Explosion at Nuclear Plant in France Kills One, Injures Four
We take a break from tonight's badger-eaten-sex-dwarf news to bring you this story out of France: An explosion on Monday afternoon at the Centraco nuclear waste processing plant has killed one and injured four. The fatality was burned so badly that "his body was carbonized," DC Bureau reports.
The French Nuclear Safety Authority stresses that there was no radiation leak at the plant, which is located about five miles from Avignon. The explosion happened in the plant's foundry, where four tons of "mildly radioactive" metal objects where being melted down.
The cause of the explosion was not yet known, he said, but he emphasized that the level of radiation - about 67,000 becquerels - contained in the molten metal was minor. [Photo via AP]
"This is very, very low - nothing close to the radioactivity you would find inside a nuclear power plant," he said.
Still, a security perimeter was set up around the plant (pictured). Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the minister for energy and environmental issues, visited the site, and defined the incident as an "industrial accident at a nuclear site" that "aroused emotion and vigilance." [Photo credit: AP]