HN Reader

A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool

689

507

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...

3 months agoby Animats

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.

3 months 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.

3 months agoby unglaublich

“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

3 months agoby dudidn

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!

3 months agoby slicktux

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.

3 months agoby arthurcolle

> 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"

3 months agoby hshdhdhehd

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.

3 months agoby antirez

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.

3 months agoby DoctorOetker

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

3 months agoby BirAdam

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.

3 months agoby robviren

I once worked in a nuclear research reactor, and they had lifebuoys at their pool. Quite prescient, as it turns out.

3 months agoby fsh

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.

3 months agoby ByteDrifter

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

3 months agoby Hobadee

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

3 months agoby fwlr

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.

3 months agoby sebmellen

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

3 months agoby sigmar

Your periodic reminder that coal is deadlier than nuclear.

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

3 months agoby 0xDEAFBEAD

I wonder if it had anything to do with the empty "alcoholic bottles" being found?

FITNESS FOR DUTY (FFD) EVENT

The following information was provided by the licensee via phone and email:

"On 10/25/25, at approximately 1230 EDT, 3 empty alcohol bottles were found in the protected area by a contract employee. Site security was notified and took possession of the empty bottles which were removed from the protected area. The individual who accidentally brought in the empty alcohol bottles with other non-alcoholic empty bottles was tested for FFD and was negative. This event is reportable in accordance with 10 CFR 26.719(b).

"The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified."

3 months agoby Movah

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

3 months agoby almosthere

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.

3 months agoby pembrook

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

3 months agoby piinbinary

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?

3 months agoby jenadine

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

3 months agoby system2

At Purdue university we had a small research reactor and to this day can remember looking down through the pool to see the blue glow of the nuclear reaction. It is crazy how well the water (boronized?) stops radiation.

3 months agoby outside1234

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

3 months agoby _qua

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?

3 months agoby notepad0x90

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.

3 months agoby mobeigi

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

Hair contaminated

3 months agoby rurban

> 300 counts per minute

Roughly 10x background radiation.

So like two weeks of sunshine in a day.

Not a good day. Not fatal.

3 months agoby dbg31415

I'm sure it has nothing to do with corporate malfeasance.

3 months agoby everdev

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.

3 months agoby Cheezmeister

I'm not literate at all on nuclear physics, but I remember in the "Chernobyl" TV show (which seemed trustworthy) some divers died after going in the cooling water to close the pumps. How was that water different ?

3 months agoby Galanwe

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

3 months agoby ggm

I have instagram id hack please

3 months agoby shravani_05_01

No more horseplay around the reactor!

3 months agoby satisfice

These are quite a few reports for one day for a technology we purportedly have under full control, nothing to worry.