Contamination of a hundred workers at Tricastin nuclear power plant (Drôme, France)

On 23 July 2008, ASN has been informed by EDF management of Tricastin NPP that during reactor 4 outage for maintenance works and for fuel reloading, a hundred workers had been contaminated.

The reactor was shut down and completely emptied of its fuel. This state allows maintenance on different components of the primary system.

On 23 July 2008 around 9:30 am, in the course of maintenance works on one of the primary system pipes, two monitoring stations located in the reactor building detected a air contamination : in accordance with its procedures, EDF then proceeded to the evacuation of the building and has forbidden its access. Workers who were in the building had an anthropogammametry scanning and medical checks on the spot.

These checks revealed that a hundred workers was contaminated at levels that do not exceed, according to EDF, the fortieth of the annual regulatory limit, set at 20 mSv in the case of a worker.

ASN classes provisionally this event at level 0 of the INES Scale.