Someone managed to sneak two goldfish into a secure area of the Perry Nuclear Plant, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Thursday, but neither FirstEnergy nor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found it very funny.
Crews working in a steam tunnel connecting the reactor to the turbine building found the fish swimming in a pitcher. A plant spokeswoman told the paper that chemists found just-detectable levels of radiation in the water.
Perry is already in the "degraded cornerstone" column of the NRC's action matrix because of occupational safety violations dating to 2011, according to the agency. While the incident last week was not serious enough to merit an event report to the NRC, an agency spokeswoman said inspectors will be looking into it further.
Perry, a General Electric boiling water reactor licensed in 1986, is offline for a refueling outage. Plant management will be reviewing video of the tunnel and questioning employees and contractors who had access to it.