BRACEVILLE, Ill. – Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.
Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP’s yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard — sometimes at hundreds of times the limit.
At three sites — two in Illinois and one in Minnesota — leaks have contaminated drinking wells of nearby homes, the records show, but not at levels violating the drinking water standard. At a fourth site, in New Jersey, tritium has leaked into an aquifer and a discharge canal feeding picturesque Barnegat Bay off the Atlantic Ocean.
Previously, the AP reported that regulators and industry have weakened safety standards for decades to keep the nation’s commercial nuclear reactors operating within the rules. While NRC officials and plant operators argue that safety margins can be eased without peril, critics say these accommodations are inching the reactors closer to an accident.
Nuclear generated power is perfectly safe….unless, of course, something goes wrong. And the government’s lame response will be to raise acceptable limits.
After having a tsunami and earthquake take out a plant, Japan is bringing two nuclear power plants back online.
Tritium is used in making Hydrogen bombs. So the questions are, is this reactor Tritium being made by accident or on purpose? And is current reactor design, because of the useful byproducts they make? Whereas a much safer design, would not crank out the bomb making goodies, another industry requires. I’ve heard of a reactor design that uses Helium, instead of water, so dangerously explosive hydrogen does not result. I’ve also heard of Thorium based reactors, instead of uranium. Which may even be more energetic, but doesn’t create the weapons grade Plutonium that we-know-who, needs.
http://tinyurl.com/3y3ypqr
If all of this is true, we’re losing a golden opportunity to start over and build new reactors right, as the aging ones are (or should be) deactivated. But I suspect the uranium mining industry, as will as the nuclear weapon making industry, will have a say in what replaces the old reactors. Once again politics, rather than science, rules the day. The US sets off two A-bombs to scare the Japanese, and impress the Russians. And we’re plagued ever since by specter of dirty nuclear power.
OK I know this is just nit-picking, but the title should read “…nuclear reactors leaking radioactive contamination.” If all there was to worry about was radioactivity, then you could just stay away from the sites since it drops off fairly rapidly. Contamination can spread (e.g. Tritium as H2O) much farther.
Nuclear power was never a good idea.
Well, expect for billionaires.