7 ms·

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

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
fsh 4y ago
There is remarkably little information in this press release. The volume of leaked water is meaningless without specifying the tritium concentration. Even if they have nothing to hide, they certainly make it look like they do.
grecy 4y ago
[flagged]
- pornel 4y ago
  Level of dilution is crucial here. It may be less radioactive than a banana.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Yeah, nothing to worry about, it's all safe, trust us!
    - pornel 4y ago
      You have the same "trust is" situation about safety of fracking, mining, chemical industry, water treatment plants, lead leaks from pipes, baby formula, plastic bottles, and air quality downwind from fossil power plants. Radioactivity level is actually one thing you can easily measure yourself without having to trust the big bad government. BTW: did you know coal power plants release uranium into the air? Coal is "clean" only in election ads. The real one is too expensive to filter, and burned in such massive volumes that even tiny impurities are significant.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        >did you know coal power plants release uranium into the air? Yes. A small amount, and not in concentrated form the way nuclear output or nuclear power plant waste is... I also don't have concerns with bananas
        pornel 4y ago
        > and not in concentrated form the way nuclear output or nuclear power plant waste is So we're back to square one: it's not actually concentrated. The report says "the levels of tritium in the water are below federal thresholds". These aren't barrels of green goo like in the Simpsons.
hammock 4y ago
More than that the problem is that authorities knew about this in November but the news is only reporting four months later. Why?
- dariusj18 4y ago
  Because it wasn't a big deal but someone out there wants to take attention away from something else. My guess
hedora 4y ago
It would be nice if they reported radiation leaks like this in terms of equivalent hours of coal plant emission.
- fsh 4y ago
  You would probably have to measure it in years or decades of equivalent coal plant emissions. According to a 1978 paper [1], a 1 GW coal power plant releases something like 50 GBq per year. The Minnesota Department of Health did not release the activity of the water that was leaked from the nuclear plant. However, according to one article, "In water directly below the plant, the picocurie-per-liter count was in the millions." [2]. 1.5 Ml of water at 1 million pCi/l would correspond to 1.5 Ci or 56 GBq of total activity. This is a very conservative estimate, since the water below the plant is probably already significantly diluted by ground water. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 [2] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.htm...
  - elcritch 4y ago
    So the headline could be "nuclear plant leaked the equivalent of 1 years worth of radiation from a large coal power plant diluted to below safe levels in 1.5 Ml of water"
  - natmaka 4y ago
    The big picture isn't about "nuclear vs. fossil fuel" anymore, it is "nuclear vs. renewables". I write "vs." because we need to tackle the climate challenge as quickly as possible and have limited resources, therefore the need for optimization is clear: boosting the better approach and neglecting anything else.
    - hedora 4y ago
      Nuclear plants probably kill less wildlife and people per delivered kWh than lithium extraction does for making batteries. No one technology is adequate. Even as we ramp lithium production as fast as we can, we’re facing production shortages for the next few years. More shortages of other stuff will hit each technology as it ramps. This looks like a “spray and pray” sort of situation to me. We should pick the top 5-10 technologies, and throw enough funding at each to get it to be a 33% solution. In five years, fund the top two or three at 100%, but don’t cut funding for the rest. (I’m counting geologically fixed atmospheric carbon capture and efficiency measures in that top N computation, fwiw)
gus_massa 4y ago
From https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.htm... > "We are well above the 20,000 picocuries per liter EPA standard," Clark said. In water directly below the plant, the picocurie-per-liter count was in the millions. I'm not sure if the millions of picocuries per liter are measured in the leak site or after it's diluted. Anyway, I made an approximate calculation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35205070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35205070 and with tritium 10 millions of picocuries per liter is 9uSv/L. So if I made no mistake and you drink 1 liter of it, it's like 2 dental x-ray or 1/4 of a flight from NY to LA. https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/

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

fsh 4y ago

There is remarkably little information in this press release. The volume of leaked water is meaningless without specifying the tritium concentration. Even if they have nothing to hide, they certainly make it look like they do.

grecy 4y ago

[flagged]

pornel 4y ago
Level of dilution is crucial here. It may be less radioactive than a banana.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Yeah, nothing to worry about, it's all safe, trust us!
  - pornel 4y ago
    You have the same "trust is" situation about safety of fracking, mining, chemical industry, water treatment plants, lead leaks from pipes, baby formula, plastic bottles, and air quality downwind from fossil power plants. Radioactivity level is actually one thing you can easily measure yourself without having to trust the big bad government. BTW: did you know coal power plants release uranium into the air? Coal is "clean" only in election ads. The real one is too expensive to filter, and burned in such massive volumes that even tiny impurities are significant.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      >did you know coal power plants release uranium into the air? Yes. A small amount, and not in concentrated form the way nuclear output or nuclear power plant waste is... I also don't have concerns with bananas
      - pornel 4y ago
        > and not in concentrated form the way nuclear output or nuclear power plant waste is So we're back to square one: it's not actually concentrated. The report says "the levels of tritium in the water are below federal thresholds". These aren't barrels of green goo like in the Simpsons.

hammock 4y ago

More than that the problem is that authorities knew about this in November but the news is only reporting four months later. Why?

dariusj18 4y ago
Because it wasn't a big deal but someone out there wants to take attention away from something else. My guess

hedora 4y ago

It would be nice if they reported radiation leaks like this in terms of equivalent hours of coal plant emission.

fsh 4y ago
You would probably have to measure it in years or decades of equivalent coal plant emissions. According to a 1978 paper [1], a 1 GW coal power plant releases something like 50 GBq per year. The Minnesota Department of Health did not release the activity of the water that was leaked from the nuclear plant. However, according to one article, "In water directly below the plant, the picocurie-per-liter count was in the millions." [2]. 1.5 Ml of water at 1 million pCi/l would correspond to 1.5 Ci or 56 GBq of total activity. This is a very conservative estimate, since the water below the plant is probably already significantly diluted by ground water. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 [2] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.htm...
- elcritch 4y ago
  So the headline could be "nuclear plant leaked the equivalent of 1 years worth of radiation from a large coal power plant diluted to below safe levels in 1.5 Ml of water"
- natmaka 4y ago
  The big picture isn't about "nuclear vs. fossil fuel" anymore, it is "nuclear vs. renewables". I write "vs." because we need to tackle the climate challenge as quickly as possible and have limited resources, therefore the need for optimization is clear: boosting the better approach and neglecting anything else.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Nuclear plants probably kill less wildlife and people per delivered kWh than lithium extraction does for making batteries. No one technology is adequate. Even as we ramp lithium production as fast as we can, we’re facing production shortages for the next few years. More shortages of other stuff will hit each technology as it ramps. This looks like a “spray and pray” sort of situation to me. We should pick the top 5-10 technologies, and throw enough funding at each to get it to be a 33% solution. In five years, fund the top two or three at 100%, but don’t cut funding for the rest. (I’m counting geologically fixed atmospheric carbon capture and efficiency measures in that top N computation, fwiw)

gus_massa 4y ago

From https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.htm... > "We are well above the 20,000 picocuries per liter EPA standard," Clark said. In water directly below the plant, the picocurie-per-liter count was in the millions. I'm not sure if the millions of picocuries per liter are measured in the leak site or after it's diluted. Anyway, I made an approximate calculation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35205070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35205070 and with tritium 10 millions of picocuries per liter is 9uSv/L. So if I made no mistake and you drink 1 liter of it, it's like 2 dental x-ray or 1/4 of a flight from NY to LA. https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/