Clock's ticking on tritium spill (Oyster Creek nuclear plant, New Jersey)

http://www.app.com/article/20100510/OPINION01/5110307/Clock-s-ticking-on-tritium-spill

If Exelon, the owner of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, thought it could let one of the largest discharges of tritium in U.S. commercial nuclear plant history slip by, the state Department of Environmental Protection has proved it wrong.

Thanks in part to the reporting of Asbury Park Press Staff Writer Todd Bates, whose story in Sunday's Press pointed out that Oyster Creek still hadn't developed a cleanup plan more than a year after at least 180,000 gallons of cancer-causing radioactive tritium entered groundwater, the DEP has come down hard on Exelon.

On Friday, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin issued a Spill Act directive, compelling Exelon to install deeper groundwater monitoring wells and to prevent the tritium from ever reaching the region's drinking water supplies. The DEP said it has initiated a "new and through investigation" into the leaks, and will force Oyster Creek's co-operation.

State officials say it is unclear how far and how deep the tritium-tainted water has spread. But the tritium concentration level has risen in the shallow Cohansey aquifer, which is used by some nearby residents for drinking water and irrigation. Some residential wells are within two miles of the contamination plume.

<more>

be sure to unrec this!

:hi:

and yet it is just as deadly.

It is virtually invisible and it can kill you if you drink it or consume it in produce, milk, etc.

It is why the nuke dangers are so severe and serious and deadly: unlike oil goop it is undetectable without a geiger counter or a long epidemiological study showing the cancer deaths it produces.

The idea that the oil spill in the Gulf means we should endorse the nuclear pollution killing us from nuke plants is insane and unjustifiable.

At least with the oil we can see it and smell it and taste it while it is coming at us - with nuke waste/pollution and emissions from operating plants, we don't even get that chance.

Sad. toxic waters everywhere.

K&R

It is very hard to "prove" the origin of cancer clusters, but they are all around site like this. Add to that lots of money and lawyers and propaganda and you get the same type of coverup that occurred with smoking.

http://www.angelfire.com/nj/becjosh/waterart.html

Does anyone know how many people drink from Cohansey aquifer water?

... here are some extracts to enlighten them ...

> According to the New Jersey DEP, about 200,000 private wells draw water
> from the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer.
> DEP estimates that about 500,000 people drink water from those wells.


> In addition to the private wells, some municipal water authorities in
> South Jersey draw water from the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer. They "mix"
> the aquifer water with water from other sources to lower the percentage
> of radium in drinking water.
> Federal officials point out that such "mixing" does not eliminate radium
> from the water, but does bring it within acceptable EPA standards.


> The USGS found that the radium content in the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer
> ranged from 0 to 30.3 picocuries per liter of water
> The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set a limit of 5 picocuries
> per liter of water as the maximum amount of radium allowed in drinking water.
> In interviews, EPA officials in Washington said no amount of radium is safe
> to ingest and that a limit of 5 was set because of "economic considerations."
> "We set 5 for practical reasons and because of the cost of treatment," said
> David Huber, the EPA's national radium expert.
> The EPA says that at 5 picocuries, one in 10,000 adults who drink the water
> over their lifetime risks fatal cancer. As the amount of radium increases,
> so does the risk factor, officials said.


I trust that the effects of the above are subtracted from any observed increase
in cancer rates before any nuclear power other source is blamed ...

Oh, BTW, the following can't be true or it would make too many people's heads
explode ...
> The study also found that the radium, which occurs naturally, gets into the
> water because of pollution from fertilizer and lime used on residential and
> agricultural land. When chemicals from the fertilizers seep into the aquifer,
> they help move radium deposits into the water, according to the USGS.

I now return readers to the routine anti-nuclear rants.

Radium (natural decay product of uranium) is actually more radioactive than uranium.

Radium has decay energy of 4.871 MeV (million electron volts). Even worse its half life is 1602 years. Once ingested about 20% makes it to the bloodstream. Unlike tritium this is a one way trip. Radium enters the bones (or any other high calcium deposit) and has an extremely high biological half life. So even stopping future radium consumption isn't sufficient to avoid further damage.

In comparison tritium has a decay energy of 0.018590MeV (roughly 1/200th that of Radium). It has a half life of only 12 years and an even shorter biological halflife. This is because tritium bonds with Oxygen to from tritinated water. Since the tritium remains in water molecule most tritium that is ingested leaves the body the same way all other water does (perspiration, urine, feces, etc).

Of course one is natural and the other comes from "scary" nuclear plants (well technically tritium is natural also).

it is safe

i read here on DU

yup

:rofl: Everyone (at least everyone on Earth) has been drinking tritinated water for centuries. Tritium is naturally occuring. Occurs in low concentration but it does occur. The thing you don't understand if that our planet is highly radioactive. Radiation in the air, the water, the ocean, the soil. Event the radioactive stuff makes MORE tadioactive stuff. Uranium decays to radium (far worse) which decays to radon (even worse). The amount of radioactive exposure you get from the Earth is massive compared to any "potential" exposure from a nuclear plant.

Far worse stuff in drinking water than tritium. By your "logic" children shouldn't drink any water. Granted they will die of dehydration rather quickly but at least they will avoid tritium, radium, lead, mercury, arsenic, etc which might kill them someday.

Better to fear the "scary unknown" then real quantifiable dangers.

nope

and the state of New Jersey disagrees with your stupid strawman

yup!

:rofl:

Regardless of where you stand on the issue, this is a lousy article.

Why does the author feel that it's unimportant to report exactly how much radiation is involved? My intuition is that in a case like this many different groups have taken measurements. What are the numbers? The fact that the author of this piece doesn't think its necessary to report the facts is stunning. It's like doing a piece claiming that the unemployment situation is getting better and not reporting, you know, what the unemployment rate is...