Nuclear plant operators in South Korea got screwed, literally. A nuclear reactor located about 160 miles south of Seoul in Yeonggwang broke down on Feb 4.

Today the plant is up and running again. Now engineers are blaming a stray screwdriver, no not the alcoholic beverage, but a real almost foot long screwdriver jammed in a cooling pump motor for the trouble.

While making repairs the 11.8 inch screwdriver was found in the motor of a cooling pump. The engineers say it was most likely responsible for the breakdown. All those years of training and they don’t know for sure? If the plant ceased to operate with the screwdriver in the pump motor and worked after it was removed it would seem pretty obvious what the cause was.

This would almost be laughable except for the fact that public safety depends on workers like these. Worse yet, the plant operators have no idea where the screwdriver came from or how it got in there. It would seem like a screwdriver that size would be missed. Let us hope that is the only tool the worker lost.

The cooling pump was last worked on in 2002. The screwdriver may have been left behind all that time or may have entered from another source. There are a lot of unanswered questions here like: Has any maintenance been done on the pump during that nine-year interval? I couldn’t imagine not changing spark plugs for nine years, let alone not doing preventative maintenance on such a key component of a nuclear plant.

There are fears that the incident may lead to concerns over safety from the public. Thankfully no serious harm was done but the incident does raise concerns about public safety and not just in South Korea. Don’t think it can’t happen here. Human error knows no boundaries. As Chernobyl taught us a nuclear accident is not just a local event but a world issue because radiation also knows no boundaries.

South Korea gets 30 percent of its power from nuclear energy and runs 20 nuclear reactors. Over the next 12 years it plans to build 12 more. It has plans to export its technological expertise and currently is under contract to build four nuclear power plants in the UAE.