Two workers were killed and another seriously injured at the Cattenom nuclear plant in France Thursday.
A structure inside the reactor building of unit 4 fell on the employees of EDF contractors Presiozo and TNS Tractel shortly before 5 p.m. The reactor was offline at the time, as the plant had entered a maintenance outage on Feb. 9. Cattenom, one of the largest nuclear plants in the country, is located near the border with Luxembourg.
The Parisien and Républicain Lorrain newspapers reported that the structure, described as a basket, fell from a height of about 12 feet, and that the victims were between 38 and 44 years old. French nuclear regulators and other agencies are investigating the accident, and autopsies were performed Friday.
Work accidents are rare at nuclear plants, especially when compared to other workplaces in the industrial and energy sectors. According to statistics compiled by the World Association of Nuclear Operators, the 2011 rate of injuries and deaths at nuclear plants per 200,000 work hours was 0.74. By comparison, that is slightly below the injury rate of 0.8 for workers in the U.S. finance and insurance industries, based on a similar calculation made by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for the same year.