HN Reader

A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool

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Palisades MI reactor. Currently shut down and de-fueled but a restart of this reactor is apparently underway, with new fuel assemblies being delivered.[1]

Worker was wearing a life vest.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Nuclear_Generating_S...

[2] https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/10/michigan-nuclear-plant-wo...

13 hours agoby Animats

Basically often it could be better to have an incident in a nuclear plant than in some building construction site... But the attention delta is incredibly high. 300 CPM sounds low, I hope they will be fine.

26 minutes agoby antirez

This is bad but cavity water radiation is usually very weak. Ingestion could be bad but its not like he swallowed a uranium isotope which would be catastrophic.

14 hours agoby tt_dev

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has a great YouTube channel where they carefully analyze similar accidents.

https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB/videos

Not necessarily nuclear (since chemical and industrial accidents are much, muhc more likely), but highly recommended if you're interested in such incidents and their causes.

7 hours agoby unglaublich

300 CPM in hair after decontamination is a massive red flag. If this is from systemic circulation, could be GBq-level total body activity.

The non-emergency classification is bureaucratic nonsense. This is an internal contamination event with unknown but potentially severe consequences.

12 hours agoby arthurcolle

I’ve heard of people falling into the spent fuel pool but never the reactor pool. Usually there are strict FME barriers in place and one cannot even look over into the pool without violating the FME. I wonder what led to the event? Definitely an OSHA recordable!

13 hours agoby slicktux

Why is this interesting? Workers gets injured all the time and sometimes even die on various accidents in all industries and nobody ever talk about it. Is this anti-nuclear propaganda?

1 hour agoby jenadine

> Non Emergency

I guess in a nuclear reactor there is a lingual shift and the word emergency cant be used for just any old 911 call.

Like how Australians apparently call a jellyfish bite "uncomfortable"

14 hours agoby hshdhdhehd

Why didn't they shave off the hair and measure again before sending off to medical? They have the opportunity to report lower numbers, and would enable identifying non-hair-adsorbed radiatioactive matter on the subject. It sounds so easy and actionable it boggles the mind that it's not part of the protocol.

12 hours agoby DoctorOetker

Incidents like this show that “nuclear safety” is as much cultural as technical. Even the best systems fail when people and organizations stop treating the environment with the respect it demands.

2 hours agoby ByteDrifter

The fear about nuclear is so big that this idiocy gets 500 points and 350 comments because nuclear is scary

52 minutes agoby JumpinJack_Cash

“worker fell off roof installing solar panels” — just getting ahead of the ‘anti-nuclear’ folks on here. Energy installations all come with risks, albeit nuclear long tail accidents are mutli-generational and externalised to people not involved in managing the risk

12 hours agoby dudidn

I greatly appreciate the nuclear industry. Nuclear field engineering was my first "real" job out of college and they really committ to safety. Transparency in this industry is inspiring because everyone involved knows that one screw up and that's the end of the US nuclear industry. Good luck getting oil and gas to be accountable and as transparent about incidents. I carry the culture into the rest of my work and appreciate being involved. Wish events like this didn't happen but it is not of significant danger and I find it great that they communicate even "smaller" issues.

13 hours agoby robviren

I have SOOO many questions, and this report answers SOOO few of them.

14 hours agoby Hobadee

Relevant from Randall Munroe https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

> What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface?

> Assuming you’re a reasonably good swimmer, you could probably survive treading water anywhere from 10 to 40 hours. At that point, you would black out from fatigue and drown. This is also true for a pool without nuclear fuel in the bottom.

9 hours agoby sebmellen

Scrolling up and down the list, just how onerous is this reporting regulation? It seems almost cartoonishly excessive, even for critical safety applications.

13 hours agoby fwlr

It doesn't say worker, just "person." I could understand falling in with some freak accident where you trip. But they ingested the water?!

14 hours agoby sigmar

Is he going to die no matter what or is this survivable?

12 hours agoby almosthere

If my childhood taught me anything, it’s that there’s about to be an awesome superhero.

13 hours agoby BirAdam

Your periodic reminder that coal is deadlier than nuclear.

https://cns.utexas.edu/news/research/coal-power-killed-half-...

14 hours agoby 0xDEAFBEAD

Hopefully the worker is okay. I have to agree that the non-emergency classification seems odd. This should warrant a proper investigation and steps to avoid this in the future.

9 hours agoby mobeigi

I thought you could safely swim in that water so long as you stay a few meters clear of the rods? water being a good absorber of radiation and all. Is this just a precautionary reaction?

10 hours agoby notepad0x90

New superhero on their way.

1 hour agoby matjazk

Does anyone have a sense for how significant of a dose of radiation this person got?

14 hours agoby piinbinary

Palisades was closed down 2022, but just reopened recently at August 27, 2025.

Hair contaminated

6 hours agoby rurban

Interesting page overall. Didn't realize reactors get scrammed that often.

14 hours agoby _qua

Does the operator go to court for OH&S breaches?

7 hours agoby ggm

For comparison: https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/calculator

In other news, a kitten named millicurie did a really adorable thing.

The only remarkable fact here is that the regulatory structure is strong enough that we commoners are entitled to hear about it. That's a Very Good Thing, and one I wish we enjoyed apropos, say, the corporate veil (looking at you, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Aramco, Sinopec, Amazon, Oracle, AIPAC, United, The Trump Organization, X Corp, Paramount, Skydance, eMed Population Health, Inc., et. al.).

But the story here is a guy fell into some water, and is following SOP (which is also a Very Good Thing).

Please don't feed the clickbait.

5 hours agoby Cheezmeister

The rest of the event reports are also very active. Reactor sites are fun places to work.

7 hours agoby system2

swimming in a reactor pool isnt that bad, water is a great radiation shield.

2 hours agoby throw-10-13

Toxic Avenger remake.

10 hours agoby JackAcid

Guys slow down, you're gonna hug xkcd to death

3 hours agoby lijok

Man in Michigan potentially exposed to radiation levels equivalent to undergoing 4 x-rays at the doctors office.

Meanwhile, in Texas, 1.5 people die every day working in Oil and Gas extraction.

A few people die every year installing or falling off of wind turbines.

But by all means, let's make this a news story instead and keep making nuclear sound scary. I’m sure the person who posted this to HN with this clickbait title has zero political beliefs.

13 hours agoby pembrook

I can't help but be reminded of relevant xkcd^{TM} https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

11 hours agoby qwertytyyuu

Apparently it’s fine according to this xkcd: https://youtu.be/EFRUL7vKdU8

14 hours agoby nojs

Mandatory xkcd: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

13 hours agoby amarant

No more horseplay around the reactor!

12 hours agoby satisfice

Relevant xkcd content: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

14 hours agoby christina97

and so hulk was born