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#tritium — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #tritium, aggregated by home.social.

  1. The Lies Have It: #XcelEnergy Wins Operating Extension for Nation’s 5th Oldest Nuclear Reactor

    by John Laforge, January 10, 2025

    "I.F. Stone famously said, 'All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.' The aphorism applies well to #NuclearReactor operators, including Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy.

    "The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (#NRC) has granted Xcel a second license extension for operating its 54-year-old #MonticelloReactor on the #MississippiRiver in #Minnesota. The decision will permit this GE jalopy, a #Fukushima clone, to run until it’s 80 years old — a dangerous feat never been done in the history of nuclear power. The NRC received over 3,000 public comments mostly critical of the extension, but the the commission has rubber stamped 87 of 92 similar requests, so call the NRC Never Really Concerned.

    "The NRC nod is based partly on the commission’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (#EIS) for the re-licensing, even though the document confirms that Xcel repeatedly made false statements about its massive 2022-‘23 leak of #radioactive cooling water. According to a March 16, 2023 Associated Press (AP) story, Xcel’s first public response to the major leak was, 'There’s no danger to the public.' Xcel then proceeded to understate by more than half the leak’s actual volume, only estimating it was 400,000 gallons.

    "Xcel eventually acknowledged that volume of the leak, from an old corroded underground pipe, was 829,000 gallons, and that the #groundwater plume of reactor cooling water — some of which would later reach the Mississippi River — had a radioactive footprint of some fourteen curies of #tritium — a very large amount. (For a reference, the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island released an estimated 15 curies of gaseous radioactive iodine-131 to the Pennsylvania atmosphere. Other radioactive materials went into the Susquehanna River.)

    "Xcel’s 829,000-gallon leak was always a direct threat to drinking water because — as the company’s own 2023 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report states on page 13 — 'It is assumed groundwater continuously flows to the river…' The Mississippi is the drinking water source for 20 million people, including #Minneapolis, #StPaul and their surrounding suburbs 37 miles downstream from the leaky reactor."

    Read more:
    counterpunch.org/2025/01/10/th
    #RethinkNotRestart #NoNukes #NuclearPowerCorruptionAndLies #WaterIsLife #MonticelloNuclearPlant

  2. #Nuclear corporations often under-report radiation amounts, or take their time about reporting incidents (sometimes only after there's a whistleblower involved). After all, it's all about image and money, not public or environmental safety.

    #Xcel fined $14K over unpermitted storage of #radioactive water at #Minnesota #nuclear plant

    After a leak of #tritium at the #MonticelloNuclear Generating Station was revealed in March, Xcel faced repeated challenges in collecting and storing the tainted water.

    By Chloe Johnson Star Tribune
    December 14, 2023

    "#XcelEnergy has been fined $14,000 for storing radioactive water without a permit in the aftermath of a spill last year at its Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant.

    "Meanwhile, Xcel revealed Thursday that the original spill started a few weeks earlier than the company originally reported, and may have released more than twice as much radioactive water as it originally estimated.

    "The plant, about a 30-minute drive northwest of the Twin Cities, sprung a leak of tritium-tainted water in late 2022. The utility and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) didn't reveal the leak to the public until the following March, drawing public criticism and a promise from state officials to be more transparent.

    "Xcel originally reported that some 400,000 gallons of water had seeped from a broken pipe in a narrow space between two buildings. But on Thursday, it reported that the real amount was more likely between 750,000 and 900,000 gallons — an updated guess based on research the company has done and 'signs that the leak may have started a few weeks earlier than previously estimated.'"

    startribune.com/xcel-fined-14k

    #WaterIsLife #MississippiRiver #TEPCOLies #XcelLies #NoNukes #MoreOversight #RethinkNotRestart

  3. "JGU: Schwer fassbaren Neutrinos auf der Spur"

    "Wichtiger Meilenstein im Experiment „Project 8″ zur Messung der Neutrinomasse erreicht. Eine Pressemitteilung der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz."

    raumfahrer.net/jgu-schwer-fass

    #CRES #Elementarteilchen #JGU #Mainz #Neutrino #Neutrinomasse #Project8 #Tritium #Universum

    7.9.2023

  4. .> Because the melted nuclear cores (corium) of reactors 1, 2 & 3 at Fukushima Dai'ichi are somewhere underneath the three reactor buildings, having melted out, workers at TEPCO have been pouring cold water on the corium since the meltdowns to cool the corium. This is both to prevent spontaneous fissioning, and also to carry heat away from the mess so that it may eventually be removed sometime later in this century (the melted core of Chernobyl is still underneath the reactor, almost 40 years later, and still has not schedule for removal). All of the water used to cool the corium is then pumped into holding tanks on the grounds of the Fukushima site. Also, groundwater flows through the basements that hold the corium, and that adds to the water being pumped out....
    .> Because the dumping of the tanks is a political negative for the government of Japan, a pipeline is being built so that the water can simply be dumped via underground pipe, and the theatrics of dumping the tanks into the ocean can be avoided in the future. A political solution to a problem with few mechanical solutions...
    .> What else can be done? As Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has said, the water could be moved to much larger tanks and held for up to a century, which would facilitate some further decay of the radioactivity of particles before they are released. However, this would be seen as a political negative as it would fill parts of Japan up with large holding tanks for a century, and remind everyone about the problem.
    - https://globalhibakusha.com/page/page-2/?permalink=what-the-fck-is-the-story-with-the-radioactive-wastewater-at-fukushima

    #KenBuesseler #WoodsHole #WoodsHoleOceanographicInstitution #BoJacobs #RobertAJacobs #FukushimaDaiichi #NuclearCores #Corium #RadioactiveWaterDumping #Tritium #PoliticalSolution #Appearances #GlobalHibakuSha #Hibakusha #被爆者 #世界の被爆者

    /HT
    @[email protected]

  5. Xcel Energy to temporarily shut down #Monticello nuclear plant after two radioactive water leaks; company says no threat to public

    March 24, 2023

    "On Wednesday, the plant's monitoring equipment detected hundreds of gallons worth of radioactive water since the crews made temporary repairs, and that it had reached #groundwater. Officials say the contaminated water, containing the radioactive isotope #tritium, has not yet reached the #MississippiRiver, which runs next to the plant.

    "When the leak was first detected back in November, Xcel used a catchment and a pumping strategy to recovered the water containing tritium. They say they've recovered about 30% of that water so far. But over the past couple days, some of that radioactive water was spilling over the catchment, creating a new leak."

    #Minnesota #XcelEnergy #Monticello #NoNukes #NoMoreNukes #RethinkNotRestart #NoDumping #Fukushima

    msn.com/en-us/news/us/xcel-ene