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Officials are admitting to an accidental leak of 400,000 gallons of radioactive water from a Minnesota nuclear plant that took place months ago.
Power provider Xcel Energy admitted Thursday that 400,000 gallons of water contaminated with tritium leaked from its Monticello nuclear plant last November, claiming it “poses no health and safety risk” to the public.
From NPR:
Minnesota officials are monitoring the cleanup of a 400,000 gallon leak of contaminated water from a nuclear power plant in the city of Monticello run by the energy giant Xcel Energy. Officials said there is no danger from the leak.
The leak was detected nearly four months ago and reported to state and federal regulators. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission posted a notice publicly at the time, but the company and state agencies did not notify the general public until last week.
When asked why the company took so long to notify the public about the leak, the company claimed they didn’t feel it necessary because there was “no immediate threat” to public health and safety.
Because there was no immediate threat to the public’s health and safety, “we focused on investigating the situation and containing the affected water in concert with our regulatory agencies,” Xcel spokesperson Lacey Nygard said in an email to NPR when asked why there was a nearly four month delay in notifying the public.
“We are now at a place where we can share with the public not only what has already been done, but what we’re going to do next. This timing allows us to provide the most accurate and complete understanding of the situation.”
The company reiterated that talking point on its website, saying, “Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment.”
“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,” Chris Clark, president of Xcel Energy–Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, said in the statement. “We continue to gather and treat all potentially affected water while regularly monitoring nearby groundwater sources.”
Xcel says it recovered about 25% of the tritium-contaminated water that leaked, and recovery efforts will continue through 2023.
A Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) spokesman Michael Rafferty said the agency wanted to get more information about the radioactive leak before informing the public about it.
“We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well,” Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) spokesman Michael Rafferty told the Associated Press, “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,” he added.
Tritium is a lower-risk hydrogen isotope that everybody is exposed to at some point in very small amounts, Futurism’s Maggie Harrison noted.
“To be fair, as far as accidental radioactive waste goes, tritium is relatively lower-risk. In fact, according to an NRC fact sheet, everyone is ‘exposed to small amounts of tritium every day, because it occurs naturally in the environment and the foods we eat.’ Xcel reportedly maintains that the leaked tritium levels fall below NRC toxicity guidelines,” she wrote.
“That said, radioactive leaks are never a net positive, and though secrecy may have staved off bad press during the investigation and containment process, it could well be argued that choosing to forgo transparency in cases like this sows more suspicion than it does trust. It can’t be fun for locals to know that information was being withheld — whether the substance in question ultimately causes extensive, minimal, or even zero harm,” she added.
Given how Norfolk Southern and the government handled the environmental and health disaster in East, Palestine, Ohio last month, perhaps it’s wise to be skeptical of what a company says about a leak for which it’s responsible.
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