Tritium spills

We're number one! We're number one! Ok, that joke is pretty old by now. I wonder what nuclear power apologists think about this latest news? Initially, Dean Armstrong argued that Exelon was doing everything they were supposed to do. Could it be possible that Exelon actually tried to hide their errors and omissions? An energy corporation untruthful and duplicitous? Nahh, I'm sure they are all good eggs, fine upstanding corporate citizens. Nothing to see here.

Chicago Tribune | State No. 1 in tritium spills
Illinois has more sites where radioactive tritium has leaked than any of the other states--ranging from New York to Arizona--where spills have been reported. ... The task force will look at tritium spills from 1996, the year of the first Braidwood leak, until now. By Aug. 31, it will consider potential public health effects, how the NRC responded and how the leaks were publicly disclosed.

The task force was established nearly two months after 22 organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, filed a petition with the NRC seeking information on about 100 U.S. sites that handle radioactive water.

They include nuclear power plants, research reactors and nuclear-fuel recycling facilities that handle “dirty water,” or water that contains tritium and sometimes other radioactive substances, said David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Nuclear Safety Project.

The petition calls on the NRC to require all site operators disclose how they handle contaminated water, monitor for its leakage and prevent it from migrating off site at levels in excess of federal limits.

Lochbaum said the organization's goal is to establish monitoring at all of the sites, so tritium never reaches levels in drinking water that pose a public health threat.

...
Exelon Corp. has taken heat in recent months from Braidwood plant neighbors who say they should have been told years earlier about four tritium spills between 1996 and 2003.

The spills were disclosed this year, weeks after Exelon announced it found tritium in groundwater outside the plant at levels exceeding federal limits, a discovery made after the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency pushed Exelon to check for groundwater contamination.

Exelon then tested local private wells and found elevated levels of tritium in one--at levels well below federal drinking water limits.

The company then announced it found a new leak at Dresden Generating Station in Grundy County. An earlier, repaired leak at Dresden, found in 2004, left tritium in on-site groundwater at levels more than 500 times the federal limit, according to state EPA documents.

And because I am a liberal through and through, and thus able to discuss 9 sides to every argument, I'll add that Dean Armstrong probably isn't a full time nuclear apologist. He's just a useful foil for my worrying ways, and someone who thinks the potential liabilities of nuclear power are exploited by news media, and he's likely right. Unless of course, an energy company employs him as some sort of consultant. Then he's just a tool.

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