Nuclear Facility dangers abound during severe Earth Changes
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Nuclear-plant-in-Tai...
Nuclear plant in Taiwan catches fire
The incident has caused no radioactive leak and no personnel have needed to be evacuated, Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) said in a statement on its website.
The fire began inside an auxiliary electrical transformer at the Third Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County, setting off an alarm at 11:58pm, Taipower said. It was put out by the plant's own firefighters within 17 minutes of its occurance, it said.
A loud noise was heard at midnight around the plant as the turbine released steam into the sky during the process, Taipower said.
Taipower said preliminary investigations suggest that it will take two weeks to get the second reactor operational again. The transformer, which was one of a number of devices supplying electricity to the plant, has been damaged due to short circuit.
The accident is expected to affect China's ambitious plans that include launching eight new nuclear power plants this year besides granting approvals for another set of six new plants. The government aims to build capabilities for producing 30,000 megawatts by 2020.
Chinese nuclear experts have argued that the country has the best safety standards in place after the government recently lifted the ban on new plants, which was imposed after Japan's Fukushima accident in 2011.
Giving details of the accident, Taipower said that another reactor in the affected plant, the No. 1 reactor is unaffected.
The second reactor, which has a electricity generating capacity of 951 megawatts, has been in operation since May 1985.
Taiwan has three nuclear power plants in operation and another one under construction. There has been much public debate about whether the island should become a nuclear power-free society, particularly in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Stay updated on the go with Times of India News App. Click here to download it for your device.
Egypt nuclear reactor in Cairo to begin June 21st and is already having problems, leaking radiocative materials. Employees were forbidden to speak of the problems the facility is having. It's a go.......... to open.views
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Comment by Starr DiGiacomo on August 26, 2020 at 5:33am
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https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/duane-arnold-energ...
Duane Arnold nuclear plant won't restart after Iowa derecho damage
Decommissioning of plant was set for October, but timeline moved up after significant storm damage
Duane Arnold Energy Center officials decideded to close the nuclear facility permanently after experiencing significant damage from the Aug. 10 derecho, a NextEra Energy Resources spokesman said Monday.
“After conducting a complete assessment of the damage caused by recent severe weather, NextEra Energy Resources has made the decision not to restart the reactor,” spokesman Peter Robbins said.
Duane Arnold, the only nuclear power plant in Iowa, was scheduled to be decommissioned Oct. 30.
The derecho caused “extensive” damage to the facility’s cooling towers, Robbins said. Replacing the cooling towers with fewer than three months until decommissioning was “not feasible,” he added.
Robbins said NextEra Energy Resources will “continue to work with all our employees to minimize the impact of this situation on them and their families.”
Before the derecho, employees were taking early retirements, looking for other jobs within the company or staying at NextEra to manage the decommissioned site. Those options remain intact, Robbins said.
“It doesn’t change the outcomes for those folks,” Robbins said. “It just affects the timing of it.”
and another:
https://energycentral.com/news/fermi-2-nuclear-power-plant-stable-a...
Fermi 2 nuclear power plant 'stable' after earthquake near Detroit Beach
- Aug 24, 2020 10:46 am GMT
Aug. 22--A minor earthquake near Detroit Beach rattled Downriver areas and was felt in places through the region, but left the nearby Fermi 2 nuclear power plant in a safe condition, officials said.
The 3.2-magnitude earthquake was recorded Friday evening south-southeast of Detroit Beach near Monroe by the U.S. Geological Survey, about two miles south of the nuclear plant.
The earthquake, rare for Michigan, occurred at 6:55 p.m just off the shoreline of Sterling State Park, according to USGS.
Depth was determined to be 9.2 km, or about 5.71 miles. The USGS initially reported the quake as reaching 3.4 magnitude.
A magnitude 3.2 quake is considered minor and generally does not cause damage, said Dongdong Yao, a postdoctoral research fellow affiliated with the University of Michigan who has studied seismic activity in the region.
Downriver residents and those as far away as Bowling Green, Ohio, reported feeling the quake. The intensity rippled throughout Downriver, including Trenton, La Salle, Grosse Ile, south to in northern Ohio, as far north as Waterford Township and in Macomb County.
Officials with the geological agency could not immediately be reached for comment Friday night.
The tremors did not appear to have affected the Fermi 2 nuclear power plant in Monroe County, which DTE Energy Co. runs.
"We remain in a safe, stable condition and we're at 100% power," spokesman Stephen Tait said Friday night.
The plant was operating at 100% Friday after earlier this month completing a refueling operation that was prolonged by the coronavirus pandemic, according to reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC had not posted an event notification report regarding the earthquake by Saturday morning.
Yao said even a minor quake can trigger a sensation of movement in some people while not in others. "Some people might be very sensitive, so they can feel some very minor shaking," he said.
Yao said the temblor was unusual: "If you look back 20 years, this type of earthquake is very rare in this region.
Friday's quake came more than a year after the agency recorded a temblor with a magnitude of 4.0 in Lake Erie, just off the shoreline of northeast Ohio, in June 2019. That was considered an "intra-plate" earthquake, USGS officials said at the time.
In April 2018, a magnitude 3.6 quake originated near Amherstburg, Ontario, across the Detroit River, some 15.5 miles south of Detroit It was felt at least 40 miles away in parts of Downriver and Dearborn.
Another quake, registering at 4.0, struck south of Galesburg, near Kalamazoo, on May 2, 2015, officials said. Also in 2015, central lower Michigan experienced a minor earthquake that measured 3.3 magnitude on the Richter scale in an area seven miles from Union City, 13 miles from Battle Creek, 14 miles from Coldwater and 47 miles from Lansing.
On Jan. 16, 2018, a meteor that hit Earth sparked a 2.0 magnitude earthquake in Metro Detroit.
Earthquakes "are not generally common" in the region, said Kyle Klein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "We're not near any active fault line."
According to USGS, most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains has infrequent earthquakes.
"... Most of the enormous region from the Rockies to the Atlantic can go years without an earthquake large enough to be felt, and several U.S. states have never reported a damaging earthquake," the agency said.
The USGS website says that most earthquakes in North American east of the Rockies "occur as faulting within bedrock, usually miles deep."
"Few earthquakes east of the Rockies, however, have been definitely linked to mapped geologic faults, in contrast to the situation at plate boundaries such as California's San Andreas fault system, where scientists can commonly use geologic evidence to identify a fault that has produced a large earthquake and that is likely to produce large future earthquakes."
and another:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/nuclear-reactor-in-france-shut-down...
Nuclear reactor in France shut down over drought
Chooz Nuclear Plant on Belgian border turned off after dry summer evaporates water needed to cool reactors
25.08.2020
PARIS
A nuclear power plant in northern France has been temporarily shuttered due to a drought in the area, said the company that runs the plant Tuesday.
The second reactor of the Chooz Nuclear Power Plant, in Ardennes, on the Belgian border, was shut down late Monday night, after the first reactor ceased operations Friday evening.
The actions were taken due to low water levels in the Meuse River, the main artery that runs through the area used to cool the two reactors.
The plant is named after Chooz, the commune where it is located in the Ardennes. The region is on level three of four drought alert levels.
In a statement on its website, French energy company EDF, which runs the plant, gave the reasons for the closure.
"On Monday at 11.30 p.m. [2130GMT], given the current climatic conditions and in accordance with the agreement between France and Belgium, teams at the power station stopped operations of reactor number one."
The company reassured that given a forecast of rain ahead, both reactors are planned to be up and running over the next couple of days.
Safety concerns were ruled out as a cause for the reactors' suspension.
Water is a crucial ingredient for nuclear plant safety to cool the reactor core.In 2019, the plant produced 4.7% of France's nuclear power, or 17.9 billion kilowatt-hours, according to paperwork the company shared with Radio France International. The two reactors operate at a capacity of 1,450 megawatts and date from 1996 and 1997.
Water restrictions have been imposed this summer in 79 out of the 96 mainland departments in France due to drought conditions.
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https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/britain/section-of-sel...
Section of Sellafield plant evacuated
August 15 2020 02:30 AM
A section of the defunct nuclear plant at Sellafield has been evacuated after a routine inspection uncovered hazardous chemicals.
A bomb-disposal unit was called into the site to deal with a "small amount" of organic peroxide, a potentially explosive chemical that must be kept cool to remain safe.
Organic peroxide has a variety of uses across different industries but its storage is subject to strict safety measures.
The plant, which is now used only to store nuclear waste and has not produced energy for the past 17 years, has been made "non-operational", Sellafield stated.
A statement by the company that operates the site said: "The storage area is safely segregated from the nuclear operations of the plant and the risk has been identified as a conventional safety issue rather than a nuclear safety risk.
"As a precautionary measure, a controlled evacuation of the Magnox Reprocessing Plant was carried out yesterday in order to investigate the chemical and devise the appropriate course of action.
"The plant was non-operational at the time.
"The plant will remain non-operational while the chemical is disposed of."
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https://www.northaugustastar.com/news/plutonium-mishap-at-los-alamo...
Plutonium mishap at Los Alamos National Lab accentuates pit production worries
- Jul 14, 2020
Fifteen workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory might have been exposed to plutonium, a potentially grave mishap that some industry observers and critics say portends trouble for plutonium pit production, a separate cross-country nuclear weapons mission.
At least one lab worker received "significant contamination" on his hair, skin and protective clothing, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, following a June breach in a glovebox, a sealed piece of equipment used to handle dangerous or toxic substances.
"The room experienced significant" airborne radioactivity at the time and alarms triggered, inspectors with the independent board reported. A Los Alamos spokesperson on July 8 said "laboratory employees responded promptly and appropriately, and cleared the room in a safe manner."
The one worker, the DNFSB noted, was successfully decontaminated and provided chelation therapy, a treatment for heavy-metal poisoning.
Los Alamos is investigating the June 8 exposure, and the total 15 workers are being monitored and evaluated, the same spokesperson said. The area where it happened at the New Mexico lab has been secured, pending a review.
Exactly how long that review will take is unclear, as are its consequences.
The "serious" incident last month is a "tiny window into long standing problems here," Greg Mello, with the watchdog Los Alamos Study Group, said in an interview with the Aiken Standard. It comes at a time, too, when the lab is maneuvering toward and preparing for jumpstarted plutonium pit production, the forging of nuclear weapon cores.
Federal law mandates the production of 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030 – a tight schedule, defense officials have acknowledged. While the Savannah River Site would produce 50 of those pits per year, according to a joint recommendation made by the National Nuclear Security Administration and the U.S. Department of Defense in 2018, Los Alamos would produce 30.
What recently transpired at Los Alamos "casts a long shadow" over the lab's "pell-mell rush to acquire a huge plutonium production mission, namely pit production," Mello said last week. Stephen Young, a Washington representative for the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, described the circumstances as "tricky, dangerous," expensive and time consuming.
"This is yet another example of why the current pit production plan is doomed to failure," Young said.
Savannah River Site Watch Director Tom Clements on July 8 similarly said the plutonium exposure is troubling – for both South Carolina and New Mexico.
"The rush by DOE to quickly expand plutonium pit production to SRS is fraught with risks and this accident serves as a red alert about those fast-tracked plans," he said. "NNSA must immediately pause their overly ambitious pit production plans and fully review this troubling plutonium accident and its implications in environmental documents being prepared on pits at both SRS and Los Alamos."
Los Alamos, near Albuquerque and Santa Fe, has been recognized as a plutonium center of excellence. Plutonium-238, what was being handled June 8, is not used in nuclear weapons, as NASA has noted.
Pit production at the Savannah River Site, according to the 2018 recommendation, would mean repurposing the failed and incomplete Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
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Comment by jorge namour on July 3, 2020 at 6:50pm
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Iran struggles to explain fire at Natanz nuclear complex
Updated 1618 GMT (0018 HKT) July 3, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/02/world/iran-natanz-nuclear-comple...
A photo provided by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) of a building at the Natanz nuclear site appeared to show serious fire damage.
Tehran (CNN)Iran struggled to explain a fire that tore through the Iranian Natanz nuclear complex on Thursday morning, causing major damage to a site that has been key to the country's uranium enrichment program.
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) shared an image of the damaged building, which appeared to show a roof charred by fire, broken doors and blown out windows
The heat signature from the fire appears to have been captured by the NOAA-20 satellite, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The fire was detected in the northwestern corner of the facility at around 2:06 a.m. local time early Thursday morning, according to data obtained by CNN from the satellite.
No casualties were reported at the facility in Iran's Isfahan Province, south of the capital Tehran, according to semi-official news agency Tasnim.
The incident is under investigation, according to state media Press TV, which cited an anonymous Iranian security official as saying that there was "no evidence" of sabotage.
Questions are swirling in the international community about the incident, which comes just a week after a major explosion on the outskirts of Tehran, near the town of Parchin and a military facility.
Heat signature data from the NOAA-20 satellite, when displayed on an undated satellite image, indicates there was a fire (seen as red boxes in the image) at 2:06 a.m. local time on July 2, in the northwestern corner of the complex. CONTINUE......
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-appears-to-be-ignoring-...
Russia appears to be ignoring the UN nuclear watchdog after it was accused of being behind a mysterious radiation leak into Scandinavia
Russia appears to be ignoring a request for information from the UN's nuclear watchdog after it was accused of being behind a radiation spike in Scandinavia.
A safe but remarkable uptick in levels of three radioactive isotopes was observed in Sweden, Finland, and Norway last week. Dutch authorities said it came "from the direction of Western Russia."
The International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday said it had asked European countries for data. Twenty-nine countries responded, but not Russia.
On Saturday, Russia's nuclear energy operator denied it was the source of the leak and said its plants were all working as usual.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Russia is yet to respond to a request for information from the UN nuclear watchdog after it was accused of being behind a radiation leak in Scandinavia.
Last week, authorities in Sweden, Finland, and Norway reported a minor uptick in levels of the Ru-103, Cs-134, and Cs-137 radioactive isotopes.
An analysis by the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (NIPHE) found that the radiation was coming "from the direction of Western Russia."
On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that 29 European countries had so far responded to a request for a situation report sent on Saturday — but not Russia.The countries "reported to the IAEA that there were no events on their territories that may have caused the observed air concentrations of Ru-103, Cs-134 and Cs-137."
While the increase in radiation is unknown, it is not dangerous, said Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the IAEA.
"I expect more Member States to provide relevant information and data to us, and we will continue to inform the public," he said.The pattern of radiation, according to NIPHE, "indicates damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant."
A spokesperson for Rosenergoatom Concern, a branch of the centralized Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom, denied that there had been a leak on Saturday.
Two nuclear powerplants in western Russia, the Leningrad and the Kola, are "working in normal regime," the spokesperson told state news agency TASS on Saturday.
Russia has a long a turbulent history with nuclear power, most famously trying to cover up the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in 1986.
It was accused of failing to disclose an accident at the Mayak nuclear facility in 2017 and of covering up an accident at a nuclear facility in Nyonoksa in August 2019.
Russia has 36 nuclear power reactors in total, according to the IAEA.
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https://theferret.scot/torness-nuclear-reactor-shut-faulty-valve/
Torness nuclear reactor shut by faulty valve
June 25 2020
One of the nuclear power reactors at Torness in East Lothian has been shut down following a problem with a valve, prompting increased concerns about its future.
EDF Energy, the French company that runs Torness, has said that reactor two went offline on 23 June because a key valve in the steam turbine closed. It is investigating what went wrong, and hoping to restart the reactor on 30 June.
Reactor one at Torness, which is still running, is now the only one of four reactors in Scotland currently generating electricity. The other two reactors at Hunterston in North Ayrshire have been closed for most of the last two years because of spreading cracks in their graphite cores.Torness station director, Robert Gunn, emailed local stakeholders on 25 June with news of the closure. “The shutdown was due to the closure of a governor valve in the conventional non-nuclear part of the power station,” he said.
“Our systems are designed to ‘fail safe’ and as our operators worked to resolve the issue, the unit automatically shut down. As a result, steam was released from the vents which made a loud noise.”
Gunn added: “This was perfectly normal and expected in a safe shut down like this. The reactor shut down and cooled safely, which is our overriding priority when a reactor goes offline, and there were no health or environmental impacts.
“The unit will be returned to service once an investigation has been carried out.”
Gunn pointed out that Torness reactor two had been operating uninterrupted for 552 days before it shut down on 23 June. The station, which started up in 1988, has the capacity to generate electricity for more than two million homes.
Gavin Corbett, a green councillor for Edinburgh and a member of the Torness local liaison committee, was informed of the closure. “The plant manager was at pains to emphasise that the shut down did not pose any safety concerns although that is for the investigation to determine rather than being prejudged,” he told The Ferret.
“Clearly, a nuclear reactor isn’t closed down for a week for no reason. Torness is 31 years old now and should have been approaching its closure very soon.”
Corbett pointed out that the plant’s “shelf life” had been extended until 2030. “I’d expect very close scrutiny of the operation and plans developed to ensure the staff and suppliers have a long term future in a thriving Lothian and Forth renewables industry,” he said.The Ferret reported on 6 May 2020 that the UK’s nuclear safety watchdog was predicting that cracks would start appearing in graphite cores at Torness six years sooner that previously thought. The Office for Nuclear Regulation said that cracking – which could increase the risk of a nuclear accident – was now expected to begin in 2022.
Friends of the Earth Scotland warned that nuclear power isn’t helping the country’s energy mix. “With cracks in reactor cores nuclear power is clearly on a shoogly peg in Scotland,” said the environmental group’s director, Dr Richard Dixon.
“The sooner we phase out nuclear power and rely on a broad mix of renewables and storage systems the better.”
Edinburgh-based nuclear consultant, Peter Roche, highlighted that there had been faulty valves in an EDF reactor in France. “Scotland has only one operating reactor just now,” he said.
“But the lights haven’t gone out. It’s time to phase out nuclear and go 100 per cent renewable.”
A spokesperson for EDF Energy said: “Unit two at Torness power station came offline due to the closure of a valve associated with the boilers in the conventional, or non-nuclear, side of the plant. Shutdown took place as expected and we expect to re-start in a few days.”
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https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2020/06/03/seabrook-emergency-shutd...
Seabrook Nuclear Plant Gets Back Online Safely After Unexpected Shutdown
June 03, 2020
Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant is back online after an unplanned shutdown this past weekend.
Officials with the plant and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say the incident did not pose a safety risk, and a watchdog group agrees.
The malfunction involved Seabrook’s control rods, which are used to fine-tune the fission reaction that powers the facility.A report to federal regulators says on Friday afternoon, a set of control rods moved into the reactor when they weren't supposed to.
This led operators to trip the reactor, or shut it down. The whole process is known as an emergency manual scram.
"On Friday, our operators followed their procedures and training and initiated a manual shutdown of Seabrook’s reactor after an issue with a piece of equipment," says a spokesman for Seabrook's owner, NextEra, in a statement. "All systems responded normally and the equipment issue has been addressed."
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8406315/Dramatic-moment-si...
Dramatic moment silo collapses at unfinished nuclear power plant Hinkley Point C throwing huge dust cloud into the air
115-ft tower suffered 'structural damage' at Hinkley Point C incident today
EDF said there were no injuries and will investigating incident near Bridgwater
Construction at Hinkley Point C is unfinished and is due to be completed in 2025A 115-ft tower at the unfinished Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant suffered 'structural damage' today, throwing a huge dust cloud into the air.
EDF, which is building the plant, has denied eyewitness claims of an explosion, and confirmed that no one was injured at the 7.30am incident.
The energy supplier is now investigating the events of this morning which occurred at the plant, due to be completely constructed in 2025, near Bridgwater.
A spokesman for EDF said: 'At around 7.30am a silo in the concrete batching plant at Hinkley Point C suffered structural damage, releasing a dust cloud around the area.The 115-ft tower, which weighs 5,000 tonnes, suffered 'structural damage' at 7.30am when onlookers said they heard what sounded like an explosion
'Nobody has been injured and the emergency services were not required. An investigation is underway to understand the cause of the event.'The silo contains ground-granulated blast-furnace slag which plays a 'pivotal role' in the plant's construction by reusing the material within its concrete.
Ground-granulated blast-furnace slag is obtained by quenching molten iron slag from a blast furnace in water or steam to produce a glass, granular product.
This product is then dried and ground into a fine powder, which explains why there was a large dust cold when the silo collapsed.
State-owned French supplier EDF is building two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point C to provide low-carbon electricity for six million British homes.EDF has denied there was an explosion, and said no one was injured. The energy supplier is now investigating the incident near Bridgwater, Somerset
Construction of the nuclear power plant was officially approved in 2016, with EDF wanting to build another station at Sizewell in Suffolk.
Financing for Hinkley Point C, which is expected to cost more than £20billion, is being split between EDF and state-owned Chinese General Nuclear (CGN).CGN which was invited to assist the construction of Hinkley Point C by David Cameron, was blacklisted by the US government for espionage last August.
In May, a senior US official told the Mail on Sunday that CGN's involvement in UK power generation would jeopardise Britain's political independent for many decades.Dr Christopher Ford, the US State Department’s assistant secretary for non-proliferation and international security, warned that CGN is closely linked to the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party's military.
One of the company’s top engineers has previously been convicted and jailed in the US for running a spy network at the behest of Beijing.
In an appeal to the Government, which was criticised by the US for initially allowing Chinese telecoms company Huawei to help build up Britain's 5G network, Dr Ford said: 'We are trying to discourage our friends and partners from engaging with a Chinese nuclear company that is known for such acts.'
Work on Hinkley Point C has continued throughout the coronavirus crisis, as workers previously warned about the perceived lack of social distancing measures.
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https://www.en24.news/2020/06/a-level-1-incident-reported-at-the-pe...
France
A level 1 incident reported at the Penly nuclear power plant
June 4, 2020The Penly nuclear power plant, near Dieppe. — BEAUFILS/SIPA
An incident was reported on 28 May to the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) by the management of the Penly power plant in Petit-Caux (
Seine-Maritime). The malfunction of one of the four core monitoring detectors in reactor No. 1 was involved in this Level 1 incident on a scale of 7, explains Paris-Normandy Thursday.
“Repairs to the offending detector are underway,” said a statement from EDF, which manages the facility.
A faulty detector
The failure was noticed during a visit to the facility on May 16. As the reactor’s power decline was initiated, an intermediate detector displayed different measurements from the other three calculating the reactor’s power variation. In an initial analysis, the detector was found to be functional, but a second concluded that it malfunctioned.
“At all times, the other three detectors remained functional, and the monitoring of the heart remained effective. However, due to an initial mis-analysis, management declared this event,” EDF said.
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https://www.dw.com/en/germany-radiation-leak-detected-at-research-r...
Germany: Radiation leak detected at research reactor
Date 16.05.2020
A research reactor near Munich has emitted excess C-14 radiation, says the Bavarian city's technical university. The "slight" leak late March had shown up Thursday when monthly readings were collated.
Munich's technical university (TUM) said Saturday a neutron reactor located at Garchingjust north of the metropole was found to have leaked nuclides into the atmosphere "slightly" above the level permitted annually in its license.
Neither human beings nor the surrounding environment had been endangered, said the TUM and Bavaria's environmental ministry — responsible for oversight.
Monthly figures collated on Thursday had shown an excess in C-14 particles 15% above the permitted yearly level, with the potential to cause "theoretically" a load for the public of 3 Mikrosieverts at the maximum.
That was less than the level a patient undergoing an x-ray at the dentists' would endure, said Anke Görg spokesperson for the TUM's operating institute, known as FRMII.
"An individual error during the installation of the mobile drying unit used for this purpose caused the discharge of the C-14 over a short period of time," Görg added, referring to a method used to extract C-14 in resin from water in the reactor's tank.
The Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said the notifiable incident was ranked "0," very low on the international scale.
Read more: Germany's anti-nuclear movement: Still going strong after four decades of activism
Garching's divisive 'Egg'
Garching's special campus, where an "egg"-shaped dome covers an older reactor — used between 1957 and 2000 — draws annually about 1,000 international researchers who experiment with its newer neutron reactor, the so-called FRMII.
The facility was put on hold on March 17 because of the current pandemic, leaving many scientists unable to glean results for industry and medicine, said Görg.
The FRMII reactor, inaugurated in 2005, remains controversial among organizations like Germany's branch of Friends of the Earth (BUND) and opposition Greens in Bavaria's state assembly.
Detection of the isotope C-14 is a key method in so-called carbon-dating to determine the age of ancient objects containing organic material.
Read more: Winds of change push German power grid to brink
Decades of turmoil
Bavaria, which in the 1970s went through political turmoil over the siting of six nuclear reactors, now has only two of them in operation — Isar 2 east of Munich, and Gundremmingen C, west of Augsburg.
As a whole, Germany currently has six reactors running as a whole, according to the federal environment ministry, as it continues its nuclear-power phase-out, spurred by Japan's 2011 Fukushima disaster, as it pushes for renewables.
Read more: Nuclear reactor to shut down amid Germany's atomic phase-out
Europe still has 108 reactors running
Positioned just outside Germany's borders are further nuclear plants, for example, Cattenom, a four-reactor French power station.
It lies alongside the Moselle river in France's Lothringia region, adjacent to Germany's states of Saarland and Rhineland Palatinate, and EU hub Luxembourg.
Downwind in terms of prevailing weather are German cities such as Frankfurt, Mainz and Heidelberg.
Western Europe currently has 108 operational reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEO) based in Paris.
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