Cats Cradled in Nuclear Plant Are Reported Healthy

As anyone who has ever tried to keep a cat from sleeping on the couch or messing with the flower garden can attest, cats roam wherever and whenever they want.

And that feline sense of authority apparently extends to the highly guarded San Onofre nuclear power plant with its barbed-wire fences, metal detectors and guards carrying semiautomatic weapons.

Which brings us to the mother cat that slipped under the security fence and gave birth to four black kittens at the coastal plant north of Oceanside. Last week the 3-week-old kittens were found near the plant’s defunct Unit 1, and employees tried to carry them off the grounds and into the free world.

But the bells and whistles that indicate radiation contamination went off when the cats were being taken through what are called the “portal contamination monitors,” through which 2,000 San Onofre employees must pass daily.

Tests showed that the atomic kittens had high levels of radioactive cesium and cobalt.

Washing helped reduce the levels, but not enough, so the kittens--named Alpha, Gamma, Beta and Neutron--were taken to a special area run by the health physics specialists who deal with contamination cases. The kittens are being fed through an eyedropper and reportedly are mewing with contentment.

Southern California Edison Co. Vice President Dwight Nunn said the kittens are healthy and pose no threat to San Onofre workers. He added that, based on urine and feces tests, their levels of internal contamination are dropping sharply with each passing day.

As for the mother cat, her whereabouts are unknown. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is monitoring the kitten case, said a pest control employee found a wet, listless cat outside the plant, dried it off and let it go.

The worker’s clothes were later found to have traces of cesium and cobalt, but below the level considered dangerous. His family was offered testing but declined.

According to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report, San Onofre workers have noted a dead cat on Interstate 5 but will not try to retrieve the carcass.

Cats and San Onofre just seem to go together. A 1985 company memo, unearthed as part of a lawsuit by a worker who claims that he got cancer at San Onofre because of sloppiness in the way that radiation is handled, called cats at the plant “a hazard” and said an employee who petted one “crapped up,” which is nuclear jargon for setting off the radiation detector.

Russ Wise, a senior allegations coordinator for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the level of contamination of the kittens is below that necessary for Edison to report to the commission. Still, Wise has been receiving daily reports.

Wise said it is possible--but not certain--that the kittens could continue to get cleaner each day to the point where they are radiation-free. He added that nothing about the kitten incident gives the commission cause to worry about safety at the power plant.

“We think we’ve got everything covered,” Wise said, “but there’s probably no way to keep a small creature from crawling under a fence.”