TORONTO, March 16 (UPI) -- A nuclear power plant 25 miles east of Toronto leaked 19,000 gallons of water into Lake Ontario, Canadian atomic regulators said Wednesday.
The incident happened just before midnight Monday at the Pickering facility, but officials didn't make a statement until Wednesday afternoon, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said.
A faulty pump seal was blamed for allowing the leak of demineralized water used to cool the reactors, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission said in a statement.
"The radiological risk to the environment and people's health is negligible," the commission said, which would suggest the water had not yet been exposed to the radioactive core.
The federal regulator gave no indication why the news wasn't released sooner.
The Canadian-built Candu nuclear reactors at Pickering on the shore of Lake Ontario began operating in 1971 and were taken offline for maintenance and upgrades for months in 1997.
The leak came as Japan continued to grapple with potential catastrophic meltdowns in three reactors damaged last Friday by a magnitude-9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
