Nuclear regulator assures that contamination incident at Koeberg did not involve reactors

The National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) on Monday assured that a reported incidence of airborne contamination at the Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant (NNP) did not come from the nuclear reactor. Koeberg, which is owned and operated by State-owned national electricity utility Eskom, has two reactors and is the country’s (and indeed Africa’s) only NPP. (The SAFARI-1 nuclear reactor at Pelindaba, west of Pretoria, is owned and operated by the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation and is a research reactor which does not generate any electricity.) The contamination was detected during a routine test of the Koeberg Security Central Alarm Station’s ventilation system. (During such tests, which are conducted on a regular basis, Iodine-131, which is radioactive, is used in tiny amounts to represent the kind of contaminant that the ventilation system has to filter out, in the event of a nuclear accident at the NPP.)