Nuclear waste pumped into SA river exceeds legal limit

A higher-than-permitted amount of radioactive liquid material was pumped into a South African river last year, the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (NECSA) said in a statement on Monday. NECSA said the liquid was released from the corporation’s Pelindaba facility, 30 km west of Pretoria, into the Crocodile River. It said that the incident was the result of “an unfortunate error (which) crept into the algorithm method used for calculating the amount of radioactive material that NECSA is authorised to discharge”. The discharge occurred during the second quarter of 1999, it added. Meanwhile, the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR), which monitors South Africa’s nuclear industry, was quoted in news reports as saying that it has given NECSA 24 hours to show that all measures necessary to correct the situation had been implemented.