A leak of radioactive gases from a nuclear plant in China could turn into a major disaster

Weather of Arabia - Secret US intelligence reports said that one of the Chinese nuclear power plants is leaking radioactive gases and may turn into a major disaster.

The Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, located in China's southern Guangdong province, is believed to have been leaking radioactive gases for at least two weeks, as problems at the power plant first surfaced in late May when France's Framatome reached out to US intelligence to alert them, according to For documents sent to the Department of Energy.

US intelligence spent the past week monitoring the situation and concluded that this leak was likely to turn into a major disaster, as the agency specifically warned that the Taishan nuclear power plant in southern China had leaked radioactive gas two weeks ago, but the owners of the Chinese nuclear power plant insisted in A report published on Sunday said everything was "normal".

A follow-up memo sent on June 3 identified the problem as a "fission gas leak" and asked the Department of Energy to share intelligence that might help resolve the problem.

Fission gas is radioactive gas produced from nuclear fission, in which heavy atoms split into lighter ones - a process that releases energy but also produces gases and radioactive waste.

But the French company apparently received no response, so it sent another note on June 8 asking for their letter to be reviewed urgently.

In the memo, the French company described the problem as an "imminent radioactive threat to the site" and warned that Chinese regulators had increased "safe" levels of radioactivity allowed around the plant, and that the new limit exceeded current safety standards in France.

The US State Department revised the June 8 memo, sparking a flurry of activity over the past week that has included meetings of senior figures on the National Security Council to assess the threat.

They concluded that while the plant could cause a major disaster, there is now no immediate danger, and the problem is likely to be resolved without putting the population at significant risk.

The French company publicly acknowledged the problem on Monday, saying it was working to fix a "performance issue" at the site.

"The environmental indicators of the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant and its surroundings are normal," the power plant's operator, state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group, said in a statement Sunday evening.

Commissioned in 2018, the Taishan plant was the first worldwide to operate a next-generation EPR nuclear reactor, a pressurized water design that has been subject to years of delays on similar European projects in Britain, France and Finland.

EPR reactors have been described as a promising advance in safety and efficiency over conventional reactors while producing less waste.

The plant's owners in the state said that one of the two reactors on the site then completed a "total overhaul" and was "successfully connected to the grid on June 10, 2021."

It did not say why the reactor was being repaired or what exactly was done.

Nuclear plants provided less than five percent of China's annual electricity needs in 2019, according to t