Perry nuclear power plant security investigators reviewing video recordings have not been able to identify the person who left radioactive goldfish in a steam tunnel.
That's because the crews who worked in the tunnel or walked through it during a maintenance shutdown were wearing yellow protective radiological suits, including hoods.
"While we continue to look at the video for evidence, identifying folks in the video has been challenging," Perry spokeswoman Jennifer Young said Tuesday.
The two goldfish were discovered on May 2 by workers taking apart scaffolding in the tunnel, which is locked and under constant video surveillance. The fish, which later died, had been swimming in a lemonade pitcher that contained reactor water. Both the fish and the water were slightly radioactive.
More than 700 people work at Perry. Young said plant security has turned to trade unions that supplied about 1,000 additional workers during the refueling and maintenance shutdown that began March 18 and ended last week. Perry's owner, FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron, is now restarting the reactor.
"They (unions) are working with us to question workers and giving us their full support, making people available," Young said.
Young added that plant security has records of anyone who worked or just walked through the tunnel during the shutdown. The tunnel carries high-pressure steam pipes from the reactor to the nearby turbine building.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is paying close attention to the company's investigation, said Viktoria Mitlyng, spokeswoman for the agency's Midwest region.
"It was not an immediate safety concern, but the behavior could potentially say something about the environment at the plant," she said.
Contractors came perilously close to heavy radiation two years ago during a refueling shutdown because the equipment they were using to retrieve a gauge from the reactor core was inadequate and not up to industry specifications.
That incident, following a history of minor worker performance issues, prompted the NRC to put Perry under closer scrutiny and the plant managers to re-work safety procedures.
The NRC has been planning a major inspection of the plant this summer and the resolution of the goldfish incident will not be forgotten during that inspection, said Mitlyng.
The goldfish are also no laughing matter to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog agency that is not opposed to nuclear energy.
"Last year, Perry got into trouble with the NRC about weaknesses preventing unauthorized access to the plant," said David Lochbaum, director of the organization's nuclear safety project.
"Goldfish are not authorized to be inside the tunnel, yet they were there. And Perry cannot determine how they got there or who put them there. What if it hadn't have been goldfish but a bomb?
"What might be an amusing account of misplaced goldfish today could become tomorrow's nightmare story if someone with an axe to grind, another Timothy McVeigh type, places a bomb instead of two goldfish in Perry," said Lochbaum, referring to the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.