Aarlouw nuclear accident

The Aarlouw nuclear accident was Lindenholt's first and most severe nuclear accident. It was recorded as being a 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale as a minor amount of radiation had been spread to the environment around the plant.

Background
The Aarlouw nuclear power plant consisted of three built by Dekker in the early 1970's. Each of the reactors had a power output of around 1100 MW, giving the Aarlouw plant a  of 3300 MW. The plant is situated on the banks of the Waads river near the border with Umbrellia.

Problems started when inexplicable corrosion within structural elements of reactor 2's building were found in 1996. Investigations conducted at the time pointed at there being a source of humidity within the reactor building's foundation. Engineers were of the opinion that the reactor's foundations ought to be investigated, and later determined that the entire reactor housing had become dangerously unstable due to an ingress of groundwater in to cavities left by the construction process. Measurements taken at the time also indicated that all three reactor buildings had sunk several centimetres in their two dozen years of service. At the time there was no indication of a nuclear risk, but purely a structural one.

In 1997 the three reactors were shut off so restoration to the building foundations and earlier planned maintenance to the reactors could be performed. These activities faced many delays, as construction work was planned to only last until February of 1997. Several missed deadlines, as well as setbacks in draining reactor building 2's foundations caused all three reactors being out of use until the summer of 1999. Reactors 1 and 3 were back in service by autumn of that year, whereas reactor 2 would only be ready for use in the spring of 2000.

Accident
On the morning of May 3rd 2000, technicians at the Aarlouw nuclear power plant commenced start up procedures for reactor 2 which had been out of service since 1997. Whereas the first signs showed that the system was performing nominally, later in the afternoon the reactor's cooling systems showed signs of inefficiencies. Unbeknownst to any of the technicians, the heat exchangers used by the cooling systems had started to corrode during the long period of maintenance, causing coolant to be blocked by a build up of rust in the narrow coolant lines near the fuel rods. By 4 PM that same day the levels of coolant left in the system had reached critically low levels. The build up of heat was sudden and consequently spotted too late by technicians. By the time action was taken, reactor core 2 had already partially melted down.

Aftermath
Despite not being prevented, the partial meltdown was limited by the safety systems and protocols in place. No workers of the Aarlouw plant received a higher than allowed dosage of radiation. Emergency services around the plant distributed iodine tablets and crops grown in a 25 kilometre radius were ordered destroyed. Soil samples taken several hours, days and weeks after the accident showed that radiation levels in the area were higher than periodic tests of the same kind showed in previous years. Despite this, no dangerous levels of radiation were measured anywhere outside of the plant.

The reactor 2 building was moderately contaminated, but not to the point where it warranted protective systems such as an outside shield or sarcophagus. Directly outside of the reactor 2 building, radiation levels were still at an acceptable level as well.

Consequences
Political commentator Victor Braan is quoted as saying that "the real fallout of the Aarlouw disaster, is not radioactive but political". The disaster caused a wave of anti-nuclear power sentiment in Lindenholt, which eventually led to the electoral momentum of the DIRE during the 2000 election and the Green Progressives party during the subsequent 2004 election. In the wake of the government's failure to prevent the accident, the De Tiller II government (VOA, LVP) was forced to resign. The elections that followed were won by the Labourers Party under prime minister Ferdinand Stevens who at first promised to decommission all of Lindenholt's nuclear powerplants but later reconsidered this stance. During the 2004 elections the Green Progressives, who among other things campaigned for a nuclear free Lindenholt, managed to almost halve the AP's vote and almost costed Stevens his second term.

During the Stevens II cabinet all nuclear powerplants were given a date to seize operations. In December of 2016 the last nuclear power plant in Lindenholt was decomissioned.