Worker Falls Into Nuclear Reactor, Drinks a Little “Cavity Water”

Next time you think you’re having a bad day at work, spare a thought for the contractor who had to be hauled out of a nuclear reactor pool on Tuesday.

The accident happened early in the morning at the Palisades Power Plant in Covert, Michigan, a single-combustion facility operating a pressurized water reactor. After tumbling an unknown distance into the nuclear cavity, the unnamed contractor was quickly decontaminated and sent to seek emergency medical care with minor injuries, MLive reported.

Unfortunately, while they were down there, the worker also “ingested some amount of cavity water,” according to the federal incident report.

“While performing work inside the containment building, a Palisades contractor fell into a pool near the reactor that contained clean, borated water,” a plant spokesperson told MLive. Though plant safety personnel ran them through a full battery of decontamination procedures, the federal report notes the unlucky contractor still had “300 counts per minute detected in their hair.”

When dealing with radiation, “counts per minute” is used to screen patients for contamination. For context, 300cpm above background is the threshold used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to triage contaminated emergency personnel for access to operations centers during a nuclear emergency.

Still, plant officials told MLive the employee had already returned to work by Wednesday — something anti-nuclear activists say exemplifies the hasty work being done at the Michigan facility.

Palisades, located directly on the Lake Michigan shoreline, is one of a number of decommissioned plants being resurrected by Donald Trump’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a historically independent agency prior to its complete takeover by this administration.

The day before the accident, MLive reported Palisades had received a shipment of uranium fuel from a mysterious source. The fall took place as plant staff were in the middle of loading the new fuel rods into the reactor core, a process which takes several days.

When it comes back online, the Michigan nuclear site would become the first commercial reactor to restart after being decommissioned, though activist groups warn that nuclear officials are prioritizing speed over safety.

“We urge the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] to put a stop to this resurrection before Michigan is placed at radioactive risk,” Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and consultant for the anti-nuke group Don’t Waste Michigan told MLive.

Given how fast the Trump administration has worked to completely tear up the nuclear oversight playbook, incidents like these could become just another day at the jobsite in America’s nuclear revival.

But looking on the bright side, the next time your job feels like it’s going off the deep end, remember: at least you’re not swimming in a reactor cavity.

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