More Than 25% of US Nuclear Reactors Leaking Carcinogen Into Groundwater

[Bobbieo]

February 2, 2010 /EIN PRESSWIRE/
The Associated Press reports that at least 27 of the 104 nuclear reactors in the US have been leaking a cancer-causing by-product of nuclear fission, with the leaks mostly occurring through deteriorating underground pipes.

The carcinogen tritium has been discovered in potentially dangerous levels (more than three times the federal safety standard) in the groundwater around the nuclear plants, most recently at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear plant.

Tritium has been linked to cancer if ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin in large amounts, and the concentration of tritium found in groundwater has caught the attention of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Follow this story at Nuclear Power News Today:

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[no_hypocrisy]

1. More nuclear plants anyone?

[amborin]

13. +10000

[wtmusic]

2. 100% of Coal Plants Spewing Carcinogen into Air

Yawn.

[Bobbieo]

3. We already know there is no such thing as 'clean coal'!

[AdHocSolver]

5. With both coal and nuclear plants spewing carcinogens into the air...

...is it implied that you prefer building more nuclear plants rather than coal plants?

My vote is don't build either, but rather push development and construction of more eco-friendly renewable energy sources.

[FBaggins]

4. Not "news"... it's a press release by a less-than-unbiased source.

And one filled with inaccuracies... particularly the second paragraph that leaves the reader with the impression that the level discovered in the highest reading to date is actually the norm at the 27 plants mentioned.

Which raises the question... if you can only score debate points by making things up to scare people - how strong is your position really?

[Bobbieo]

7. Wish you would move to Navajo uranium country and live there for several

years. It' a great place to raise a famiy!!!!

[FBaggins]

14. What a charmer you are!

You are aware that uranium is a VERY common element, aren't you?

I didn't think so.

[Bobbieo]

19. Yep - Especially when it is left in Navajo country from abandoned mines and polluting the ground

water and killing hundreds every year.

[FBaggins]

22. Oh please.

Killing hundreds per year?

I rather doubt it. That's likely closer to the rate while people were actually working in the mines (and then it was over multiple years).


But hey... what's a little hyperbole for a good cause, right?

Never heard of "black lung" eh? I'm sure that's no big deal (55,000 deaths in about 20 years)

[hunter]

29. Have you been to coal country out there?

It's pretty amazing.

The uranium mines were abusive of the land and the workers, and it's a disaster how the tailings were used in concrete. The insane demands of the Cold War had terrible consequences.

Yet the coal mining and power production in the Southwest is ongoing today, and much more noxious. It makes power production at the Palo Verde nuclear station look very "green" in comparison.

Edit to add link: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_and_Native_American_tribal_lands

[AdHocSolver]

10. Then this link is especially for you,

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/4-nuclear-waste-pools-in-north-carolina/


snip
..........
One of the most lethal patches of ground in North America is located in the backwoods of North Carolina, where Shearon Harris nuclear plant is housed and owned by Progress Energy. The plant contains the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country. It is not just a nuclear-power-generating station, but also a repository for highly radioactive spent fuel rods from two other nuclear plants. The spent fuel rods are transported by rail and stored in four densely packed pools filled with circulating cold water to keep the waste from heating. The Department of Homeland Security has marked Shearon Harris as one of the most vulnerable terrorist targets in the nation.
..........


..........
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has estimated that there is a 1:100 chance of pool fire happening under the best of scenarios. And the dossier on the Shearon Harris plant is far from the best.
In 1999 the plant experienced four emergency shutdowns. A few months later, in April 2000, the plant’s safety monitoring system, designed to provide early warning of a serious emergency, failed. And it wasn’t the first time. Indeed, the emergency warning system at Shearon Harris has failed fifteen times since the plant opened in 1987
..........


..........
Between 1999 and 2003, there were twelve major problems requiring the shutdown of the plant. According to the NRC, the national average for commercial reactors is one shutdown per eighteen months. Congressman David Price of North Carolina sent the NRC a report by scientists at MIT and Princeton that pinpointed the waste pools as the biggest risk at the plant. “Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly and catch fire,” wrote Bob Alvarez, a former advisor to the Department of Energy and co-author of the report. “The fire could well spread to older fuel. The long-term land contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than Chernobyl.”
..........


..........
The study recommended relatively inexpensive fixes, which would have cost Progress approximately $5 million a year—less than the $6.6 million annual bonus for Progress CEO Warren Cavanaugh.
Progress scoffed at the idea and recruited the help of NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan to smear the MIT/Princeton report...
..........


That last paragraph provides the best argument for NOT building any more nuclear generating plants. When it comes to increasing profits and executive bonuses versus operating the plant safely, there are going to be plant operators who vote for profits and bonuses. Guaranteed!

[Zoeisright]

12. [phone]

[FBaggins]

15. Why? Was there anything that refuted anything I said?

Or was it a wild attempt to change the subject from the original post's errors?

I think we both know the answer.

[AdHocSolver]

20. The issue is NOT which power source, coal or nuclear, is worse than the other.

They are both equally bad and unsustainable. The issue is whether to replace a power source (coal) that is polluting, dangerous, and that has many hidden costs (such as for health care), with another polluting, even more dangerous, and more costly technology (nuclear) -- OR -- invest in less costly, far less polluting, and far less dangerous renewable energy sources.

It is you that is obfuscating the real issues with irrelevant arguments about which side is more accurate in their responses

Another benefit of renewables such as solar, wind, and wave power generation is that they do not put the people into dependencies on a small number of giant, for-profit corporations to be able to live their lives. Renewable power sources can be decentralized and do NOT rely on esoteric technologies (such as nuclear engineering) for their deployment and maintenance.

Moreover, renewable energy sources do not place the safety of the planet into the hands of a greedy cabal of corporate executives who will do anything to increase their profits.

[FBaggins]

21. Actually... "the issue" was that the OP was factually incorrect

And appears to be intentionaly so.

The fact that you would attempt to shift the argument to entirely different topics implies that you knew this.

As I said... if an argument relies on knowing falsehoods... how much attention should I pay to it?

And no... coal and nuclear are not "equally bad and unsustainable".

Renewable energy sources have many advantages and many reasons for support... they are not, however, options that replace fossil/nuclear sources as primary energy supply any time in many MANY decades.

[NNadir]

6. Why not discuss a subject you know nothing about?

Do you know the risk of tritium?

Any idea even of what it is?

Here: Let me help you. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/1/17162/29083">Profile of Radioactive Substance Associated With Nuclear Power: Tritium.

Why not call for banning the sun? It has continually been radiating tritium on this planet for about, um, four and a half billion years. (This fact accounts for the fact that moon rocks contain He-3, but there's no point in discussing science in this kind of thread.)

Every man, woman, child and http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=7251306">feral beagle on earth has been living at a level of tritium contamination that was literally thousands of times higher in 1963 - when coincidentally nuclear power began to expand - than it is today.

It will be a cold day in hell when there is EVEN ONE anti-nuke on the face of this pathetic ignorant planet who gives a rat's ass about the millions of people who die each year from coal carcinogens.

Do any of you people who know NO science whatsoever give a rat's ass about the leak of carcinogens from coal plants?

Nuclear power need not be perfect to be infinitely better than the stuff scientifically vapid anti-nukes don't care about. It merely needs to be infinitely better than stuff scientifically vapid anti-nukes don't care about, which, happily it is.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bananas]

9. We're discussing a subject you know nothing about.

[NNadir]

24. Really? You know something about the risks of tritium?

Do tell...

Anti-nukes are pretty glib about asserting that their ignorance consists of knowledge.


You do know, don't you that tritium contamination in human flesh is um, measurable, don't you?

You don't?

Why am I not surprised?

You realize that there are tritium detectors all over the world, don't you?

How about you start with giving us a description of the measured incorporation of tritium from world wide detectors? How about comparing the absorbed dose from tritium with the absorbed dose from potassium? Next why not give us a little dissertation on the difference between potassium contamination in um, bananas - and tritium concentrations in human flesh.

Can't do it?

I thought as much. Here, let me help you with the bananas portion:

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm

Do you, um, know what a picocurie is? No?

Well I'm obviously unsurprised by that as well.

Why don't you come back when you figure it out, and tell us whether we should ban bananas and brazil nuts, and in speaking about brazil nuts, I'm not speaking about the dumb indifferent fucks who are grinding up the Pantanal and Amazon basin to save their cars as part of their "renewable energy portfolio standards."

The number of anti-nukes who know any science is zero. Mostly they just wave their hands and assert their anti-science nonsense as facts, relying on the credulousness of other people who also know no science.

The anti-nukes are oblivious. If they don't know what they're talking about - and they never do - they just make stuff up.

[Zoeisright]

11. I'm not surprised.

It's absolutely impossible to keep that poison contained permanently. I'm sure there's much more to this than we're being told.

[caraher]

16. No sense of perspective

I'd rather spend a year drinking groundwater contaminated at the levels of tritium they are finding than breathing the air near a coal plant.

Yes, there is a problem that needs to be addressed at these nuclear plants. The tritium should not be leaking out, and this indicates a need for maintenance. The tritium is essentially zero threat in itself, but its presence may indicate deficiencies that could progress into genuine problems.

"Leaking carcinogen into groundwater" is not an accurate portrayal of the health risks associated with this problem. One could with similar scientific justification assert that "grocery stores sell carcinogen-laden bananas" on the basis of their potassium content and the fact that natural potassium contains the radioactive isotope K-40. K-40 will cause cancer, too, if ingested in large amounts.

There may be plenty of reasons to prefer alternatives to nuclear power, but fear of tritium is as weak as the radiation health risk posed by a banana.

[kristopher]

18. I worked at the Command Post on Keesler AFB

...right across the street from Sandia National Labs (you've heard of them?). We had a report of a "minor" tritium leak from an overturned truck about 150 miles west of the base.

The trio of helicopters used for response by the HAZMAT team seemed to indicate that some people with significant knowledge of the topic have an opinion that is at odds with yours.

[caraher]

25. I'm not saying tritium spills should not be taken seriously

and they are a bitch to clean up because tritium is so damned hard to detect with survey instruments - because the beta particles have so little energy. You pretty much need to put samples into scintillation fluid to detect anything. And I know people who have taken part in some pretty extensive tritium cleanups both at the university and a company that used to make targets for inertial confinement fusion experiments in Ann Arbor.

I don't think counting helicopters is a valid method of risk assessment.

What I am saying is that when you calculate the actual additional radiation burden that 80,000 picocuries/liter represents (I believe that was the highest reading they reported), the health risk is less than that for many hazards we accept on a daily basis. One site reports the maximum permissible tritium body burden for radiation workers is 1 mCi. If my entire ~100 kg body consisted of water with a tritium concentration of 100,000 pCi/l that amounts to a total of 10 microcuries - 1% of the radiation worker limit. And of course, the real tritium burden from drinking the water would be less.

Now the standard for radiation workers should never be applied to the general public; but it's also set to a level that does not pose an unacceptable risk to workers as far as our best science can tell. It's harder for me to calculate the harm from what I'd be sucking from a coal plant smokestack, but you can bet that risk is non-negligible.

[kristopher]

26. Instant authority to spend the money for three helicopters is a good indicator of an area of concern

That's all I was saying. While agreeing that public perception of risk varies widely from scientific perception of risk, he problem I see with the argument you pose is twofold. First is the fact that they just told an overt lie about the matter at Vermont Yankee. That has a large impact on the margin of tolerance for ANY deviation from established safety standards on issues as potentially toxic (pun intended) as nuclear power. Second is the matter of the perception of cumulative risk. It is absolutely sound reasoning for a nonexpert to look at a minor release of radioactivity and place that into a matrix of beliefs associated with distrust of the profit motive, the very real large scale dangers associated with potential technological failures in the industry and the demonstrated episodes where peoples lives have been placed at risk in the early days of nuclear power.

The upshot is that I think the criticisms are rational, even if the problem isn't particularly deadly - this time.

[bananas]

27. "readings of 1 million to 2 million picocuries per liter "

William Irwin, the state’s radiological health chief, says readings of 1 million to 2 million picocuries per liter of the isotope were found in a concrete trench several hundred feet from the test well where tritium was reported on Jan. 7.

<snip>

Tritium is a hydrogen isotope that can be a radiation hazard when it is inhaled or ingested through food or water. The federal safety standard for tritium in drinking water is 20,000 picocuries per liter.

as reported here: Breaking: High Levels of Radioactive Material Found in Water Outside Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant

Here is Entergy's response: Entergy Lawyers Up, "Disappears" Chief Engineer from website

[FBaggins]

28. That level was only found WITHIN the containment area.

There's a difference between that and what ends up in the water table. In fact, there is speculation that this concrete trench (and not the speculated underground pipes) may be the source of the tritium found in the test well.

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Latest research: 100% of raindrops leaking carcinogen into groundwater

http://www.pnas.org/content/39/4/245.full.pdf

("Latest" for anyone who hasn't read a science journal in the last 50 years. If you have, this may be old news)

Now, anyone for a nice glass of water? Don't worry, it's from Suntech.

[amborin]

23. speaking of groundwater.....

my original post from 2 yrs ago is missing.....

so i dug this up:

"On January 1, 2006, Obama introduced a bill, S. 2348, to help allay the concerns of Illinois citizens. The original draft of the legislation required nuclear plant operators to "immediately notify" local communities of any "unplanned release" of radioactive substances in excess of federal limits. The legislation was subsequently modified in committee over the objections of some environmental activists. The new draft shifted responsibility for drafting the regulations away from Congress itself to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the goverment's nuclear watchdog. Both drafts are available here.

The chief Exelon lobbyist on the Obama bill was David C. Brown. He told me that Exelon supported the "spirit" of the Obama legislation, in contrast to some other nuclear operators, who opposed more regulation of the industry. Nevertheless, Exelon had some "concerns" about the way the legislation was written. For example, the company felt that the phrase "immediately notify" should be changed to "within 24 hours," and that small spills on plant premises should be exempted from the reporting requirement.

Brown says that he met with the Obama staffer responsible for the notification legislation, Todd Atkinson, half a dozen times between January and June 2006, while the bill was being considered by the Senate environment committee. In addition, he helped arrange a five-minute meeting between Exelon CEO (and Obama contributor) John W. Rowe and Senator Obama outside a Senate hearing room on March 29, at which the bill was briefly discussed.

As Brown remembers this conversation, Rowe told Obama that he supported his bill, but that the company had some concerns about the language. According to Brown, Obama replied, "Fine, work with Todd."

Over the next four months, according to a timeline drawn up by Exelon, Brown had a series of meetings with Atkinson (on May 12, May 25, and June 21), as well as staffers for the GOP majority and Democratic minority on the Environment Committee. An e-mail provided by the Obama campaign shows that the committee chairman, James M. Inhofe (R-OK), favored rewriting portions of the bill to reflect the concerns of Exelon and other nuclear operators. In May, Obama put a temporary hold on a Bush administration appointee to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because he was unsatisfied with his answers on the notification issue.

Although Obama had initially introduced the legislation, Inhofe had the decisive say on whether it would move forward. Two other Democratic senators on the committee, Barbara Boxer (CA), and Richard Durbin (IL), said that Obama had little choice except to go along with Inhofe, in order to keep his legislation alive. Both scoffed at Clinton's claims of a "backroom deal" between Obama and Exelon."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_backroom_deal.html