It’s a story which has made international news, being reported by The Mirror in the United Kingdom and on ABC News International.
Three separate contamination events took place inside the Koeberg Power Station between 30 June and 7 July.
The National Nuclear Regulator is investigating the incidents that occurred during maintenance on Unit 2.
Speaking on CapeTalk/702, energy expert Matthew Cruise explained that what happened involved the ventilation equipment rather than a failure of the nuclear reactor itself.
“You hear that there’s a radioactive contamination event, it sounds very significant, but when we read into the details of the information, we see that actually these events were quite minor.”
Cruise explained that during the maintenance work, there had been a loss of power to the ventilation units.
“No radioactive particles actually escaped the containment building. What did happen is that there was some minor exposure to the people working in that containment building.”
Radiation detectors immediately picked up the contamination, and affected workers were assessed.
The highest recorded exposure was one microsievert, which is a very small standard unit used to measure the biological effect of low-level radiation doses.
“To put that into context, if you have a dental X-ray at the dentist, you’re exposed to about five microsieverts; that’s five times as much. Or if you eat about ten bananas, you’ll receive roughly the same amount of radiation, because bananas naturally contain a small amount of radioactive potassium. So it was a very small amount of contamination that affected some of the workers,” explained Cruise.
He told host Africa Melane that the incidents were unrelated to the age of the plant.
“This event was not related to Koeberg failing because it’s old… From my assessment, there’s nothing that I can see that we should be worried about in the public.”
Cruise said public anxiety around nuclear power is understandable given disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, but explained that Koeberg was built with certain ‘fail-safe’ systems.
He explained that if Koeberg loses power completely, mechanisms are in place to ensure it can immediately shut down safely.
“If there’s a complete loss of power at Koeberg, what happens is the control rods drop into the nuclear reactor and shut down everything. It basically makes the nuclear reactor ‘cold’, and it can’t start up again. It’s also designed to withstand a missile strike or something like a Level 5 earthquake. So Koeberg itself is safe, in my opinion.”
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