The Hindu Business Line : Probe team questions Kaiga employees

KAIGA (KARNATAKA): Investigators on Monday questioned the employees present in the operating area of the Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant after preliminary findings revealed “internal sabotage” for radioactive contamination of drinking water at the high-securit y complex.

The probe team, which includes nuclear scientists, questioned the employees present on the night intervening November 23-24 during which radioactive heavy water (tritium) vials were put in the water cooler, said a senior official in the plant in Karnatak a’s Uttara Kannada District.

“Relevant agencies are conducting the probe. Questioning is part of the investigation,” he said.

In New Delhi, the Union Minister, Mr Prithviraj Chavan, said the Government was taking the issue “very seriously” as it was “breach of some security measures’’.

Mr Chavan, who is the Minister of State in the PMO, said: “All agencies are looking into the matter. Somebody from the lab, who had access to the water cooler, had done it between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. (of November 24).”

On the medical treatment provided to around 50 employees who were exposed to radiation after drinking the cooler water, Mr Chavan said, “All the people have been medicated and they have returned to work.”

Kaiga plant officials said the computer access control system has a record of all the personnel who had entered the “operating island” as the contamination incident is believed to be an insider’s job. — PTI

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