Industry news
A leak of radioactive water from a nuclear power plant in th
release time：2023-04-03
The Monticello nuclear power plant in Minnesota has announced that 400,000 gallons of contaminated water containing radioactive tritium have leaked from a water pipe between two buildings. The leak was discovered more than four months ago and reported to state and federal regulators. But the company and state regulators did not tell the public until mid-March, sparking public safety concerns and questions about transparency. The Monticello nuclear power plant, which opened in 1971, is located about 60 kilometers northwest of Minneapolis, Minnesota's largest city, on the upper Mississippi River. Radioactive water leaked from the plant on November 21 last year. After the accident, the plant's owner, Excellence Energy, implemented a short-term fix to collect radioactive water from broken pipes and send it back to the plant for reuse, preventing tritium from entering the groundwater, the Associated Press reported. Excellence plans to replace the pipes during the refueling outage at the plant in April. Excellence Energy said recently that short-term fixes would not ensure 100 percent of the leaked radioactive water would be collected. On March 24, the company discovered a secondary leak of water contaminated with tritium. Hundreds of gallons of water are expected to have leaked, and a small amount has found its way into groundwater. The company then decided to temporarily shut down the plant for maintenance. Excellence Energy said the leak occurred in a water pipe between two buildings at the plant and was contained inside. About 32 percent of the leaked tritium has reportedly been recovered, a process that is expected to continue into next year. Minnesota officials said the groundwater contamination had not spread beyond the plant's boundaries, had not entered the drinking water supply or the Mississippi River, and posed no risk to downstream Mississippi residents. The state health department says communities that get water from the Mississippi River are not at risk because even if the river is contaminated, that pollution quickly dilutes in large flows of water. It took nearly four months for the Monticello nuclear power plant to inform the public of the accident, which led to doubts and complaints from local people and public opinion. NBC News reported that local residents were worried about the consequences of the repeated leaks and were upset that authorities had not notified them sooner. Megan Sanborn, 31, lives about 10 kilometers upriver from the plant. "We have good reason to be concerned because my children go to school three kilometers downstream from the plant," she said. If the water was safe during this time period, as they say, why wasn't it made public in time? I think the public needs to know more about this." The incident is a cautionary tale about what and how quickly government agencies should communicate to the public about hazardous material leaks at aging nuclear plants, according to CNET, a technology news website. Two leaks in a short period of time have exposed the problems in the safety management of nuclear power plants in the United States. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there have been at least half a dozen leaks from commercial nuclear power plants in the United States in the past 20 years that released high levels of tritium into groundwater at plant sites. "As nuclear power plants age and are difficult to maintain, contaminated water leaks are becoming more common," said Edwin Lyman, nuclear safety director at the US non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists. These accidents should serve as a warning."
Service Hotline：133-9305-7858，If you are interested or in doubt, please call!
YuHe Technology - dedicated to serve you!
Keywords：Nuclear Industry，Nuclear medicine，Intervention protection，Lead material
