Tritium in the groundwater / DEP acts decisively (Oyster Creek nuclear plant, New Jersey)

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/opinion/editorials/article_bdb4159c-6660-574c-a99b-5d13d2488321.html

State Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin deserves praise.

Appointed more to cut regulation than to cut pollution, Martin reacted immediately and forcefully last week to the news that radioactive water from the Oyster Creek Generating Station had found its way into the Cohansey aquifer - a major source of drinking water for southern New Jersey.

"There is a problem here. ... This is not something that can wait," Martin said while invoking New Jersey's Spill Act, which enables state officials to take over the cleanup from the plant's owner, Exelon Corp., and allows the state to fine Exelon three times the cost of the cleanup.

The plume is believed to be 2 miles from the nearest wells in Lacey Township. The 180,000 gallons of water is contaminated with 1 million picocuries per liter of tritium. The federal safe drinking-water standard is 20,000 picocuries per liter. Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, is a byproduct of nuclear fission and has been linked to cancer if ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

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Wow, no problem with those nuclear plants? Cancer coming might close to wells.

the air, food we eat and now the water many will have to drink. Close them down already. We'll be fine without them, it may cause some some hardships but nothing that any of us can't deal with. 20% is all they supply anyway. We have safer alternatives. All thats needed is the money from the money pit that the nuclear energy is redirected towards developing and implementing other more benign sources.

Only fools advocate for more nuclear plants to be built.

Bet we would have healthier kids in the US if they didn't have as much electric powered babysitters and actually spent time with parents, others, and outside playing. Especially if outside was less threatening to the ones near these abominable LEAKING facilities.

I seriously worry what we're going to do with these plants to protect the people who come after us. How will we insure that they are safe for them when we can't even make them safe for us. I'll say it again, the nuclear genie should never have been let out of the bottle. mankind will have to deal with the radiation from this very misguided experiment that mankind has embarked on with nuclear energy, in some cases for thousands and thousands of years. Long after we're gone. If I was a betting person I'd bet that a couple decade down the road no one will still be using nuclear energy for anything except in the medical field.

The details are important in cases like this. The "plume" is reportedly expanding at 1-3 ft per day. So we're talking 10-20 years before it really gets "close to wells"... and tritium has a half life of about a dozen years. You would also have massive dilution... very likely well below the guidelines (which are themselves VERY low).

IOW, the leak is certainly something that needs to be stopped, but it's highly unlikely that a single person has received ANY dosage worthy of concern.

and I guess I worry more about people beyond my own life. Some don't seem to,

> Yes, I know the filtering is slow, but it is going on.
> and I guess I worry more about people beyond my own life.

Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years.

This means that after 12.3 years, approximately half of the original
amount of tritium is no longer present. It also means that it will not
be accumulating at that distance from the source at any dangerous rate.

Tritium is "a rare but naturally occurring hydrogen isotope" but most
of the measurable tritium in the atmosphere and surface/near-surface
waters came from the open-air nuclear testing from the 1940s onwards.

Taken in perspective, it is not the tritium that you need to worry
about affecting people during or after your lifetime but the medium
range half-life isotopes (i.e., long enough to last but short enough
to be active) and non-radioactive pollutants (i.e., last forever).

HTH
:hi:

Worrying without cause, OTOH, isn't. There are likely a dozen things that the average person in town gets more dosage from every day than this leak might cause ten years from now.

I'm just saying that a little perspective is warranted.

That's cause. We are constantly told the plants are safe and that is incorrect.

It's paranoia.

Which is what the anti-nuclear crowd feeds on. But that doesn't make it any more rational.

You are likely at FAR more danger from breathing the air in your home than anyone will ever be from this tritium leak. So the existance of the leak isn't "cause" for worrying about others.

and tell him he has nothing to worry about

yup!

Why is that so confusing for you? Surely the paranoia can't be 24/7?

Just because the event had no impact on the public (or on workers at the plant), does NOT mean that there's no reason to take action. The release IS a violation of state law/regs.

The DRINKING WATER limit is 20K pCuries per L.
Are you planning on drinking from the test well?

pCuries/L is a measure of concentration. The actual amount of radioactive material is 0.683 curies.
At current rate of travel it is about 15 years before tritinated water reaches nearest well. 62% of the tritium will have decayed off by then. So roughly a third of a curie of tritium.

Also what do you think happens when 1/3 of a curies of tritium gets mixed into billions of Liters of water in the aquifer?
Think saltshaker into Lake Michigan.

Think concentration might go down?

So at current rate of travel it will take 15 years to reach nearest well, most of it will be decayed by then, and when it does it will be diluted by a couple orders of magnitude below EPA limit.

OH NOES!!!!! OH NOES!!!!

If it gets into test wells, it's in the fucking ground water. I read rather well.

> Civility and reality problem
> If it gets into test wells, it's in the fucking ground water.

To complete your "reality" side, please consider the dilution
rather than just the "non-zero tiny amount" aspect.

:shrug:

There is no drinking well within miles of the tritium and it is moving very slowly.

It will be decades before it could contaminate even the nearest well.

Of course even that scenario ignores both
Radioactive decay. In 12 years the amount of tritium will be halved.
Dilution. Half million liters into couple billion liters.

I read fine. You do to, I reckon. But spin is how safety problems keep getting dismissed. See, I can read between lines too.

With all due respect.

A facility does not become "unsafe" because of this, nor are the problems "dismissed" (other than to correct misperceptions). It isn't as if anyone is saying "just let it leak... who cares?"

What they're saying is that not a single person has received (or very likely WILL receive) ANY dosage from this event that would compare unfavorably to, say, and x-ray.

If you give me a PO box number, I will ship dramamine. Might help when industry spin tries to call leak not a leak. ;)

What you said was that your point was that "their allegedly safe facilities are not as safe as they claim"

A "problem with leaks" doesn't make the facilities "not as safe"

If there is ZERO forseable health impact from a leak, the leak isn't a safety issue.


"There is a leak" and "these things are unsafe" is not the same thing. Solar panels sometimes catch on fire, but that doesn't mean that their supporters' claims that they are safe are incorrect. Wind turbines occasionally break apart and throw deadly shards for hundreds of yards... but that doesn't mean that a wind supporter would be proven wrong when we say that they're safe.

If they'll lie about this and lie is what they were doing for quite some time then what else are they hiding. The difference between a solar panel that catches fire, never heard of that happening btw, and a wind turbine failing is in no way on the same level as when a nuclear plant pulls a Chernobyl or a three mile island, it's a whole different ball of wax. Now don't even try to tell me that either or both of these caused no deaths as I'll call you a liar and a dumbass for thinking that. Nuclear energy is not going to help us in our endeavor to reduce our co2 long term, short term either as it takes too long to build the plants and way too much money. Without a government handout none of the nuke plants can compete in the real world. Nuclear is not as clean as you would want us to believe nor is it as safe as you want to bloviate about. Oh and yes I also worry about the people coming after us.

As I said if the nuclear power industry will lie to us over this, which they were, what you claim is no big deal then what else are they hiding?

They lied to us about WMD in Iraq, so you can feel justified in believing that they lied about going to the Moon. After all, if they'll lie to us about one thing, what else are they hiding?

the pukes in the government lied to us not the government lied to us. Anyways that has no bearing at all on the subject at hand. The nuclear power industry lies to us even when the truth would sound better as this case we're discussing is a perfect example of. Pathetic argument you have there:rofl:

There is absolutely zero evidence that this event has resulted in any danger to the public. Yet you insist that there IS a danger because others in the industry have lied in the past?

BTW - "the nuclear industry" is no more a living entity than "the government" is.

The nuclear power industry as a whole lie like a dog to us and have as long as they've been in existence. At some point early on they made a conscious decision to lie rather than be truthful because if the people knew the truth they would never have been allowed to exist to begin with. I've been watching this industry from its inception and I remember nuclear power back before there was a nuclear electrical power industry. Back before they thought they had to lie to us, back when they were for the most part honest about the dangers and worried that some of the faults would be impossible to deal with as the waste is a testament too.

In another thread I'll do something called "risk analysis" and report how the misuse of the prefix "pico" compares with the known dumping by Amory Lovins pals of dangerous fossil fuel waste.

The risks of tritium are well known, well characterized and not mysterious, unless one gets one's science education from reporters who never took a science course in their lives.

unlike the made-up NJ molten salt breeder reactor

yup!

:rofl:

... That there is no danger to the public.

from the OP...

"Radioactive water leaking into underground aquifers is, as Martin recognized, a very serious situation. The state would have been lax if it had not stepped in to deal with the problem."

yup!

if they hadn't stopped it.

That does NOT mean that there is any risk to the public.

The DEP made clear in the press release that there was no threat to public or private drinking water supplies.

The company's annual radioactive effluent reports three abnormal releases and lists the estimated radiation exposure for the MOST exposed member of the public...

...wait for it...

less than .001 mRem

The normal annual dosage from normal environmental sources in that part of NJ is about 300,000 times as high.

:D

when I spin like that I get all dizzy and fall down all over everywhere. :rofl: Only fools and small minded people advocate for more nuclear energy to solve any problem we may have imagined or real.

Does it compare to the risks know from the dumping by Amory's pals of millions of tons of oil in Karachi harbor?

How about the Gulf of Mexico, Amory boy? Any risk from cancer with your pals leaching oil wells?

No?

Don't know how to do risk analysis?

I thought so.

Um, you wouldn't know. The number of dumb anti-science anti-nukes who view nuclear energy in any context in comparison, is um, zero.

Nuclear power need not be risk free to be infinitely superior to all the stuff that dumb anti-nukes don't care about. It only needs to be infinitely superior to all the stuff that Amory Lovins owners at BP don't care about, as well as their failure driven fantasies about solar and wind power.

Can you demonstrate ONE PERSON who has been injured by this stupidity freak out.

Like I said, the risks of tritium are well known.

(Note DFF refers to the dangerous fossil fuels. We have here, on this website, DFF advocates all over the place. To wit: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=246887&mesg_id=246887
">The gas man cometh. )

Have a nice cap rock dynamiting evening.