USA: The Minnesotan government announced on Thursday that a nuclear power plant close to Minneapolis had experienced a radioactive water spill totaling more than 1.5 million litres. The Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant's owner, Xcel Energy, is attempting to clean up the spill and maintains there is no danger to the general public.
A broken pipe at the facility caused an estimated 400,000 gallons of tritiated water to leak out, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). The leak was first identified on November 22; on December 19, its source was located and patched "soon after."
According to MPCA assistant commissioner Kirk Koudelka, the decision was made to keep the public in the dark about the incident while Xcel Energy and the state were "actively managing" the situation to stop the underground plume of radioactive water from spreading to the nearby Mississippi River.
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On Thursday, MPCA spokesman Michael Rafferty said, "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.
Christopher Clark, president of Xcel in Minnesota, said that there is no risk to the general public's health or the quality of the drinking water. He acknowledged that the tritiated water directly beneath the plant is "in the millions" of times higher than the 20,000 picocuries limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In a statement, the city of Monticello claimed that the leak, which occurred outside the region from which they draw groundwater for their municipal wells, had no impact on its supply of drinking water.
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According to Xcel, the contaminated water has not been found outside of the plant's boundaries. A treatment system on the property has been pumped with an estimated 25% of the water recovered. For the project, which could take a year or longer, the company is thinking about constructing storage tanks or a retention pond.
The leak was well below the NRC safety threshold, according to Viktoria Mitlyng, a spokeswoman for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the plan is not against the law. Leaks of tritium "are not unusual for nuclear plants," she continued.
In 1981, the Monticello facility experienced a leak of about 2,000 gallons (7,500 litres), some of which made it to the river, but state health officials deemed it to be safe for both people and wildlife.
In order to keep Monticello operating after its current licence expires in 2030, Xcel submitted an application to the NRC in January. According to the company, the extension is "critical" to complying with a new Minnesota law that requires all electricity to be carbon-free by 2040.
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A mildly radioactive hydrogen isotope called tritium is frequently found in the water used to cool nuclear reactors. According to Daniel Huff, an assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Health, the public's exposure from a nuclear power plant "should be zero," adding that the only way it can affect people is if they breathe it in or drink tritiated water.