It's not Chernobyl, but neighbors of the Millstone nuclear plant in Waterford, Conn., can't be too happy.

Two fuel rods containing uranium dioxide, a byproduct of nuclear power, have been missing at the Waterford, Conn., nuclear reactor for twenty years. What's worse, plant officials didn't actually notice that the waste was unaccounted for until November 2000.

``We've looked through our records to see if anything like this has ever happened before,'' says a spokeswoman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Diane Screnci, ``and it hasn't.''

According to plant officials, the fuel rods were removed from the reactor in the early '70s and placed in what's called a cooling pool, which is about 40 feet deep and 900 square feet, where they generally stay for anywhere between six years and 20 years. The rods, which are made by General Electric (NYSE: GE - news), each have serial numbers and are regularly inventoried by the plant.

``The rods were on the map we did of the pool in May 1980, but they came up missing in September 1980,'' says a Millstone spokesperson. No one at the reactor noticed that the rods were unaccounted for until this fall, and since then a search has been underway.

Millstone is searching its cooling pool, which now holds about 2,900 of these fuel assemblies. It's also reviewing records of all shipments out of the plant made in the past two decades to see if the rods were accidentally sent to a low-level waste facility.

Millstone has been struggling to gain respectability, and the missing fuel rods will only make that harder. The plant was on the NRC watch list of those that required heightened scrutiny from 1996 to 1999, and in 1999 Millstone and its parent company Northeast Utilities (NYSE: NU - news) were fined $10 million for 19 violations of the Atomic Energy Act and six violations of the Clear Water Act.

``We don't believe [the lost rods] will have any impact on public health and safety,'' says Screnci, ``but obviously we're concerned about the missing rods.'' She says that whether the NRC takes legal action will depend upon where the rods are found.

Nevertheless, after being out of the reactor for nearly 30 years, the rods probably don't hold much radiation, if any. ``As long as you don't break them apart with your hands and eat them, you're probably okay,'' says Ted Rockwell, a founder of the Radiation Science and Health, a nonprofit organization.

His real concern may not be these particular missing rods, but what losing them says about the rest of Millstone's operations. ``If [waste disposal] protocol wasn't followed,'' says Rockwell, ``you have to wonder what other protocols aren't being followed.''