A SCUBA diver has recounted the heart-stopping moment he was sucked into a nuclear power station after getting too close to a water pipe used to cool the plant.

    Christopher Le Cun, from Palm Bay, Florida, the U.S., said he was sure he was going to die after being sucked into a pipe at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant.

    Cun, 30, described how he was diving off Hutchingson Island with friend Robert Blake when the pair spotted shadows cast by large objects more than 100 meters beneath the waves.

    Noticing a yellow buoy nearby, the pair decided to anchor their boat to it before going down to check the mysterious structures out. Cun said, “I swam right up to this big structure and it looks like a building underwater. I felt a little bit of current.

    “All of a sudden it got a little quicker and I thought, ‘this ain’t right, this ain’t right.’”

    Before he could react, Cun was sucked into one of the structures which turned out to be 4.88-meter-wide intake pipes, capable of draining 500,000 gallons of water per minute into massive pools used to cool the plant’s reactors.

    Cun described the sensation as similar to being sucked over a waterfall, saying he suddenly found himself in complete darkness and still being swept along.

    Blake, sure he’d just witnessed his friend die, swam back to the boat and broke the news to Cun’s wife Brittany, who was sitting in the craft with the couple’s young son and daughter.

    Meanwhile, Cun was adrift in total darkness and fearful of being cut to piece by whatever turbine was sucking the water in.

    After around five minutes Cun was deposited into one of the reservoir pools used to store water before it is pumped into the reactor, where he managed to climb out.(SD-Agencies)