A small amount of plutonium which leaked from an ageing International Atomic Energy Agency laboratory near Vienna did not reach the environment, according to an independent inquiry cited by the U.N. watchdog on Friday.
The August 3 incident at the Seibersdorf analytical lab, which occurred overnight and caused no injury, raised a stir in Austria, which hosts the IAEA but rejects nuclear energy itself as fundamentally dangerous.
In a statement, the agency said test samples of soil, plants and water provided by outside Austrian experts found no release of radioactive material into the environment from the incident.
A tiny amount of plutonium, a common nuclear bomb fuel, contained in an acid solution spilled from five small glass vials in a storage safe when one of them burst from a build-up of pressure, the statement said.
Virtually all of the contamination was confined within the steel-walled safe and nobody was in the area at the ...