Minnesota nuclear power plant leaked radioactive water last year
Americans are in an uproar after learning Thursday about radioactive water leak at a Minnesota nuclear power plant that happened in November 2022
At least 400,000 gallons of spilled from Xcel Energy’s Monticello facility on November 22, which came from a pipe between two buildings.
The public is outraged by silence of the matter, as it occurred months before the devastating East Palestine train derailment that released 1.6 million pounds of hazardous chemicals in Ohio.
An Xcel Energy spokesperson told DailyMail.com: ‘We understand the importance of quickly informing the communities we serve if a situation poses an immediate threat to health and safety. In this case, there was no such threat.
‘With no immediate safety risk, we focused on investigating the situation and containing the affected water in concert with our regulatory agencies.
Regulators said Thursday they are monitoring clean up and there is no danger to the public.
People have their outrage about the incident on Twitter, with some claiming that ‘this is why the public doesn’t trust nuclear bros.’
Another user is sure that there is a risk to public safety, even though the company stated otherwise.
DailyMail.com has contacted Xcel Energy for comment.
The water contained tritium, which is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with half-life about 12 years.
Tritium can enter the body through inhalation, ingestion or absorption through the skin, and increases the risk of cancer if consumed in extremely large quantities, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).
Minnesota Health Commissioner Dan Huff told MPR News: ‘While tritium is radioactive, it’s low energy, and so it is not like plutonium. If you were to sit it next to you in a glass, it would not hurt you.
‘If you drank it, it would increase your radiation exposure. And we want to limit radiation exposure because radiation can cause tissue damage.’
The Monticello plant is about 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis, upstream from the city on the Mississippi River.
Both the regulators and company said the radioactive water did not flow into the Mississippi River.
Xcel Energy said in a statement that it reported the leak to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state on November 22.
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Michael Rafferty said in a statement: ‘We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well, however Xcel had not yet identified the source of the leak and its location.
‘Now that we have all the information about where the leak occurred, how much was released into groundwater, and that contaminated groundwater had moved beyond the original location, we are sharing this information.’
Xcel Energy claims it has been pumping groundwater, storing and processing the contaminated water, which contains tritium levels below federal thresholds, since the leak occurred.
‘To date, Xcel Energy has recovered about 25 percent of the tritium released and will continue recovery over the course of the next year,’ the company shared.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said tritium spills happen from time to time at nuclear plants, but that it has repeatedly determined that they havee either remained limited to the plant property or involved such low offsite levels that they did not affect public health or safety.
Xcel reported a small tritium leak at Monticello in 2009.
Chris Clark, president of Xcel Energy-Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, said in the statement: ‘While this leak does not pose a risk to the public or the environment, we take this very seriously and are working to safely address the situation.’
‘We continue to gather and treat all potentially affected water while regularly monitoring nearby groundwater sources.’
See more here dailymail.co.uk
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