7 ms·

Nuclear power plant leaked 1.5M litres of radioactive water in Minnesota

114 points by grecy 4y ago

jmclnx 4y ago
It is like the Nuclear Industry is doing all it can do destroy their own industry. Recently it seemed people were looking seriously at Nuclear Power for Climate Change. With this and the article below, I think it will be next to impossible for anyone to build a new Nuclear Power Plant. That is sad since I think Nuclear could have been a good short/medium term bridge to renewals. https://gothamist.com/news/dumping-radioactive-water-hudson-river-best-option-indian-point-nuclear-plant-owner-holtec https://gothamist.com/news/dumping-radioactive-water-hudson-...
- erentz 4y ago
  It’s tritium. It sounds like it’s at concentrations that are below the safety thresholds. You have tritium in your tap water.
  - u320 4y ago
    It's worth adding too that the US for some reason has insanely low thresholds. Orders of magnitude lower than most other developed countries.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >It sounds like it’s at concentrations that are below the safety thresholds And even if it's not, regulatory bodies in cahoots with the industry can always raise the safety thresholds! Worked wonders in the past!
- vkou 4y ago
  If you think this leak, at these concentrations was unacceptable, we are going to need to shut down every chemical and industrial process in the world, starting today, and regress to a stone-age sort of level of technology. Things leak all the time in industrial work. This one was not particularly damaging, but because it's nuclear, it's under a million times more microscopic scrutiny than any equivalent leak from a chemical plant.
  - jmclnx 4y ago
    Ever hear of NIMBY ? Here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY It does not matter if it is harmless, people reading these articles will freak out should a proposal be submitted for a new Plant. So yes, these articles will put the last nail in the coffin of the nuclear industry in the US. All they need to do is reach the mainstream press.
    - u320 4y ago
      So your attitude to misinformation is that we should just give up, and act as if it's true? Should we stop doing vaccinations too, just because some people believe they contain 5G chips?
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  Nuclear fission still has a long-term role to play in that it has a tiny land/material/resource footprint. With breeder reactors, we can power all of humanity for 4 billion years using the existing uranium and thorium resources. Pretty long term IMHO. Not just a bridge, but an asymptotic state.
- physPop 4y ago
  This is alarmist and anti-science and moderators should remove this post.
acidburnNSA 4y ago
With these kinds of headlines you always have to figure out how many actual radioisotope solutes are in the water solvent. Otherwise, dilution seems to make it worse. 1 liter of radioactive water diluted into 50 billion liters of water becomes 50 billion liters of radioactive water to the headline writers. > The EPA safe drinking water concentration for tritium is 20,000 picocuries/liter. It is not expected or likely that this concentration would be exceeded as a result of this event. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/air/tritiumleak.html https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/air/t... I think radiation just freaks people out in general, so these headlines are super effective at getting engagement.
- yunohn 4y ago
  Well, this confusion could be solved by disclosing exact details on the leakage, but despite my research I can’t seem to find any other number than 1.5M liters. I don’t see any evidence that the reporters made up the number. Instead, the company and government agencies just reiterate that “it’s safe”.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    Yes it's kind of weird that they leave out this information because this negatively impacts the trust you have in the decision.
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    I could be wrong as it was a couple days ago that I read this and I didn’t go through and parse out the differences between the two, but I think this local article may have a bit more detail: https://archive.is/p0hTx https://archive.is/p0hTx According to that, the concentration of radiation in the water directly under the plant is at least 50x above EPA limits. But that is where virtually no dilution will have occurred. If plant officials and state regulators are to be believed, the other monitoring locations around the site don’t yet show anything to get super worried about. Edit: Just to note, I live in the general area, but not particularly close to this specific location. Lucky for me I live in the area with water contaminated by 3M PFCs rather than Xcel Energy radiation. /s
u320 4y ago
Light water plants doesn't even produce much tritium to begin with, so it's hard to imagine this would pose any danger.
Julesman 4y ago
Nuclear power is advocated principally by the current energy industry regime because it maintains their existing distribution model. A model that is disrupted by wind and solar power generated locally or even individually. I know some people honestly believe that it's a good option. But for every one of them there are three industry lobbyists and social media bots who are working directly for the industry making drastically short sighted arguments. Don't tell me it's safe when other options will never ever make whole parts of the world a toxic wasteland for the rest of human history.
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  I'm a nuclear power advocate. I am on social media making arguments in support of massive expansions of nuclear power to reduce air pollution and fight climate change. I have a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and a professional engineering license in my state. I chose nuclear engineering at age 19 because I wanted to fight climate change, not because I wanted to become an industry lobbyist. There are hundreds of nuclear advocates just like me. While nuclear power is commonly perceived as unduly dangerous, if you're interested in the numbers of it all in context, I highly recommend this page: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy The whole wasteland argument falls apart quickly when you take a look at e.g. a worst case scenario like Chernobyl and compare it to the fact that fossil and biofuel cause 7 million premature deaths per year from particulate emissions (according to the WHO) and cause global climate change. https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive-wastelands-a-look-at-chernobyls-effects-on-nature/ https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive...
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Upton Sinclair — 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
    - acidburnNSA 4y ago
      Counterargument: I am readily employable in other related industries and could likely get a significant raise switching. Every time I make an offer to a software engineer who asks for >$50k more than our peak salary, I'm reminded of this fact. Again, I chose nuclear specifically to fight climate change, not to make the most money.
RobLach 4y ago
Whatever. The system is working well. The amounts of tritium measured in a test well to initiate repair of leaky pipes and cleanup is well below any potential risk. Every issue was responsibly reported to regulators and acted upon.
- tucosan 4y ago
  Right. Nuclear power is absolutely safe. Nothing to see here. Move on.
  - daveguy 4y ago
    You must have misunderstood what you were replying to. The GP said that there are test wells around the facility for detecting leaks and they detect at levels much lower than is dangerous. The post wasn't implying that nuclear power is absolutely safe. Simply that safety measures in place worked in this case and the incident was handled correctly with respect to response and reporting.
    - cyanydeez 4y ago
      I can tell you that many monitoring wells are rarely tested before they're "operational". Typically they're just installed according to a site model and assumed to function like that. Happened to koch along the Mississippi where they assured regulators for a decade that you'd never see their contamination. Eventually someone was sampling along the Mississippi and there it was.
      - natmaka 4y ago
        The Fukushima case has similar characteristics: https://insidestory.org.au/water-water-everywhere/ https://insidestory.org.au/water-water-everywhere/
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
  [dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
xchip 4y ago
Most probably it could be: 1- it is not water, it is deuterium (AKA `heavy water`, the hydrogen atom has an extra neutron, this way it is heavier and it can carry more heat) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium) 2- the water used to cover the still radioactive uranium that has been used as fuel So... thoughts and prayers :/
- pjscott 4y ago
  It's not heavy water. It's very slightly tritiated water, and the tritium concentration is low enough that you could drink it without worry.
  - xchip 4y ago
    [flagged]
- accrual 4y ago
  The article indicates it is tritium, hydrogen-3. Though if it was heavy water, "Poisoning would require that the victim ingest large amounts of heavy water without significant normal water intake for many days to produce any noticeable toxic effects." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biological_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biologic...
ethagknight 4y ago
I was curious, so I looked it up.. 1.5M litres is roughly a half-sized Olympic swimming pool, more or less.

114 points by grecy 4y ago

It is like the Nuclear Industry is doing all it can do destroy their own industry. Recently it seemed people were looking seriously at Nuclear Power for Climate Change. With this and the article below, I think it will be next to impossible for anyone to build a new Nuclear Power Plant. That is sad since I think Nuclear could have been a good short/medium term bridge to renewals. https://gothamist.com/news/dumping-radioactive-water-hudson-river-best-option-indian-point-nuclear-plant-owner-holtec https://gothamist.com/news/dumping-radioactive-water-hudson-...

erentz 4y ago
It’s tritium. It sounds like it’s at concentrations that are below the safety thresholds. You have tritium in your tap water.
- u320 4y ago
  It's worth adding too that the US for some reason has insanely low thresholds. Orders of magnitude lower than most other developed countries.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >It sounds like it’s at concentrations that are below the safety thresholds And even if it's not, regulatory bodies in cahoots with the industry can always raise the safety thresholds! Worked wonders in the past!
vkou 4y ago
If you think this leak, at these concentrations was unacceptable, we are going to need to shut down every chemical and industrial process in the world, starting today, and regress to a stone-age sort of level of technology. Things leak all the time in industrial work. This one was not particularly damaging, but because it's nuclear, it's under a million times more microscopic scrutiny than any equivalent leak from a chemical plant.
- jmclnx 4y ago
  Ever hear of NIMBY ? Here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY It does not matter if it is harmless, people reading these articles will freak out should a proposal be submitted for a new Plant. So yes, these articles will put the last nail in the coffin of the nuclear industry in the US. All they need to do is reach the mainstream press.
  - u320 4y ago
    So your attitude to misinformation is that we should just give up, and act as if it's true? Should we stop doing vaccinations too, just because some people believe they contain 5G chips?
acidburnNSA 4y ago
Nuclear fission still has a long-term role to play in that it has a tiny land/material/resource footprint. With breeder reactors, we can power all of humanity for 4 billion years using the existing uranium and thorium resources. Pretty long term IMHO. Not just a bridge, but an asymptotic state.
physPop 4y ago
This is alarmist and anti-science and moderators should remove this post.

acidburnNSA 4y ago

With these kinds of headlines you always have to figure out how many actual radioisotope solutes are in the water solvent. Otherwise, dilution seems to make it worse. 1 liter of radioactive water diluted into 50 billion liters of water becomes 50 billion liters of radioactive water to the headline writers. > The EPA safe drinking water concentration for tritium is 20,000 picocuries/liter. It is not expected or likely that this concentration would be exceeded as a result of this event. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/air/tritiumleak.html https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/air/t... I think radiation just freaks people out in general, so these headlines are super effective at getting engagement.

yunohn 4y ago
Well, this confusion could be solved by disclosing exact details on the leakage, but despite my research I can’t seem to find any other number than 1.5M liters. I don’t see any evidence that the reporters made up the number. Instead, the company and government agencies just reiterate that “it’s safe”.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  Yes it's kind of weird that they leave out this information because this negatively impacts the trust you have in the decision.
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  I could be wrong as it was a couple days ago that I read this and I didn’t go through and parse out the differences between the two, but I think this local article may have a bit more detail: https://archive.is/p0hTx https://archive.is/p0hTx According to that, the concentration of radiation in the water directly under the plant is at least 50x above EPA limits. But that is where virtually no dilution will have occurred. If plant officials and state regulators are to be believed, the other monitoring locations around the site don’t yet show anything to get super worried about. Edit: Just to note, I live in the general area, but not particularly close to this specific location. Lucky for me I live in the area with water contaminated by 3M PFCs rather than Xcel Energy radiation. /s

u320 4y ago

Light water plants doesn't even produce much tritium to begin with, so it's hard to imagine this would pose any danger.

Julesman 4y ago

Nuclear power is advocated principally by the current energy industry regime because it maintains their existing distribution model. A model that is disrupted by wind and solar power generated locally or even individually. I know some people honestly believe that it's a good option. But for every one of them there are three industry lobbyists and social media bots who are working directly for the industry making drastically short sighted arguments. Don't tell me it's safe when other options will never ever make whole parts of the world a toxic wasteland for the rest of human history.

acidburnNSA 4y ago
I'm a nuclear power advocate. I am on social media making arguments in support of massive expansions of nuclear power to reduce air pollution and fight climate change. I have a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and a professional engineering license in my state. I chose nuclear engineering at age 19 because I wanted to fight climate change, not because I wanted to become an industry lobbyist. There are hundreds of nuclear advocates just like me. While nuclear power is commonly perceived as unduly dangerous, if you're interested in the numbers of it all in context, I highly recommend this page: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy The whole wasteland argument falls apart quickly when you take a look at e.g. a worst case scenario like Chernobyl and compare it to the fact that fossil and biofuel cause 7 million premature deaths per year from particulate emissions (according to the WHO) and cause global climate change. https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive-wastelands-a-look-at-chernobyls-effects-on-nature/ https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive...
- coldtea 4y ago
  Upton Sinclair — 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
  - acidburnNSA 4y ago
    Counterargument: I am readily employable in other related industries and could likely get a significant raise switching. Every time I make an offer to a software engineer who asks for >$50k more than our peak salary, I'm reminded of this fact. Again, I chose nuclear specifically to fight climate change, not to make the most money.

RobLach 4y ago

Whatever. The system is working well. The amounts of tritium measured in a test well to initiate repair of leaky pipes and cleanup is well below any potential risk. Every issue was responsibly reported to regulators and acted upon.

tucosan 4y ago
Right. Nuclear power is absolutely safe. Nothing to see here. Move on.
- daveguy 4y ago
  You must have misunderstood what you were replying to. The GP said that there are test wells around the facility for detecting leaks and they detect at levels much lower than is dangerous. The post wasn't implying that nuclear power is absolutely safe. Simply that safety measures in place worked in this case and the incident was handled correctly with respect to response and reporting.
  - cyanydeez 4y ago
    I can tell you that many monitoring wells are rarely tested before they're "operational". Typically they're just installed according to a site model and assumed to function like that. Happened to koch along the Mississippi where they assured regulators for a decade that you'd never see their contamination. Eventually someone was sampling along the Mississippi and there it was.
    - natmaka 4y ago
      The Fukushima case has similar characteristics: https://insidestory.org.au/water-water-everywhere/ https://insidestory.org.au/water-water-everywhere/
mrtweetyhack 4y ago
[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

xchip 4y ago

Most probably it could be: 1- it is not water, it is deuterium (AKA `heavy water`, the hydrogen atom has an extra neutron, this way it is heavier and it can carry more heat) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium) 2- the water used to cover the still radioactive uranium that has been used as fuel So... thoughts and prayers :/

pjscott 4y ago
It's not heavy water. It's very slightly tritiated water, and the tritium concentration is low enough that you could drink it without worry.
- xchip 4y ago
  [flagged]
accrual 4y ago
The article indicates it is tritium, hydrogen-3. Though if it was heavy water, "Poisoning would require that the victim ingest large amounts of heavy water without significant normal water intake for many days to produce any noticeable toxic effects." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biological_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biologic...

ethagknight 4y ago

I was curious, so I looked it up.. 1.5M litres is roughly a half-sized Olympic swimming pool, more or less.