Research Reactor News - Penn State Reactor

Penn State Reports Minor Reactor Leak

By GENARO C. ARMAS – 12 October 2007

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Penn State University reported a minor leak of "slightly radioactive water" at its nuclear research reactor but said Thursday that the leak poses no risk to workers, the community or the environment.

Workers discovered water leaking Tuesday from the pool in which the reactor sits into the ground beneath the Penn State campus. State and federal officials were notified, and the reactor was shut down and will remain out of service until the source of the leak is found, the university said.

"There's no impact on the community. It's just something that, now that we know what's going on, we are telling the community and continuing to look for the leak," A'ndrea Elyse Messer, the university's senior science and research spokeswoman, said Thursday night.

The state Department of Environmental Protection and federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission were notified after the problem arose Tuesday. Public safety was not threatened, but the situation is being monitored, officials said.

"They've clearly erred on the side of caution," said Eliot Brenner, an NRC spokesman who said the commission sent workers to the site Tuesday night. "It is not a danger. There is no safety issue here."

Staff at the Breazeale nuclear research reactor noticed "a small reduction of several hundred gallons over the past several days" from the 71,000-gallon pool, which shields the core's radiation and cools the reactor, the university said. The level had not dropped enough to trigger an alarm from monitoring devices, Messer said.

Classes, meetings and other research not connected to the reactor were still taking place at the facility, Messer said. There was no threat to the water supply and the public "should not be worried" by the leak, she said.

Someone drinking the contaminated water for a year would be exposed to only half the amount of radiation deemed safe by the Environmental Protection Agency and less than half the amount received from a conventional X-ray, the university said in a news release.

"Residents of central Pennsylvania routinely receive much larger exposure from natural sources in their environment," Penn State said.

The reactor is used for research by nuclear engineering students and by 20 to 30 other departments on campus but does not produce electricity, according to the reactor center's Web site. Since it was built in 1955, there have been "no accidents or evacuations involving a degradation or problem with the reactor," the site said.
On the Net:

* Breazeale Nuclear Reactor: http://www.rsec.psu.edu/index.html