Nuclear security

Ruhr nuclear plant ‘pumped radioactive waste into air’

Speaking to the Westfälischer Anzeiger, 83-year-old retired engineer Hermann Schollmeyer apparently decided it was time to come clean, three decades after the incident he describes.

The official story had always been that radioactive waste was unintentionally leaked into the air at the THTR reactor in Hamm in May 1986, the western German newspaper reports.

But Schollmeyer now claims that the plant used the cover of the Chernobyl - which had released a cloud of radioactive waste over western Europe - to pump their own waste into the atmosphere, believing no one would notice.

“It was done intentionally,” Schollmeyer said. “We had problems at the plant and I was present at a few of the meetings.”