Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant: “Unknown Amount” of Tritium Released Into Mississippi River
May 8th, 2011I guess the intertubes are so clogged with fake Bin Laden nonsense that this one wasn’t important enough to mention. There are only two references to this story on Google News at the moment and 60,900 for Bin Laden.
Via: Natchez Democrat:
An unknown amount of radioactive water was released accidentally into the Mississippi River late last week at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating the incident, but suggests the release poses no public health hazard.
Entergy Nuclear, which operates Grand Gulf, filed a report with the NRC explaining that crews located standing water at the plant last week after the area experienced heavy rains.
Water was found Thursday at the Unit 2 turbine building — which is an abandoned, partially constructed building — and began pumping the water into the river.
An alarm apparently alerted workers to the presence of tritium, a byproduct of the nuclear reactor processes. The pumps were turned off stopping the flow. Investigators are not certain why tritium was in the storm water or how it got there.
“Although the concentrations of tritium exceeded EPA drinking water limits, the release should not represent a hazard to public health because of its dilution in the river,” said Lara Uselding, public affairs officer with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Region IV.
there are still only 2 hits on goole news: one AP article and one in the local paper (Herald-Sun). nothing to see here, obviously.
speaking of which…
http://www.digtriad.com/news/national/article/174708/175/Japan-New-Smoke-At-Nuclear-Plant
“Fukushima Prefecture, Japan — Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), and the Japanese government gave a joint press conference on Sunday and explained that an unusual amount of smoke that billowed from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactor on Saturday night was nothing to be concerned about.
“Steam is coming out from the spent fuel pool of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, and I’m assuming that due to shadows created by lighting, the steam appeared black. Therefore, we assessed that it’s not smoke from something burning or that sort of thing,” TEPCO’s General Manager, Junichi Matsumoto reassured reporters at the press conference.”