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OrganicRedditor t1_jdhsbka wrote

"On Wednesday, the plant's monitoring equipment detected that more radioactive water, hundreds of gallons worth, had leaked out since crews made temporary repairs, and it had reached the groundwater. Officials say the contaminated water, containing the radioactive isotope tritium, has not yet reached the Mississippi River, which runs next to the plant. " Hope they can stop the leaks!

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girlfreddyf t1_jdhwjrd wrote

It f'ing reached the groundwater???? Jayzuz, RIP any people tapping that reservoir for their drinking water.

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[deleted] t1_jdi53hw wrote

Nuclear energy could be such a great asset then people cut corners and screw things up. So many nuclear advocates on Reddit, but none in this comments section.

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tacos_for_algernon t1_jdi5cxy wrote

Don't worry, the rich folks who poisoned the water are perfectly fine. They have decided remediation will consist of the poors receiving a lead-lined drinking cup, to block the radiation from the poisoned water. Now get back to work, plebes.

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danranja t1_jdifbfj wrote

They should have notified the public earlier. What a bunch of nonsense. I hope there is a lawsuit.

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withoutapaddle t1_jdiuld1 wrote

Right here.

Nuclear is still the best high output energy options we have until renewables can be more widely rolled out and decentralized all over the country. Prove me wrong.

Anyone who actually is reading the facts of this incident will know that the radiation levels are extremely minor, like the stuff you get everyday anyway. There is no major health risk here. The irony of all the panic is that if it DID reach the Mississippi, it would be diluted even more by billions of gallons of water as it went through the state and country, making it less radiation that eating a banana once a year...

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systemsfailed t1_jdixbbn wrote

The issue here is more so that this leak happened more than once, and they themselves said it wasn't worth notification of the public.

An individual leak is not life ending, but as was shown by Indian point, these companies cannot be trusted to fucking do the right thing, and that is scary in the event a larger incident occurs.

Nuclear energy has a bad rap, and requires public trust. Fucking hiding your incidents isn't going to help that, nor is being a condescending twat about it.

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[deleted] t1_jdixd5e wrote

Cutting corners in the name of profits when it comes to nuclear can have REALLY bad REALLY long lasting results. I think nuclear energy is fantastic, I think people are not reliable especially when corporations having high demands and hiding stuff. I don't think nuclear power plants should be leaking and apparently they don't either now finally that's why they're powering it down.

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Hunterrose242 t1_jdiynmb wrote

>"If we look at the dose impact of something like this, it would be a fraction of a milligram. I'm talking 0.00-something milligrams. The average person will get 300 milligram in a year just from the sun, the ground, everything,"

Of course no one will read that part...

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withoutapaddle t1_jdiyvw0 wrote

Oh yeah, I would never want my support of nuclear energy to be misconstrued as approving of corner cutting. The return on investment of nuclear energy takes like a decade, because the plants CANNOT be cutting any corners, and cost so much to properly design, build, and commission.

If anything, I would expect the greediest, most irresponsible corporations to be lobbying for more fossil fuel burning, which is actually orders of magnitude more dangerous than nuclear. It's just that the victims of fossil fuels are spread out over millions of cases over decades instead of 1 big headline-grabbing accident every few years, most of which results in little/no deaths (Chernobyl NPP being the obvious exception). For example, Fukushima had 1 casualty, and that was a pretty major incident.

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xMisterTryHard t1_jdiz5vv wrote

You posted an article that said they voluntarily reported it after they found the leak. They weren’t even required to because it hadn’t reached unsafe levels so what is your point exactly? There is regulation for reporting this, they did nothing wrong.

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systemsfailed t1_jdizcgl wrote

None of you can read.

The comment he was responding to was about reporting it to the public.

They chose not to report it to the public, as I said.

Do try to actually read the comment you're trying to correct.

−12

withoutapaddle t1_jdize3v wrote

The news story YOU JUST LINKED says Xcel reported the leak right away.

The REGULATORS didn't tell the public. In this case, the government failed the people. The company followed proper reporting proceedure.

But you know, keeping having a shitty, know-it-all attitude? How's that working out for you?

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PoppinKREAM t1_jdizor5 wrote

The tritium isotope released is very, very little. Humans are exposed to far more tritium than what has leaked.

>Valerie Myers, a health physicist with the NRC, told WCCO last week that [the amount of tritium that's in the water is negligible.

>"If we look at the dose impact of something like this, it would be a fraction of a milligram. I'm talking 0.00-something milligrams. The average person will get 300 milligram in a year just from the sun, the ground, everything," Myers said.

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VetteBuilder t1_jdj1zcr wrote

Another step back...

Which oil man dumped watch dial paint into the river?

0

systemsfailed t1_jdj2ysn wrote

Weird, and yet they managed to notify the public the second time around.

Transparency goes a long way, but the point is the person was responding to a comment about lack of public notification. They were wrong.

I've said nothing about health hazard, I know what tritium is and what acceptable levels are. Stop strawmanning the argument here.

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Cyclonitron t1_jdj5epq wrote

> The irony of all the panic is that if it DID reach the Mississippi, it would be diluted even more by billions of gallons of water as it went through the state and country, making it less radiation that eating a banana once a year...

The sad irony is that the Mississippi is already so polluted if the radioactive water actually did reach it it would probably reduce the pollution on a whole.

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withoutapaddle t1_jdj7r29 wrote

Well the Monticello NPP is pretty close to the beginning of the Mississippi, compared to its entire run through the US, (it is significantly before even Minneapolis/St.Paul), so the river is actually quite clean up there in comparison to its state by the time it hits the Gulf.

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AvariceLegion t1_jdjb4xn wrote

They already cut corners and caused this leak

I'd like to say residents should trust whatever independent or government investigators end up concluding... but that's easy to say since i don't live there

I wouldn't blame ppl for not believing a word they are told

−4

Hunterrose242 t1_jdjblgc wrote

This statement isn't coming from Xcel Energy. It's coming from a senior health physicist from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is a fact about radiation exposure amounts, not some conspiracy or an opinion.

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AvariceLegion t1_jdjc67e wrote

Yeah I said independent or government investigators

And like I said, unless we live there, it's easy to say ppl should accept what they're told by experts. I mean they should in this case i think... but i wouldn't be surprised if they just don't like in communities near the recent derailments

−13

[deleted] t1_jdje0as wrote

Oh I know the timelines and costs are just too much and renewable is cheaper. Nuclear would have been great to implement decades ago. However some people early on decided to cut corners, things didn't work out well and everyone got scared.

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Crank_FaCe t1_jdje666 wrote

If the radiation exposure is so minimal why are they not dumping in the river? Why is it ok for a local aquifer to be exposed but not the river?

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us1549 t1_jdjri23 wrote

Serious question. If only several hundred gallons leaked, how does that compare to naturally occurring radiation from the ground?

Several hundred gallons (if contained) shouldn't really matter when the ground water table and Mississippi river is massive in comparison

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scrabble71 t1_jdjwe6t wrote

They’re saying the amount you would be suddenly exposed to is 100 times less than what you are normally exposed to per day. Sounds pretty good to me.

It’s not great that radioactive water is leaking but it’s good to put it into context so people can try and understand how dangerous this is.

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Kitchen_Bicycle6025 t1_jdjxwt9 wrote

Tritium becomes harmless in 30 years. In fact, it’s already harmless enough that scientists use heavy water to track stuff in digestive systems. You drink some of this water, and doctors track the low radioactivity

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shady8x t1_jdk8ypv wrote

From the article:

>Valerie Myers, a health physicist with the NRC, told WCCO last week that the amount of tritium that's in the water is negligible.

>"If we look at the dose impact of something like this, it would be a fraction of a milligram. I'm talking 0.00-something milligrams. The average person will get 300 milligram in a year just from the sun, the ground, everything," Myers said.

So the radioactive danger from this specific leak is much less than just stepping outside your house on a normal day.

Last time such a leak happened they reported it 1 day after it happened and the danger of the release was considered such non-issue by those that learned about it, that journalists which constantly seek out anything to terrify the public with, took 4 months to even bother reporting on something that was made public 4 months ago.

Now that said, what the fuck is wrong with those morons? Stop cutting corners and do some proper repairs. Not to mention the danger of an actually dangerous leak, repeated accidents are gonna make people terrified about what else is close to breaking at this power plant, and with good reason.

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shady8x t1_jdkgiux wrote

Unless a coal power plant opens up nearby, my guess is that the changes will be negligible.

These leaks aren't bigger than regular scheduled releases of the same type of polluted water. Unless they are lying about the amount or the type of leak they had, then government regulation of what a safe release is, is different from these leaks in only one way, these weren't caused by someone pressing a button while under government monitoring, but happened accidentally.

There is a reason why nuclear power is less deadly then even wind and solar power, per kilowatt generated.

This plant has to get it's shit in order, obviously. But from the information released so far, there is not much to be concerned about yet.

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SewSpooky t1_jdkq68b wrote

Reading this as i am watching Meltdown: Three Mile Island on Netflix

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WeekendSubstantial87 t1_jdkuceo wrote

I live 2 miles down River as in we live on River street! They didn’t tell us anything until it came on the news and then said they would answer questions from community. Which I’m sure everyone is at work middle of day. Poss poor communication

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stonewall384 t1_jdkwcca wrote

I understand it is a harmless amount of radiation, but it is dishonest to say it is less than background. Anything added to background is more than background. This is an example of some company trying to skirt regulations. If they distort the truth, they distort the truth they deserve the fines

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throwleboomerang t1_jdkxg80 wrote

You are just plain wrong. Let's say we've got a sample of that tritium and it reads 3 counts per second (CPS) on a lead-encased geiger counter (i.e. not exposed to background level). If I then take a non-lead encased counter outside, it now reads 10 CPS from normal atmospheric/environmental radiation. If I then take the tritium outside of the lead and measure it with the unshielded meter I will likely still get 10 CPS, i.e. no increase in background. The tritium in this case has less than the background radioactivity and therefore does not cause an increase, which means your dose does not increase.

Edit- this is an example, the CPS are made up to illustrate the point, lest you think I am stating exactly what will happen.

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phoenix1984 t1_jdl0rz8 wrote

It’s tritium. Jesus we need to stop with these dramatic headlines. You’ll get more radiation damage just walking outside for an hour in the summer.

Living close to a coal power plant has waaay more radiation than this. Fun fact, it’d be uniquely economical and convenient to convert retiring coal plants to nuclear. Trick is, coal plants aren’t regulated for radioactive exposure and waste. As soon as we convert these the nuclear regulation kick in. They’re waaay over the tolerable limit for a nuclear energy reactor but coal plants get a pass.

People are overly paranoid of nuclear energy and not paranoid enough when it comes to coal and oil.

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phoenix1984 t1_jdl2x24 wrote

What talking points? It’s basic science literacy. People don’t seem to have a sense of scale for sieverts so I thought of the first thing I could to give people a relative sense of what we’re actually talking about here. Should I convert it to banana scale for you?

Serious question, how dangerous do you think this is?

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TheRealMrOrpheus t1_jdl4sep wrote

Listen man, all the facts previously mentioned aren't supporting the narrative I want to believe, so I'm going to disregard all of those, and I'm going to need you to come up with entirely new ones; preferably ones that don't actually refute my views, but I'll also take "talking points" that are easily refuted or can be twisted in my favor, if that's all you got. Please and thank you!

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stonewall384 t1_jdl7kma wrote

“Let’s say” you Ben Shapiro or something.

No supposing, just facts. The environment already had an amount of tritium, they added more to it. A Geiger counter is an inappropriate instrument for the energy level of beta given off by tritium b y the way

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stonewall384 t1_jdl7t5k wrote

You seem to be misunderstanding me. I am pro nuclear power, but I am anti capitalist pigs misrepresenting their mistakes. It is possible to explain to the public’s how harmless this is, but saying it is nothing or less than nothing is a lie

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Picasso5 t1_jdluwqo wrote

Nuclear waste is a made up issue. Considering what’s coming for us when the climate shifts radically, the nuclear waste issue is nothing. We can safely store waste, and eventually, it will be fuel for certain types of reactors.

−1

Picasso5 t1_jdlvc3k wrote

Man, it is really a shame how many people are vastly misinformed about nuclear power and basic science. This is why we can’t have nice things. This is why our climate will inhospitable to us in a few decades; ignorance.

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VaccumSaturdays OP t1_jdlxozk wrote

From another article:

Xcel Energy to temporarily shut down Monticello nuclear plant after two radioactive water leaks; company says no threat to public Minnesota

BY WCCO STAFF, JOHN LAURITSEN UPDATED ON: MARCH 24, 2023 / 3:06 PM / CBS MINNESOTA

MONTICELLO, Minn. -- An Xcel Energy nuclear plant in Monticello will temporarily shut down after officials found more radioactive water leaking from the facility.

The company says they'll bring the facility offline to make repairs and conduct a series of inspections. The leak poses no safety concerns for the public, according to the company.

Late last year, 400,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked from the premises, though the public wasn't informed until last week.

On Wednesday, the plant's monitoring equipment detected hundreds of gallons worth of radioactive water since the crews made temporary repairs, and that it had reached groundwater. Officials say the contaminated water, containing the radioactive isotope tritium, has not yet reached the Mississippi River, which runs next to the plant.

When the leak was first detected back in November, Xcel used a catchment and a pumping strategy to recovered the water containing tritium. They say they've recovered about 30% of that water so far. But over the past couple days, some of that radioactive water was spilling over the catchment, creating a new leak.

At a press conference Friday morning, Xcel Energy's Chris Clark said there was "no drinking water concern, no safety concern, no concern to the environment."

"We are capturing the water from the leak, we were able to take that water and process it in our plant," he said. "We are bringing the plant offline over the next, couple of days here. We'll let the plant cool, we'll cut that pipe out, we'll send that pipe out to a lab and do a full root cause analysis of why that pipe failed."

He added there was no threat to groundwater in the area and he also doesn't anticipate any impact on electric service. Even if the plant were to stay offline during peak winter or peak summer needs, the company has "enough margin" that they'll have the ability to provide service during those times, Clark added.

Xcel reported the initial leak in November of 2022, and state officials -- alongside the national Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- defended the choice to delay notification for months due to its small scale.

Xcel Energy says it is confident it'll be able to bring the plant back online safely, but Clark said it's hard to say just how long the plant will be offline.

"It shows the importance of making sure we get regulation, we get transparency. Minnesotans deserve to know," Gov. Tim Walz said. "I think today was the expectation that Minnesotans have - a very quick notification that this happened and a very aggressive decision to shut the plant down for now."

Walz: Monticello nuclear leak shows need for "regulation," "transparency"

"I just want Minnesotans to know that our role with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and our agencies it to monitor and make sure there is no health risk - that still remains the case," he added.

The city of Minneapolis said on Friday that their Water Treatment and Distribution Services is taking the precautionary step of developing plans to make sure that the water it delivers is not impacted in the event of contamination.

What is tritium?

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen which is created as a byproduct of nuclear reactors, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It's most commonly found in the form of water, as the isotope reacts with oxygen to create water.

It can also be found naturally in very low concentrations in the environment, including in the upper atmosphere, when cosmic rays collide with nitrogen molecules.

Valerie Myers, a health physicist with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told WCCO last week that the amount of tritium that's in the Monticello plant water is negligible.

"If we look at the dose impact of something like this, it would be a fraction of a milligram. I'm talking 0.00-something milligrams. The average person will get 300 milligram in a year just from the sun, the ground, everything," Myers said.

According to the NRC, tritium does not travel far, and cannot penetrate the skin.

"I don't ever want to see a situation like this in the future"

Monticello community members attended an open house on Friday morning, concerned that Xcel didn't properly notify them when the first leak was detected.

Megan Sanborn, who lives in the city, said she wants to hold the energy company accountable.

"To maintain that transparency in the future. I don't ever want to see a situation like this in the future happen again," she said.

Cole Hendry and his family live in town. He says they weren't made aware of the situation until last week.

"A 4-month gap is a little strange when you have a nuclear leak or some radioactive activity in your own backyard so I just want to make sure we stay in the know," said Hendry.

Clark said the notification gap is "certainly a lesson we'll take from this. We value our relationship with the city of Monticello and the residents here."

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VaccumSaturdays OP t1_jdly225 wrote

And then the bananas reference. Keep it going.

And to answer your question, I think it’s as dangerous as Xcel thinks it is. Why then clean it up?

We know this is a slow moving train, about to crash, and will be getting worse.

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Ok-Taste-570 t1_jdm6gja wrote

Gee Wally, you mean they fibbed about it being under control?

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phoenix1984 t1_jdmwuv3 wrote

Because after actually dangerous accidents rushed regulation was passed saying any leak must be cleaned up regardless of how dangerous it is. Remember the coal power plant example? This is not like the Ohio train derailment.

It is tritium. Its radiation cannot pass through the skin. If ingested, it decays within a few hours. You know the radioactive material doctors use to photograph the path your veins take? Thousands of times more radioactive. Hell, assuming they never clean it up and you live next door and consume the entire leak yourself, that would be somewhere between an X-ray and an international flight’s worth of radiation. Those exit signs they hang in schools all over the place? Waaay more tritium than this. You absolutely consume way more radiation naturally.

You are proving my point. People don’t understand the relative dangers of different radiation levels.

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VaccumSaturdays OP t1_jdn3r3c wrote

You keep insinuating that this is a very low level of concern, but you’re proving my point. The concern is not what we’ve been informed of, but what we haven’t been informed of. What comes next.

I’ll summarize it this way, you don’t give a shit. And that’s fine. But most others do, and are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So again, your damage control is showing.

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phoenix1984 t1_jdn5iid wrote

So you’re concerned that a thing that hasn’t happened yet, in a reactor that is already in the process of being shut down, will happen. Ok, probably not first place of concern but a degree of paranoia when it comes to nuclear safety is a good thing. Yay for good intentions. Sounding the alarm over things that don’t matter hurts your ability to keep people safe.

If something bad does happen, but if you’ve been overreacting about the things that don’t matter, nobody will listen/care. It hurts not only your own credibility but people’s impression of the dangers of radiation in general. If you are legit worried about nuclear safety, then clearly communicating accurate information is priority #1. This post and your comments until now do none of that. They make the people who believe you less safe. You are doing harm. That’s why I’m hung up on this.

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rnr_ t1_jdnjmj8 wrote

They clean it up because they have to. The limits on allowable tritium concentrations were exceeded but the limits are set so far below dangerous levels, this leak has not posed any real threat to the public.

−1

deadlylegacy t1_jdnyyz5 wrote

The issue can often be detection as well. Our blowdown line (the line that pumps non-radioactive water from our cooling lake which we use as a dilution source for our liquid releases) releases ~25,000 gpm through a 4 foot wide concrete pipe. We release at most 20 gpm of heavily diluted waste water into this 25k gpm which then further dilutes in the river we make up/letdown to which has flows between 450,000 to 9,000,000 gpm.

The problem is detecting a 1-2 gpm leak through the pipe into the ground when you're pumping tens of thousands of gallons per minute.

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luckyhedron t1_jdob8sq wrote

And yet nobody is gonna end up in a supermax prison cell over this like they ought to.

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phoenix1984 t1_jdorwxo wrote

Next up, triple secret gaslighting! So you’re just done saying anything relevant or substantive now then, huh?

[edit]

So you're going to scare people who don't know any better, and then block anyone who calls you out on it. Preying on people's ignorance and fears for karma. Cool.

−1

rnr_ t1_jdp8ah0 wrote

I'm not a geologist so I'm not trying to define geological terms. My point was that the leak did not reach any aquifers (or other underground water reservoir) that is used for drinking water.

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-FullBlue- t1_jearst5 wrote

If you're referring to Vogtle, it's in Georigia and the total cost is 30 billion for 2 reactors. Even after rate hikes, the price of power in the area remains substantially cheaper than in the state of California.

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