They were present at first reactor unit on Nov 24.
Three top administrators and a Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) team is grilling over 50 plant employees — of engineer, scientific assistant, technician and labourer rank — who were at the atomic plant in Kaiga when the mishap occurred. The investigation revolved around only two questions —who introduced the two vials containing tritium and where did the saboteurs get the vials from.
Kaiga nuclear plant director JP Gupta was, meanwhile, busy allaying fears of a radiation leak and keeping under wraps the number of workers affected. To quote Gupta, “I have given the names of those present at the first reactor unit on November 24, when the incident occurred, to central and state investigation agencies. We have handed over records, biometrics documents and their photo identification cards.”
In the evening, Kaiga authorities lodged a police complaint and an FIR at the Kaiga police station. The FIR is late by two days; initially the NPCIL investigators thought the police complaint was not necessary but a senior counsel told them to do so without further delay.
Gupta said they have studied service reports of all employees who were on duty on that day’s specific shift. He said the “tritium contamination was not fatal and that the affected employees were not exposed to excess radiation. Nobody has been admitted to hospital at this very moment.”
“Only one of them had shown residue at a permissible level of 30 ml. We ensured that minutes after employees showed abnormal symptoms (tritium ingression) our medics administered medicines to flush out the contamination, each of them were given water spout treatment not only to flush out the contamination but also to determine the level of contamination at the tissue level.”
Gupta also clarified there was no danger of any radiation from the plant as the 220MWe unit had been closed since October 20 for biennial maintenance. “The only contamination workers got was by drinking from the water cooler, contaminated by mischief mongers”.
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