![]() ![]() of Oklahoma City, was too busy to talk to reporters Sunday afternoon. ![]() A secretary said Donna McFarland, a spokeswoman for parent company Kerr McGee Corp. Sequoyah officials could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts. The gas had a nauseating odor and ″your throat burned,″ said Bill Kassinger, 38, an electrician for a construction company working on an expansion at the plant. ″It took him such a length of time (to escape the cloud) that he could not avoid (overexposure),″ he said. The employee who died was on a platform above the cylinder and downwind of the poison plume, Bangart said. The container then ruptured and all the gas spewed out. Workers heated the cylinder in an attempt to remove the excess gas, Bangart said. The cylinder, designed to hold 27,500 pounds of the mildly radioactive material, was filled with 29,500 pounds before employees realized they had improperly placed it on a scale, Bangart said at a news conference in Muskogee. ″For this kind of facility, this is one of the most severe accidents that they can have,″ he said. The leak of uranium hexafluoride apparently occurred after a cylinder was accidently overloaded, said Dick Bangart, director of the Division of Radiation Safety and Safeguards for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All but nine of those admitted were plant workers. Twenty-six people hospitalized overnight were released while eight remained hospitalized in stable or good condition. On Sunday, six federal investigators were at the Sequoyah Fuels Corp. More than 100 people were treated for exposure to the gas, and Interstate 40 was closed for two hours as the cloud dissipated. Saturday’s leak at a plant that processes uranium fuel sent a cloud of poison gas as far as 18 miles. (AP) _ A chemical tank at a nuclear facility was too full when it cracked and leaked 141/2 tons of radioactive gas, killing one man and hospitalizing dozens who breathed potent acid fumes, authorities said Sunday. ![]()
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