Villagers head home after nuclear scare sparks mass exodus

Tens of thousands of residents were returning to their villages and towns in Qixian county, Henan province, at the weekend after fleeing their homes over rumours of a nuclear disaster.

The villagers began returning to their homes after local authorities convinced them that it was safe and announced that rumour-mongers had been detained.

'The residents started to come back on Saturday night. The majority of them are now at home and back to normal life again,' said Chen Siwei, a county government spokesman.

The exodus started on Friday after a team of technicians sent by the central and local governments failed in efforts to put an irradiation device, used for sterilising chillies and red peppers, back in its confinement well at a local plant.

The technicians abandoned the mission at noon after finding that the remote controls for the robots that were supposed to move the Cobalt 60 irradiation device were not working properly, Mr Chen said, 'but people watching the process soon dramatised it into an accident with descriptions that the robots had melted because of the radiation and that explosions occurred'.

Food is irradiated to destroy germs that cause it to spoil or cause disease. A variety of foods is irradiated in several countries, including the US and France. The only fatalities linked to food irradiation involve workers bypassing safety steps.