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Page added on February 7, 2016
65,000% Spike In Reported Radioactivity After Tritium Leaks At Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant
Two years after being fined for falsifying safety records, nine months after a transformer exploded at the Indian Point Nuclear Reactor just 37 miles from midtown Manhattan, and two months after Entergy – the plant’s operator – shut down the Unit 2 reactor after a major power outage cut power to several control rods (when the company assured that no radioactivity was released into the environment), this afternoon NY Governor Andrew Cuomo said he learned that “radioactive tritium-contaminated water” had leaked into the groundwater at the nuclear facility in Westchester County.
Cuomo, in a letter Saturday to the state Health Department and the Department of Environmental Conservation, called for the probe into the Indian Point NPP after he said Entergy, the plant’s owner, reported “alarming levels of radioactivity” at three monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000 percent.
It is unclear if the facility was taking a page out of the Fukushima “crisis response” book, or was being honest when it said that the contamination has not migrated off site “and as such does not pose an immediate threat to public health.” For the sake of millions of downriver New Yorkers, we hope it was the latter.
From Cuomo’s statement:
“Yesterday I learned that radioactive tritium-contaminated water leaked into the groundwater at the Indian Point Nuclear facility. The company reported alarming levels of radioactivity at three monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000 percent. The facility reports that the contamination has not migrated off site and as such does not pose an immediate threat to public health.
“Our first concern is for the health and safety of the residents close to the facility and ensuring the groundwater leak does not pose a threat.
“This latest failure at Indian Point is unacceptable and I have directed Department of Environmental Conservation Acting Commissioner Basil Seggos and Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to fully investigate this incident and employ all available measures, including working with Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to determine the extent of the release, its likely duration, cause and potential impacts to the environment and public health.”
The Governor’s letter directing Acting Commissioner Seggos and Commissioner Zucker to their begin investigation can be viewed here. The text of that letter is also available below:
Despite Indian Point’s denial that the contamination has migrated off site, Cuomo said that the incident requires a full investigation.
There was no immediate comment from Indian Point on the situation, Lohud reported.
The plant, located in Buchanan, NY which supplies about 30 percent of the energy to New York City, has been under increased scrutiny from Cuomo’s office, and the Democratic governor supports closing the plant, even as he supports keeping open two other upstate nuclear facilities.
In December, Cuomo ordered an investigation into Indian Point after a series of unplanned shutdowns, citing its risks being just outside the city and in the populated suburbs.
Cuomo said the “latest failure at Indian Point is unacceptable” adding that the DEC and health department should “employ all available measures, including working with Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to determine the extent of the release, its likely duration, cause and potential impacts to the environment and public health.”
In other words, nothing will change.
Which is probably why such failure escalations, which lead to a lot of verbal jawboning and shuffling of papers and nothing else, will continue until one day the failure leads to tragic consequences and everyone will say how nobody could have possibly seen this coming.
* * *
Cuomo’s full letter directing Acting Commissioner Seggos and Commissioner Zucker to their begin investigation can be viewed here. The text of that letter is also available below:
Dear Commissioners Zucker and Seggos:
I am deeply concerned to have learned that radioactive tritium-contaminated water has recently leaked from operations at the Entergy Indian Point Energy Center (Indian Point) into groundwater at the site. This is not the first such release of radioactive water at Indian Point, nor is this the first time that Indian Point has experienced significant failure in its operation and maintenance. This failure continues to demonstrate that Indian Point cannot continue to operate in a manner that is protective of public health and the environment.
The levels of radioactivity reported this week are significantly higher than in past incidents. Three of forty monitoring wells registered alarming increases. In fact, one of the monitoring well increased nearly 65,000 percent from 12,300 picocuries per liter to over 8,000,000 picocuries per liter.
Our first concern is for the health and safety of the residents close to the facility and ensuring the groundwater leak does not pose a threat. As such, I am directing you to fully investigate this incident and employ all available measures, including working with Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to determine the extent of the release, its likely duration, its causes, its potential impacts to the environment and public health, and how the release can be contained. We need to identify whether this incident could have been avoided by exercising reasonable care. We also need to know how a recurrence of this episode can be avoided by specific steps that Entergy should be taking.
Please report back at the completion of the investigation.
Sincerely,
ANDREW M. CUOMO
19 Comments on "65,000% Spike In Reported Radioactivity After Tritium Leaks At Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant"
diemos on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 9:17 am
For a long time I though zero hedge was the most idiotic website out there where every article was guaranteed to be, if not flat out wrong, at least wildly overblown. Then I started seeing stuff from superstation95.
ghung on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 9:42 am
… and your point?
twocats on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 9:55 am
This article includes a statement from the governor himself. The source is:
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/statement-governor-andrew-m-cuomo-regarding-indian-point-nuclear-facility
off you go.
Kenz300 on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 10:40 am
Wind and solar power are safer and cleaner ways to generate electricity..
Nuclear waste is too costly to clean up and store FOREVER.
twocats on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 2:43 pm
There’s very little that makes me sadder than to think about humanity’s affair with nuclear power. Only a culture obsessed with death, that has blurred the lines between love and death, could ever consider nuclear…anything.
peakyeast on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 4:30 pm
Nuclear power is possibly pretty safe – but never when you include humans. When including the human factors we are back from dreamy scientific idealism to “Everything that can go wrong – will go wrong – as well as a lot of thing that couldnt possibly go wrong.”.
Politicians and economists will likely be the ones to assure the last part.
penury on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 4:39 pm
Things are becoming better and better, first we have Fukishima adding radiation to the Pacific, then we have the methane leak in Ca which is adding radiation to the atmosphere (as short lived as it is) then we have the leak in NYC. How long before .gov issues statements assuring everyone that everything is fine. It may be but bio=accumulation is a bitch.
onlooker on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 4:44 pm
Yeah I live in upstate NY, so I am close to that darn power plant. The world is contaminated now so much and will be for so long that our legacy to the future could not be worse.
makati1 on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 7:02 pm
I watched some techie freak, on YouTube, with a degree and an idea to use nukes to blow a hole in the earth down to the hot mantle (about 9 miles), fill it with molten iron and then use the heat conducted to the surface as an energy source. All he needs is enough fools to spend about $20 billion dollars on it. That is his “guesstimate” of cost. I wish I had tagged the site for future reference. Insanity is spreading. We call the same thing made by Mother Nature, “Volcanoes”. She does them for free.
dave thompson on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 7:42 pm
To cheap to meter(Sorry couldn’t help it).
twocats on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 11:19 pm
Nuclear power is possibly pretty safe – but never when you include humans. [peaky]
good one peaky.
To cheap to meter(Sorry couldn’t help it). [dave]
harry shearer’s le show regularly highlights nuclear industry “news of the atom – clean, safe, too cheap to meter”. He’s been covering tritium leaks (which are near-weekly occurrences at most plants) for years now.
GregT on Sun, 7th Feb 2016 11:47 pm
“I watched some techie freak, on YouTube, with a degree and an idea to use nukes to blow a hole in the earth down to the hot mantle (about 9 miles), fill it with molten iron and then use the heat conducted to the surface as an energy source.”
Sounds like a great idea. What could possibly go wrong?
Boat on Mon, 8th Feb 2016 12:12 am
GregT,
They do pump water down to create steam. Problem is the water cools the mantle to fast for the cost of drilling. It also works best where the mantle is nearer the surface, but that cuts down on location options.
Hey, was that guy on you tube named short?
GregT on Mon, 8th Feb 2016 12:29 am
Short is a realist Boat, he is not a techie freak.
Boat on Mon, 8th Feb 2016 1:11 am
GregT,
When the price of oil goes back up without the world crashing his entire theory will crash instead. Should happen within a year depending on how fast Iran starts pumping or how fast fracking crashes.
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 8th Feb 2016 2:01 am
I remember getting rude phone service and slow shipments from those discount New York photography stores in the 1980’s. So there is no problem go ahead and pump radioactive tritium into their drinking water.
GregT on Mon, 8th Feb 2016 4:24 am
Boat,
It is entirely possible for the price of oil to go back up again, even multiple times, before our economies finally collapse. The bankers could have a trick or two left up their sleeves yet, but I seriously doubt it. Short’s ETP model makes complete sense, and will happen eventually. Your continued attacks on Short are neither considerate, nor are they intelligent. They are foolish. Keep playing your little games Boat, and they will ultimately come back to bite you in the ass. You are in way over your head.
Kenz300 on Mon, 8th Feb 2016 7:48 am
Fukishima and Chernobyl should have taught us how costly and dangerous nuclear energy really is……..
Wait until the cost to dismantle all the old nuclear plants and store the waste FOREVER is added up.
Wind and solar are safer, cleaner and cheaper ways to generate electricity.
Freedom lover on Mon, 8th Feb 2016 11:57 am
Kenz300 You forget the fact that neither the soviet era Chernobyl or the unsafely sited Fukishima plants would and could never be licenced to operate in the United States. You also fail to realize that nuclear power in the United states has one of the best safety records of any industrial process over the past 50-yrs (3-mile island not withstanding) no deaths only financial loses and all of the safety back-up systems contained the partial melt down. Also not to mention the overblown concern with nuclear waste since the average 1-MW plant produces about enough waste to fill up a typical phone booth whereas a comparable coal plant produces mountains of fly ash waste which in total is more radioactive than the waste of the Nuclear plant. Lastly the new generation of plants will produce little or no waste as it is consumed in the process.