Radioactive Leaks Found at 75% of US Nuke Sites

- Asso­ci­at­ed Press, June 21, 2011, CBS

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.

While most leaks have been found with­in plant bound­aries, some have migrat­ed off­site. But none is known to have reached pub­lic water supplies.

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.

Any expo­sure to radioac­tiv­i­ty, no mat­ter how slight, boosts can­cer risk, accord­ing to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. Fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors set a lim­it for how much tri­tium is allowed in drink­ing water. So far, fed­er­al and indus­try offi­cials say, the tri­tium leaks pose no health threat.

But it’s hard to know how far some leaks have trav­eled into ground­wa­ter. Tri­tium moves through soil quick­ly, and when it is detect­ed it often indi­cates the pres­ence of more pow­er­ful radioac­tive iso­topes that are often spilled at the same time.

For exam­ple, cesium-137 turned up with tri­tium at the Fort Cal­houn nuclear unit near Oma­ha, Neb., in 2007. Stron­tium-90 was dis­cov­ered with tri­tium two years ear­li­er at the Indi­an Point nuclear pow­er com­plex, where two reac­tors oper­ate 25 miles north of New York City.

The tri­tium leaks also have spurred doubts among inde­pen­dent engi­neers about the reli­a­bil­i­ty of emer­gency safe­ty sys­tems at the 104 nuclear reac­tors sit­u­at­ed on the 65 sites. That’s part­ly because some of the leaky under­ground pipes car­ry water meant to cool a reac­tor in an emer­gency shut­down and to pre­vent a melt­down. More than a mile of pip­ing, much of it encased in con­crete, can lie beneath a reactor.

Tri­tium is rel­a­tive­ly short-lived and pen­e­trates the body weak­ly through the air com­pared to oth­er radioac­tive con­t­a­m­i­nants. Each of the known releas­es has been less radioac­tive than a sin­gle X‑ray.

The main health risk from tri­tium, though, would be in drink­ing water. The U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency says tri­tium should mea­sure no more than 20,000 pic­ocuries per liter in drink­ing water. The agency esti­mates sev­en of 200,000 peo­ple who drink such water for decades would devel­op cancer.

Still, the NRC and indus­try con­sid­er the leaks a pub­lic rela­tions prob­lem, not a pub­lic health or acci­dent threat, records and inter­views show.

“The pub­lic health and safe­ty impact of this is next to zero,” said Tony Pietrange­lo, chief nuclear offi­cer of the indus­try’s Nuclear Ener­gy Insti­tute. “This is a pub­lic con­fi­dence issue.”

Leaks Are Prolific

Like rust under a car, cor­ro­sion has prop­a­gat­ed for decades along the hard-to-reach, wet under­bel­lies of the reac­tors — gen­er­al­ly built in a burst of con­struc­tion dur­ing the 1960s and 1970s. As part of an inves­ti­ga­tion of aging prob­lems at the coun­try’s nuclear reac­tors, the AP uncov­ered evi­dence that despite gov­ern­ment and indus­try pro­grams to bring the caus­es of such leaks under con­trol, breach­es have become more fre­quent and widespread.

There were 38 leaks from under­ground pip­ing between 2000 and 2009, accord­ing to an indus­try doc­u­ment pre­sent­ed at a tri­tium con­fer­ence. Near­ly two-thirds of the leaks were report­ed over the lat­est five years.

Here are some examples:

• At the three-unit Browns Fer­ry com­plex in Alaba­ma, a valve was mis­tak­en­ly left open in a stor­age tank dur­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tions over the years. When the tank was filled in April 2010 about 1,000 gal­lons of tri­tium-laden water poured onto the ground at a con­cen­tra­tion of 2 mil­lion pic­ocuries per liter. In drink­ing water, that would be 100 times high­er than the EPA health standard.
• At the LaSalle site west of Chica­go, tri­tium-laden water was acci­den­tal­ly released from a stor­age tank in July 2010 at a con­cen­tra­tion of 715,000 pic­ocuries per liter — 36 times the EPA standard.
• The year before, 123,000 pic­ocuries per liter were detect­ed in a well near the tur­bine build­ing at Peach Bot­tom west of Philadel­phia — six times the drink­ing water standard.
• And in 2008, 7.5 mil­lion pic­ocuries per liter leaked from under­ground pip­ing at Quad Cities in west­ern Illi­nois — 375 times the EPA limit.

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