence". The most immediate danger to you is that you'll drown because radioactive water is water and you can't breathe. So the life vest avoids this. In contrast volcanic lava absolutely can kill you before you drown, no problem. Yes, radioactivity isn't good. You should not, for example, drink this water, or swim in it once a week for good luck. But, it isn't magic death fluid, the worker will have been decontaminated - destroying clothing, washing skin and so on, and the additional exposure means they might get more monitoring, but they're probably fine.
- weinzierl 1y agoIn addition to that they increased their likelihood to get cancer earlier than they would otherwise. Many things have this effect, for example alcohol. In the end everyone get cancer eventually, some just die before from other causes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- slicktux 1y agoI’ve heard of people falling into the spent fuel pool but never the reactor pool. Usually there are strict FME barriers in place and one cannot even look over into the pool without violating the FME. I wonder what led to the event? Definitely an OSHA recordable!
- feminintendo 1y agoThis is not true at all. I have personally looked into a reactor pool. I remember thinking how easy it would be to literally just jump in. I mean, I'd trip about a thousand alarms and probably end up in prison, but....
- Quarrelsome 1y agowas this place one of those who suffered firings as a result of the government shutdown? I believe at least 1,000 employs at nuclear facilities have been fired.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pembrook 1y agoMan in Michigan potentially exposed to radiation levels equivalent to undergoing 4 x-rays at the doctors office. Meanwhile, in Texas, 1.5 people die every day working in Oil and Gas extraction. A few people die every year installing or falling off of wind turbines. But by all means, let's make this a news story instead and keep making nuclear sound scary. I’m sure the person who posted this to HN with this clickbait title has zero political beliefs.
- gnarlouse 1y agoReally puts it into perspective
- kevincox 1y agoThis is enlightening chart. Only Solar beats nuclear in deaths/Wh of energy. Even wind power results in more deaths. Additionally this uses very pessimistic numbers for large nuclear incidents and doesn't count thinks like deaths and health complications due to pollution and emitted radiation from fossil-fuel power sources (which emit way more radiation than nuclear power). https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
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- raqix 1y ago[dead]
- BirAdam 1y agoIf my childhood taught me anything, it’s that there’s about to be an awesome superhero.
- satisfice 1y agoA spider will bite this guy and get the powers of a human.
- DonHopkins 1y agoWhere is Jimmy Carter when we need him? And Rodney Dangerfield to explain how big Jimmy Carter is. https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveFromNewYork/comments/1bh2edu/the_pepsi_syndrome_an_epic_parody_of_the_1978/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveFromNewYork/comments/1bh2edu/th...
- gfalcao 1y agosame thought here
- escapecharacter 1y agoIf one falls into a tank like this, what steps are required to guarantee likelihood of developing powers?
- robviren 1y agoI greatly appreciate the nuclear industry. Nuclear field engineering was my first "real" job out of college and they really committ to safety. Transparency in this industry is inspiring because everyone involved knows that one screw up and that's the end of the US nuclear industry. Good luck getting oil and gas to be accountable and as transparent about incidents. I carry the culture into the rest of my work and appreciate being involved. Wish events like this didn't happen but it is not of significant danger and I find it great that they communicate even "smaller" issues.
- smilespray 1y agoI've lived through three major nuclear incidents, and what they had in common, regardless of the political systems of the US, The Soviet Union or Japan, was not the transparency, it was the lying. It started immediately after each incident. I'm essentially pro-nuclear, I just don't trust people who run it.
- consp 1y agoYou describe incidents which become political. At some point the normal rules are being ignored by those on the top of the information food chain. That says nothing about the rules of the game, but does say a lot about the people involved.
- smilespray 1y agoThe rule-ignoring and the lying started inside the plants before anybody outside got involved. Then it just spread like cancer.
- robviren 1y agoTotally valid perspective. I only became part of the industry after Fukushima. I only knew an industry by its disasters. I will say, having gone through the training programs we studied the nuclear incidents and spent a year in training before going to the plants. I just don't see parallel experiences looking back like that. The people in nuclear (at least from what I saw) want the industry to be safe and successful.
- amarant 1y agoMandatory xkcd: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
- PhoenixFlame101 1y agoVideo format if anyone prefers it: https://youtu.be/EFRUL7vKdU8 https://youtu.be/EFRUL7vKdU8
- almosthere 1y agoIs he going to die no matter what or is this survivable?
- jasongill 1y agoUltimately, yes; he will die no matter what.
- almosthere 1y agoAs you get older this pedantry gets really tiring.
- brongondwana 1y agoThe good news is, you have less time to be annoyed by it
- IncreasePosts 1y agoPersonally, my belief in my own immortality only increases the older I get. Yes, Socrates died, but he clearly wasn't smart if he died. Me, on the other hand? I'm batting a thousand.
- yard2010 1y agoWould it kill you? Well, ultimately yes..
- lgas 1y agoNot necessarily. Could get hit by a car later the same day.
- dooglius 1y agoThere is a deeper point here, not just pedantry. The point is that harm is a spectrum not a binary and one cannot meaningfully answer a question that assumes a binary.
- satisfice 1y agoNo more horseplay around the reactor!
- IngvarLynn 1y agorelevant xkcd not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreev_Bay_nuclear_accident#An_accident_during_the_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreev_Bay_nuclear_accident#A...
- rurban 1y agoPalisades was closed down 2022, but just reopened recently at August 27, 2025. Hair contaminated
- arthurcolle 1y ago300 CPM in hair after decontamination is a massive red flag. If this is from systemic circulation, could be GBq-level total body activity. The non-emergency classification is bureaucratic nonsense. This is an internal contamination event with unknown but potentially severe consequences.
- ramchip 1y agoFrom: https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-nuclear-plant-worker-fell-into-a-reactor-pool-and-somehow-survived/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-nuclear-plant-worker-fell-... > According to federal reports, the contractor ingested some of the reactor water before being yanked out, scrubbed down, and checked for radiation. They walked away with only minor injuries and about 300 counts per minute of radiation detected in their hair. > That sounds like a lot, but apparently it isn't terribly serious. He underwent a decontamination scrubdown and was back on the job by Wednesday.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- arthurcolle 1y agoLitvinenko had about 10 MBq in his body and died in 3 weeks. This might be 500+ MBq (0.5 GBq). Yeah it's a different isotope, but clearly not a "non-emergency" EDIT: (after 1 hr) - Litvinenko dose was 4GBq - I was wrong by 3 orders of magnitude. My bad
- orwin 1y agoExternal contamination is not comparable to internal, at all. Bq is a terrible unit to understand radioactive danger. Doses are usually detected in Grey, then converted into Sievert because Grey didn't take into account the difference between Alpha radiation and the others. And even then, when someone is truly contaminated, we calculate effective dose per organ. The poor guy who fell in the pool probably didn't take any Alpha ray, wasn't taking all the radiation on a specific place, and while in my country we would calculate the dose he took before sending him back to work, he would probably work again in the same nuclear sector (this isn't the case for anyone, I know someone who dive to get the radioactive/explosive/poisonous trash we put in the water in the 50s until the 90s, he now cannot work on any radioactive trash.)
- dudidn 1y ago“worker fell off roof installing solar panels” — just getting ahead of the ‘anti-nuclear’ folks on here. Energy installations all come with risks, albeit nuclear long tail accidents are mutli-generational and externalised to people not involved in managing the risk
- dlcarrier 1y agoThat happens all the time; it's only news when something unusual happens.
- DoctorOetker 1y agoWhy didn't they shave off the hair and measure again before sending off to medical? They have the opportunity to report lower numbers, and would enable identifying non-hair-adsorbed radiatioactive matter on the subject. It sounds so easy and actionable it boggles the mind that it's not part of the protocol.
- seb1204 1y agoI thought this as well but given some other comments the measures numbers are open to interpretation/ spread. Also it could be considered a violation of the person's body if done without his consent.
- DoctorOetker 1y agoand one could argue that showering without consent is also a violation of the person's body... consider an accident where a person is actually super hot with radioactive contamination, does the person have the right to exit the facility without shower and spread the radioactive particulates at will? the thing is that this type of "violation" can easily be prevented by including the obligatory showering or shaving as part of the contract, so either they consent or they didn't end up in a position where they can be exposed to radioactive matter. So this can not explain why the hair wasn't shaved.
- loeg 1y agoDude might prefer to keep his hair? Given the low exposure amount.
- qwertytyyuu 1y agoI can't help but be reminded of relevant xkcd^{TM} https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
- JackAcid 1y agoToxic Avenger remake.
- notepad0x90 1y agoI thought you could safely swim in that water so long as you stay a few meters clear of the rods? water being a good absorber of radiation and all. Is this just a precautionary reaction?
- chistev 1y agoDude about to have superpowers and go after the government
- sebmellen 1y agoRelevant from Randall Munroe https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ > What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface? > Assuming you’re a reasonably good swimmer, you could probably survive treading water anywhere from 10 to 40 hours. At that point, you would black out from fatigue and drown. This is also true for a pool without nuclear fuel in the bottom.
- trenchpilgrim 1y agoThat blog post is about the spent fuel pool. The link is about the reactor cavity.
- sebmellen 1y agoWouldn’t the same principles apply?
- trenchpilgrim 1y agoNo, reactor cavity has a different shape and is directly part of the reactor system.
- sebmellen 1y agoI mean the principle of water mitigating radioactive impact. > “While performing work inside the containment building, a Palisades contractor fell into a pool near the reactor that contained clean, borated water,” O’Brien said. From https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-worker-had-to-be-decontaminated-after-falling-into-reactor-pool.html https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-wo...
- aakkaakk 1y agoNot bad, not terrible.
- tzot 1y agoDid you mean “not great, not terrible” or was the change deliberate?
- mobeigi 1y agoHopefully the worker is okay. I have to agree that the non-emergency classification seems odd. This should warrant a proper investigation and steps to avoid this in the future.
- Someone 1y agoFTA: “This is an eight-hour notification, non-emergency, for the transportation of a contaminated person offsite“ ⇒ the “non-emergency” classification isn’t about the “fell into a nuclear reactor pool”, but about sending the victim off site.
- drysart 1y agoI can guarantee you there will be a proper investigation and steps taken to avoid this in the future. The non-emergency classification here applies solely to the notification that the contamination was transported off-site. Not to the fact that the incident occurred. Every accidental incident that occurs within the controlled area of a nuclear facility is investigated and evaluated for necessary policy changes. And the reason the contamination transport off-site was classified as non-emergency was because even though the amount of radiation detected on the guy is less than he'd have gotten from flying in an airplane; nuclear safety standards are so unbelievably rigorous and strict that even that small of an incident needs to be reported; even if it presents absolutely no danger to anyone anywhere (not even the guy that was contaminated) and hence is classified as a non-emergency notification.
- kevincox 1y ago> Plant officials today confirmed the worker sustained minor injuries from the fall and has already returned to work. - https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-worker-had-to-be-decontaminated-after-falling-into-reactor-pool.html https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-wo... They returned to work the next day with minor injuries due to the fall. It doesn't sound like it was an emergency to me.
- handal11 1y ago[flagged]
- tedggh 1y ago[flagged]
- xandrius 1y agoProper nightmare fuel right here.
- defraudbah 1y agoand so hulk was born
- ggm 1y agoDoes the operator go to court for OH&S breaches?
- unglaublich 1y agoThe Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has a great YouTube channel where they carefully analyze similar accidents. https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB/videos https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB/videos Not necessarily nuclear (since chemical and industrial accidents are much, muhc more likely), but highly recommended if you're interested in such incidents and their causes.
- dubbel 1y agoI loce their videos, too, but as far as I know the current US administration will shut them down at the end of this year. [0] [1] But just now I read that a (sharply reduced) budget had passed the house? [2] does anyone know what the current state is? [0]: https://www.csb.gov/assets/1/6/csb_cj_2026.pdf https://www.csb.gov/assets/1/6/csb_cj_2026.pdf [1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/only-federal-agency-that-investigates-chemical-disasters-faces-shutdown-under-trump https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/only-federal-agency-that-i... [2]: https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/27090-house-committee-approves-bill-with-chemical-safety-board-funding https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/27090-house...
- lazyasciiart 1y agoThat’s from July, and it says a committee has approved a specific line item to be put into the budget that would eventually be voted on.
- unit149 1y ago[dead]
- lavela 1y agoThese are quite a few reports for one day for a technology we purportedly have under full control, nothing to worry.
- rvrs 1y agoDid a coal miner write this comment?
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 1y agoWorse, an environmentalist.
- lavela 1y agoMiner vs. straw man, who wins? :o)
- drysart 1y agoWhich do you consider as being under better control: a technology that we exhaustively create reports on even in the face of incidents like this where the only real chance of harm was that the guy couldn't swim and might have drowned; or a technology where we don't report on anything at all whatsoever and thus have no idea what's actually going on? Reports don't mean danger, and they don't mean lack of control. Reports are information.
- lavela 1y agoOf the eight reports I only see one that relates to a guy being able to swim or not (and I suspect the same is true for the estimated 1400 reports so far this year). Also having transparency is obviously good and I don't understand what you want to prove with arguing that a worse situation would be worse. It clearly would be worse. I'm also not totally against nuclear, in case you are suspecting that. I do think though, that we as a society aren't at the point where we have the ability to completely control such technology, contrary to what proponents of much higher utilization of nuclear like to claim. Reports of fuses seemingly without failover or stolen equipment seem to support that argument.
- gomez4151 1y ago[flagged]
- foofoo12 1y agoI'm interested, email me at contact@fbi.gov
- Cheezmeister 1y agoFor comparison: https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/calculator https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/calculator In other news, a kitten named millicurie did a really adorable thing. The only remarkable fact here is that the regulatory structure is strong enough that we commoners are entitled to hear about it. That's a Very Good Thing, and one I wish we enjoyed apropos, say, the corporate veil (looking at you, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Aramco, Sinopec, Amazon, Oracle, AIPAC, United, The Trump Organization, X Corp, Paramount, Skydance, eMed Population Health, Inc., et. al.). But the story here is a guy fell into some water, and is following SOP (which is also a Very Good Thing). Please don't feed the clickbait.
- lijok 1y agoGuys slow down, you're gonna hug xkcd to death
- ByteDrifter 1y agoIncidents like this show that “nuclear safety” is as much cultural as technical. Even the best systems fail when people and organizations stop treating the environment with the respect it demands.
- pembrook 1y agoThis harmless incident shows us nothing aside from why nuclear is so expensive. There is essentially zero risk to the operation of the plant (or this worker!) from such an event. Imagine if oil and gas facilities were required for any worker fall to have federal government workers visit onsite, draft a report for review, have it examined by expensive niche lawyers with rounds of revisions, and then have it published it publicly. This is just a silly example of the hysterical safety-ism involving anything nuclear-related in the US. Yes, working in any job related to energy carries risks. Just ask a roughneck, lineman, or wind turbine installer.
- throw-10-13 1y agoswimming in a reactor pool isnt that bad, water is a great radiation shield.
- catlover76 1y ago[dead]
- jenadine 1y agoWhy is this interesting? Workers gets injured all the time and sometimes even die on various accidents in all industries and nobody ever talk about it. Is this anti-nuclear propaganda?
- yoavm 1y agoI guess that U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is required to report any unusual events in the plants in the US, which would be reasonable. A worker falling into a nuclear reactor pool is unusual. The report itself doesn't seem like it's anti-nuclear in any way, and it clearly states "no impact on the health and safety of the public or plant personnel". If you're asking why it's interesting for HN, I think it's actually because people are fascinated with nuclear, in a positive way.
- aatd86 1y agoBecause another mutant might be joining our ranks soon.
- matjazk 1y agoNew superhero on their way.
- gethly 1y ago> They ingested some amount of cavity water. How dumb do you have to be to not only fall into it but to also swallow it...
- JumpinJack_Cash 1y agoThe fear about nuclear is so big that this idiocy gets 500 points and 350 comments because nuclear is scary
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoWe’re 50 years behind fusion because of people that now rage against fossil fuels. It’s tough to see it keep happening despite the educational resources we have now vs the 70s and 80s.
- antirez 1y agoBasically often it could be better to have an incident in a nuclear plant than in some building construction site... But the attention delta is incredibly high. 300 CPM sounds low, I hope they will be fine.
- outside1234 1y agoAt Purdue university we had a small research reactor and to this day can remember looking down through the pool to see the blue glow of the nuclear reaction. It is crazy how well the water (boronized?) stops radiation.
- thinkingforks 1y ago[dead]
- Ericson2314 1y agoThe XKCD has come to life! Accidental swimming is no fun, I wish the guy a full recovery from dihydrogen monoxide poisoning.
- grork 1y ago3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible
- fsh 1y agoI once worked in a nuclear research reactor, and they had lifebuoys at their pool. Quite prescient, as it turns out.
- dbg31415 1y ago> 300 counts per minute Roughly 10x background radiation. So like two weeks of sunshine in a day. Not a good day. Not fatal.
- Galanwe 1y agoI'm not literate at all on nuclear physics, but I remember in the "Chernobyl" TV show (which seemed trustworthy) some divers died after going in the cooling water to close the pumps. How was that water different ?
- nvahalik 1y agoI watched the show but if I remember correctly they actually didn’t die. They survived. > The reality is much more positive than the myth, with all three men escaping such a grisly fate. Indeed, Alexei Ananenko and Valeri Bespalov are believed to be both still alive as of 2024, while Boris Baranov lived until 2005 when he passed away from heart disease. Source: https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-real-story-of-the-chernobyl-divers https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-real-story-of-the-cher...
- Movah 1y agoI wonder if it had anything to do with the empty "alcoholic bottles" being found? FITNESS FOR DUTY (FFD) EVENT The following information was provided by the licensee via phone and email: "On 10/25/25, at approximately 1230 EDT, 3 empty alcohol bottles were found in the protected area by a contract employee. Site security was notified and took possession of the empty bottles which were removed from the protected area. The individual who accidentally brought in the empty alcohol bottles with other non-alcoholic empty bottles was tested for FFD and was negative. This event is reportable in accordance with 10 CFR 26.719(b). "The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified."
- everdev 1y agoI'm sure it has nothing to do with corporate malfeasance.
- shravani_05_01 1y agoI have instagram id hack please
- dekerklas 1y ago[dead]