Fire of undoubtedly electrical origin broke out at a nuclear power plant within a controlled zone building housing the effluent treatment installations. The blaze then spread to a pile of used clothing left behind: a large quantity of waste (mainly composed of individual vinyl protection and slightly radioactive rags) had been stored in the room and its periphery due to malfunction of the machine used to pack them prior to disposal. As such, the maximum allowable thermal load had been exceeded by a wide margin. First responders used a heat camera to locate the fire source owing to the thick smoke emitted and moreover were impeded by the mounds of waste. Smoke was suctioned by the building ventilation system and then filtered prior to discharge. Measurements conducted at the outlet did not indicate increased radioactivity.

After 3.5 hours, the accident was under control, but fire-fighters needed another few hours to clear 100 m³ of waste stored in the 60-m² room. Extinction water was channelled into the liquid radioactive effluent treatment tanks, and all responders were tested: no human contamination, either inside the plant or outside, was detected. Given breakdowns in the waste management process combined with the fact that the risk of a widespread fire throughout the effluent processing building could not be neglected, this incident was classified as level 1 on the INES scale for nuclear events.