The radioactive leak at Con Edison’s Indian Point 2 power plant was not the first time poison found its way outside, The Post has learned.
Radioactive material was “erroneously” moved from the nuclear plant and taken to Con Edison’s Queens laboratory for analysis in June 1984, utility officials confirmed yesterday.
Con Ed downplayed the 16-year-old incident — but former workers said it was far worse than officials portrayed.
Shortly after the material arrived at a Con Ed lab in Astoria, one worker’s skin “looked like a piece of raw meat,” said Mildred Bunn, a clerk at the chemical lab who retired last April after 21 years with Con Ed.
“It set off the Geiger counters, and they ended up locking all the counters up” so they wouldn’t have to hear them, Bunn added.
The material was put in a locked storage area, she said.
The hazardous sample had been driven to the lab by Con Ed scientists, said Ronald Mecklosky, a company chemist.
“He [the scientist] told me he just took hot stuff from Indian Point,” Mecklosky said. “It was never reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
Con Ed officials called the incident a mistake.
“There was a small sample of sludge from a steam generator sent from the Indian Point station to the Astoria lab,” Con Ed spokesman Joseph Petta said. “It should not have been sent.”
The company maintained the sample’s volume was only 150 cubic centimeters and that, when tested, it showed a radiation level equal to one-twentieth of that from a chest X-ray.
But experts said a sample that weak would have never set off Geiger counters or caused skin rashes.
In any case, it was returned to Indian Point within a week, Petta said.
“We tested the lab in Astoria for radioactivity and found none,” Petta said, noting the sample may have gotten mixed up with others.
Con Ed could not say whether it reported the incident to the NRC, which is probing it now.
Meanwhile, Indian Point 2 remained shut yesterday as residents protested and the NRC probed Tuesday’s release of radioactive steam at a rate of 75 gallons per minute.
Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano complained about the NRC’s postponing an inspection of the plant’s steam generators from last June until this June despite doubts about their reliability.