If it is reactor coolant, yes.
The simple fact that there is any type of leak at a facility like that should have folks worried.
Thanks for the reply!
Reactor coolant is not dangerous. I will drink some. It is dangerous when there is fuel failure and the fission products get in the water. There is no fuel failure involved in this accident. Just let the N-16 gammas die down first.
A reactor will stay on line with less than 1 GPM unidentified RCS leakage and up to 6 GPM identified. Most power plants can figure out their leak rates immediately and track the leakage rate down to a gnat's ass.
The 75 GPM leakage would clearly be seen immediately if it was instantaneous. It would be identified by radiation monitors (pretty sensitive stuff) if in containment. The reactor was shutdown immediately and started to be cooled down / depressurized. The nice thing about this is that the charging pumps and High Pressure Safety Injection pumps would be able to handle a leak rate of 75 GPM quite handily.
It is not going to take months to recover from this maintenance opportunity (a cute little nuclear euphemism that means since this broke we can fix this other stuff).
It would take months or if ever to recover from a major loop blowout with fuel failure. This little accident is far from the design basis scenario.
I used to sit on the edge of a uranuim bathtub reactor with nothing but water between me and the core. We used to turn all the lights out in the reactor room and crank the reactor up to 600 megawatts. The blue glow from the Cerenkov radiation was beautiful. It is pretty cool watching the core glow blue with your own eyes. :-)