A welder's torch ignited a fire on the roof of a building within a complex housing spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste on the grounds of a US nuclear research laboratory in Idaho late Monday, but no one was reported hurt, lab officials said. The blaze prompted an evacuation of the building, part of a facility called the Materials and Fuels Complex, but the fire has since been extinguished, and there was no release of radiation, said Craig Shull, a spokesman for the Idaho National Laboratory. The building where the fire occurred did not contain any nuclear material. The Materials and Fuels Complex, used in the remote handling of spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive materials, is located near the edge of the sprawling 890-square-mile lab site in the high desert of eastern Idaho, about 38 miles from the city of Idaho Falls. The same facility was where 16 Idaho lab workers were exposed to radiation in November of last year during an accident that occurred while they were preparing to remove an old plutonium fuel cell from a decommissioned reactor. A separate mishap about a week later sent another worker to a hospital with burns from a chemical reaction.
