NYT: Nuclear Reactors Found to Be Leaking Radioactive Water

Nuclear Reactors Found to Be Leaking Radioactive Water
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: March 17, 2006


WASHINGTON, March 16 — With power cleaner than coal and cheaper than natural gas, the nuclear industry, 20 years past its last meltdown, thinks it is ready for its second act: its first new reactor orders since the 1970's.

But there is a catch. The public's acceptance of new reactors depends in part on the performance of the old ones, and lately several of those have been discovered to be leaking radioactive water into the ground.

Near Braceville, Ill., the Braidwood Generating Station, owned by the Exelon Corporation, has leaked tritium into underground water that has shown up in the well of a family nearby. The company, which has bought out one property owner and is negotiating with others, has offered to help pay for a municipal water system for houses near the plant that have private wells.

In a survey of all 10 of its nuclear plants, Exelon found tritium in the ground at two others. On Tuesday, it said it had had another spill at Braidwood, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, and on Thursday, the attorney general of Illinois announced she was filing a lawsuit against the company over that leak and five earlier ones, dating to 1996. The suit demands among other things that the utility provide substitute water supplies to residents.

In New York, at the Indian Point 2 reactor in Buchanan, workers digging a foundation adjacent to the plant's spent fuel pool found wet dirt, an indication that the pool was leaking. New monitoring wells are tracing the tritium's progress toward the Hudson River....


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/national/17nuke.html

Leaking wtf repair or cease opeartion.

is that Braidwood was leaking the "hot" water in 1998, and it's just now coming to light. They covered it up and are now claiming that there are problems now, too.

that if you live there, you have to be concerned.

kind of scary, huh?

Not if the alternative is coal.

:popcorn:
:yoiks:

that these leaks did not have to be reported to the public anymore??

We have better designs and materials than we did 30 years ago.