Nuclear reactors produce small amounts of Tritium during normal operations. It’s released into the environment as standard procedure because the amount is so ne

Nuclear reactors produce small amounts of Tritium during normal operations. It’s released into the environment as standard procedure because the amount is so negligible that it doesn’t matter, but it must be closely monitored and reported. Any time it escapes in an unplanned manner, it’s a “leak”. That doesn’t mean it’s dangerous, though. You could drink water from a well contaminated by a titriated water spill for a year and only get about 1/10th the radiation dose of flying cross country in an airplane. It also decays rapidly with a half life around 12 years and it doesn’t accumulate in the body. Radiation exposure is a huge spectrum and we can detect tiny amounts with modern equipment. There are a lot of detectable amounts of radioactive material out there that just don’t matter at all to your health: Bananas, smoke detectors, tritiated water from nuclear reactors, etc.