Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: VACUUM CLEANER SETS FIRE TO NUCLEAR PLANT

by Hazed

A vacuum cleaner was guilty of putting a nuclear powerplant in Sweden out of action for seven months, when it was left inside its containment vessel by mistake during tests. The cost of the disaster was calculated at 1.8 billion kronor (over 110 million US dollars) in lost revenue from electricity sales.

That's one expensive vacuum cleaner. See, I told you cleaning was a bad idea!

The fire broke out at the Ringhals powerplant south of Gothenburg in May, while No 2 reactor's containment was being tested. According to Swedish English-language journal The Local:

Someone forgot to remove a wet vacuum cleaner from the premises, which then caught on fire.

"It was a human error, and those shouldn't occur in our power plants," said Peter Gango, nuclear power chief at the company that owns the plant. Well, as long as humans are in charge, I expect there will be errors - the trick is to make sure any errors that do happen are not that devasting!

The powerplant bosses hope to get two of the four Ringhals reactors fired up next week.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/14/swedish_nuke_plant_fire/

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