UK averted major nuke disaster in 2007, thanks to laundry employee

London, June 12 (ANI): Britain has saved itself from probably its worst nuclear disaster, thanks to a worker who spotted water as he was sorting out his laundry.

According to an official report obtained by The Telegraph, disaster was averted at the Sizewell A nuclear reactor when the worker spotted over 40,000 gallons of radioactive water leaking out into the open.

The leak was caused when a 15-foot crack appeared in a pipe leading to a cooling pond in the Sizewell A reactor in January 2007.

If the worker had not spotted it, the pool, which contained 5,000 spent uranium fuel rods, could have run dry, causing the rods to ignite which would have sparked a supercharged radioactive fire, it was claimed.

Despite the potential severity of the incident, no one has been fined or prosecuted.

Sizewell A, which is on the Suffolk coast, stopped generating electricity in December 2006 and the decommissioning process began.

Part of that process is the cooling of spent fuel rods in water ponds and it takes years before they can be moved.

The complete details of this incident were only released after a Freedom of Information request. (ANI)