(... more April 28, Forsmark)
09:00 am An alarm was sent from Reactor 1, where a routine check
revealed that the soles of the shoes worn by a radiological safety engineer
were radioactive.
10.00 All the three reactor blocks had proved "clean," and the
grounds were being checked for radioactivity.
11.30 The high level of radioactivity was reported at a regular
internal production meeting attended by the plant management. The gates
to the plant area were ordered shut.
11.45 The regular meeting broke up and the emergency command
room was manned in a shelter inside the mountain near the administration
building, which housed communication equipment. The procedure had been
practiced many times.
In the large room in the shelter were two desks. At one desk sat the
plant manager, who was in direct contact with the control room in the block
where an accident was assumed to have occurred. He was joined by the director
of operations and other key management and the information chief. The other
desk was manned by surveillance heads, fire and police department personnel,
and telephone operators.
12.15 The county alarm central and the relevant public authorities
were informed of the emergency.
12.30 The plant was closed off to all non-essential traffic.
The wheels of outgoing vehicles were checked for radioactivity. Measurement
personnel were assembled and transportation resources were organized.
Technical analysis commenced to find the cause of leakage from one
of the three Forsmark reactors. At the same time the first news of a suspected
leakage in one of the Forsmark blocks was sent over the local radio. The
local radio station, Radio Uppland, is designated in Forsmark's emergency
plans as the main channel for communicating with the public. The station
personnel have been drilled for emergencies.
12.45 Reinforcements for Forsmark's public information department
were called in.
13.00 An alarm was sent through the plant's loudspeaker system
ordering evacuation of the plant by all personnel except for necessary
operational forces and those engaged in contingency plans. Cars with loudspeakers
spread the news to plant workers who were housed in barracks and charged
with the disposal of low-level nuclear waste 50 meters below the ocean
surface.
The evacuated personnel were directed to the decontamination station
in the village of Norrskedika but were stopped temporarily at the plant
exit when it was learned that the station facilities were not yet able
to receive them.
14.00 (noon in Sweden) About 700 people got through the traffic
jams that resulted from the roadblocks and arrived at Norrskedika. They
lined up outside the sports hall where the Forsmark plant had pre-installed
apparatus to measure radioactivity. They followed procedures from earlier
emergency training sessions. The radiation action limit for employees at
Swedish plants is set at 50 millisievert per year.
14.05 The local radio station broadcast an interview with the
director of plant operations at 15.00 The information chief contacted the
press department at the State Water Power Commission to prepare for a press
conference to beheld in Forsmark's information offices at 14.00. At the
same time preparations were made for a possible shut-down of the Forsmark
blocks; two hour's notice was set for the shut-down of Reactor Block 3.
The electricity produced by Block 3 would be compensated by the power produced
by oil-fueled plants at Stenungssund and Karlshamn, which had a start-up
time of three hours.
14.50 Beginning at 14 hours power sales to Norway were to be
cut by 500 megawatts and notice was given of additional reductions of 500
megawatts beginning at 17 hours.
14.57 Stenungsund's Block 3 received start orders and was to
be in a state of readiness within three hours.
15.00 All other nuclear power plants in the Nordic countries
were asked to carry out measurements.
15.20 It was announced that only Reactor Block 3 at Forsmark
would be involved in a shut-down with two hour's notice, and the cutbacks
in electricity sales to Norway were rescinded.
16.00 The General Director of the State Water Power Commission
and the government’s Minister of Energy agreed to hold a press conference
at 18 hours.
16.50 The stand-by to shut down the Forsmark block and the start
order to Stenungsund and Karlshamn were rescinded.
17.15 Radioactive coating on the ground that did not originate
in Forsmark was found in Oskarshamn, Barsebäck, and Ringhals - nuclear
plants distant from the Forsmark area - and the finding reported to the
command center at Forsmark.
17.30 The evacuees were allowed to leave Norrskedika. None had
come in the remote neighborhood of an action limit for radioactivity, but
some had to leave their shoes behind and journey home with plastic coverings
on their feet. By this time about 300 persons had been checked for radioactivity.
Forsmark now returned to a state of normalcy.
18.00 Analysis initiated by the Forsmark command station disclosed
that a reactor was involved in the fallout and not a nuclear weapons test.
New measurements were carried out over larger areas. Forsmark's information
chief was interviewed by representatives of foreign media. The spotlight
of the world was on Forsmark. From Chernobyl itself there were no news.
Lars Wahlström, radiology supervisor at Forsmark, has given this
summary of the events:
"Something indicated that radioactivity had leaked out from one of
the blocks at Forsmark. Rumors about the activity circulated between noon
and 14hours and people said 'Now let's leave here.' At the same time news
arrived that radioactivity had been detected in Finland. I said, I want
evidence. Among other things I called Studsviks Energiteknik AB, where
management was sitting in a crisis meeting and where they said 'We think
it's coming from one of our laboratories.' But that wasn't so. Soon I also
began to have doubts that there was anything wrong in any of the Forsmark
reactors, which I told the National Institute of Radiation Protection.
We had even been inside the chimney and checked. Then the Institute said
the fallout had come from somewhere in the east, and by around 15.30 it
was determined that the fallout definitely did not come from Forsmark."