Fear for the city of Minnesota where the nuclear power plant leaked 400,000 gallons of toxic waste
A small town in Minnesota, home to about 14,564 people, has experienced two major radioactive water leaks from a nearby nuclear power plant months apart.
Xcel Energy spilled 400,000 gallons of toxic material in November — the public was not notified until this month — and the second leaked hundreds of gallons last week.
At the time of the most recent incident, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency found that at least 230 fish had died in the Mississippi River next to the plant.
The agency and company claim that “the fish kill was not caused by tritium,” a radioactive isotope, but by a change in water temperature.
The factory temporarily closed on Saturday to repair the latest leak and stopped pumping hot water into the river, dramatically changing temperatures that “the fish are getting used to.”
“The fish kill is unfortunate, but not unexpected given the significant temperature change that can occur when the plant’s hot water stops flowing to the river during a shutdown,” the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said Monday.
At the time of the most recent incident, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency found that at least 230 fish had died in the Mississippi River next to the plant
DailyMail.com has contacted Xcel Energy and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Xcel Energy will be operational again ‘next week’, but will temporarily close in mid-April for an annual maintenance project.
Xcel’s Theo Keith said more than 30 percent of the tritium has been removed from groundwater and the cleanup process will continue over the next year
Chris Clark, president of Xcel Energy-Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, said in a Thursday rack regarding the recent leak, “While the leak continues to pose no risk to the public or the environment, we have determined that the best course of action is to shut down the plant and make permanent repairs immediately.”
The water contained tritium, a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with a half-life of about 12 years.
Tritium can enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or absorption through the skin.
Xcel Energy spilled 400,000 gallons of toxic material in November — the public was not notified until this month — and the second leaked hundreds of gallons last week
The Monticello plant is about 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis, upriver from the city on the Mississippi River
It increases the risk of cancer if consumed in extremely high amounts, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).
Minnesota health commissioner Dan Huff recounted it MPR news: ‘Although tritium is radioactive, it has a low energy, so it is not like plutonium.
“If you put it in a glass next to you, it wouldn’t hurt you.
“If you drank it, it would increase your exposure to radiation. And we want to limit exposure to radiation, because radiation can cause tissue damage.’
The Monticello factory is about 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis, upriver from the city on the Mississippi River.
After the first leak was found in November, Xcel Energy created a short-term solution to capture water from a leaking pipe and return it to the plant for reuse.
The solution is designed to prevent new tritium from reaching groundwater until the installation of a replacement pipe during a regularly scheduled outage in mid-April, the company said.
However, monitoring equipment indicated on Wednesday that a small amount of new water from the original leak had reached the groundwater.
Operators found that the workaround was no longer capturing all of the leaking water, Xcel Energy said.
In a statement, Xcel Energy reported the first leak to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state on Nov. 22.
Since the leak occurred, Xcel Energy claims it has pumped up groundwater, stored and processed the contaminated water, which contains tritium levels below federal thresholds.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said tritium releases occasionally occur at nuclear power plants, but has repeatedly found that they have been confined to plant grounds or were at such low offsite levels that they had no impact on public health or safety.
Xcel reported a small tritium leak at Monticello in 2009.
.
