[HN Gopher] Nuclear power plant leaked 1.5M litres of radioactiv...
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Nuclear power plant leaked 1.5M litres of radioactive water in
Minnesota
Author : grecy
Score : 85 points
Date : 2023-03-18 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (globalnews.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (globalnews.ca)
| jmclnx wrote:
| It is like the Nuclear Industry is doing all it can do destroy
| their own industry. Recently it seemed people were looking
| seriously at Nuclear Power for Climate Change.
|
| With this and the article below, I think it will be next to
| impossible for anyone to build a new Nuclear Power Plant. That is
| sad since I think Nuclear could have been a good short/medium
| term bridge to renewals.
|
| https://gothamist.com/news/dumping-radioactive-water-hudson-...
| erentz wrote:
| It's tritium. It sounds like it's at concentrations that are
| below the safety thresholds. You have tritium in your tap
| water.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _It sounds like it's at concentrations that are below the
| safety thresholds_
|
| And even if it's not, regulatory bodies in cahoots with the
| industry can always raise the safety thresholds! Worked
| wonders in the past!
| u320 wrote:
| It's worth adding too that the US for some reason has
| insanely low thresholds. Orders of magnitude lower than most
| other developed countries.
| vkou wrote:
| If you think this leak, at these concentrations was
| unacceptable, we are going to need to shut down every chemical
| and industrial process in the world, starting today, and
| regress to a stone-age sort of level of technology.
|
| Things leak all the time in industrial work. This one was not
| particularly damaging, but because it's nuclear, it's under a
| million times more microscopic scrutiny than any equivalent
| leak from a chemical plant.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Ever hear of NIMBY ? Here is a link:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY
|
| It does not matter if it is harmless, people reading these
| articles will freak out should a proposal be submitted for a
| new Plant.
|
| So yes, these articles will put the last nail in the coffin
| of the nuclear industry in the US. All they need to do is
| reach the mainstream press.
| u320 wrote:
| So your attitude to misinformation is that we should just
| give up, and act as if it's true? Should we stop doing
| vaccinations too, just because some people believe they
| contain 5G chips?
| physPop wrote:
| This is alarmist and anti-science and moderators should remove
| this post.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Nuclear fission still has a long-term role to play in that it
| has a tiny land/material/resource footprint. With breeder
| reactors, we can power all of humanity for 4 billion years
| using the existing uranium and thorium resources. Pretty long
| term IMHO. Not just a bridge, but an asymptotic state.
| Julesman wrote:
| Nuclear power is advocated principally by the current energy
| industry regime because it maintains their existing distribution
| model. A model that is disrupted by wind and solar power
| generated locally or even individually.
|
| I know some people honestly believe that it's a good option. But
| for every one of them there are three industry lobbyists and
| social media bots who are working directly for the industry
| making drastically short sighted arguments.
|
| Don't tell me it's safe when other options will never ever make
| whole parts of the world a toxic wasteland for the rest of human
| history.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > Nuclear power is advocated principally by the current energy
| industry regime because it maintains their existing
| distribution model.
|
| In what world? Yes, nuclear could cleanly replace existing
| fossil fuel plants, which is exactly why the fossil fuel
| industry tries to _stop_ it! In contrast, intermittent solar
| and wind aren 't viable full replacements to fossil fuel
| electricity, so Exxon-Mobil and co are comfortable investing in
| it.
| [deleted]
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I'm a nuclear power advocate. I am on social media making
| arguments in support of massive expansions of nuclear power to
| reduce air pollution and fight climate change. I have a Ph.D.
| in nuclear engineering and a professional engineering license
| in my state. I chose nuclear engineering at age 19 because I
| wanted to fight climate change, not because I wanted to become
| an industry lobbyist. There are hundreds of nuclear advocates
| just like me.
|
| While nuclear power is commonly perceived as unduly dangerous,
| if you're interested in the numbers of it all in context, I
| highly recommend this page:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
|
| The whole wasteland argument falls apart quickly when you take
| a look at e.g. a worst case scenario like Chernobyl and compare
| it to the fact that fossil and biofuel cause 7 million
| premature deaths per year from particulate emissions (according
| to the WHO) and cause global climate change.
|
| https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive...
| coldtea wrote:
| Upton Sinclair -- 'It is difficult to get a man to understand
| something, when his salary depends on his not understanding
| it.'
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Counterargument: I am readily employable in other related
| industries and could likely get a significant raise
| switching. Every time I make an offer to a software
| engineer who asks for >$50k more than our peak salary, I'm
| reminded of this fact.
|
| Again, I chose nuclear specifically to fight climate
| change, not to make the most money.
| abecedarius wrote:
| This phenomenon cuts both ways. Ralph Nader in the 70s kept
| telling falsehoods about the health hazards of nuclear
| power, seemed immune to correction, and had a platform with
| the press uncritically propagating his claims. (Documented
| in Petr Beckmann's book at that time.) In retrospect this
| seems like a hinge point in history leading to our current
| energy problems.
|
| Someone's incentive towards some point of view is not
| evidence either way about an object-level claim. It's only
| useful for questions like attention allocation, or like how
| someone could be so wrong _after_ you 've established
| they're probably wrong.
| locallost wrote:
| I chose to be a software developer because I was interested
| in creating things, but now I am just a cog in a machine
| trying to generate income. I don't doubt your motives, but
| what is the situation we are currently in?
|
| Nuclear has failed to make a dent in emissions for 60 years
| now. Whatever the reason might be, rationally it's time to at
| least ask "can it ever make an impact"? But this question is
| almost never asked. I honestly believe there is a symbiotic
| relationship between nuclear and fossil fuel industry.
| Nuclear cannot survive without the threat of fossil fuels,
| but it cannot or at least has not for decades prevented
| fossil fuels dominating electricity production worldwide. So
| it's a guarantee for keeping the status quo. It's time for
| something else. Not merely another technology, but another
| way of thinking.
| 323 wrote:
| How many of the safety assessments take into account the fact
| that the nuclear waste is almost never buried away and in a
| dispersed matter and instead it's kept near the nuclear power
| plant in dry/wet pools because of NIMBY?
|
| This has the effect turning the nuclear power plant into a
| giant dirty bomb. Almost all the problems at Fukushima were
| caused exactly by these used fuel pools, and not by the
| nuclear material in the plant itself.
|
| And then you have Ukraine where dry storage is shelled with
| artillery.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| >a worst case scenario like Chernobyl
|
| Chernobyl was not a worst-case scenario, it is just the worst
| scenario that has happened so far. If it hadn't been handled
| by humans sacrificing their lives to stop the chain of
| events, it could have been much, much worse. Had the fire
| continued it could indeed have been a "wasteland" scenario.
|
| The site you recommend makes claims about safety that are
| logically broken. Things are not safe based on what has
| happened so far, they are safe or unsafe based on what could
| happen in the future. Surely you realize this.
|
| The claim this site makes is equivalent to saying that a gun
| is safe if it hasn't been used yet. I frankly find it to be a
| very dishonest argument, it seems designed to mislead rather
| than enlighten.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| The fact that it was:
|
| a) an unstable reactor
|
| b) without a containment structure
|
| c) that was put through a dangerous experiment overriding
| safety systems
|
| means to me that it's very likely to be the worst
| commercial nuclear power scenario we'll see.
|
| Compare with Fukushima where a whole area was inundated by
| a tsunami and a triple meltdown, leading to very few, if
| any, people receiving more than the minimum dose known to
| cause measurable harm.
|
| And again keep in mind that we're comparing against fossil
| and biofuel, which power over 80% of the planet and cause 7
| million premature deaths from particulate emissions every
| single year just operating normally.
|
| I guess the term 'worst case scenario' isn't really useful
| since there's always someone who can come up with something
| else, regardless of how unlikely it is. Fair point on that.
| physPop wrote:
| The problem with your argument is that renewables aren't
| readily deployable in all situations and we still haven't
| solved grid level storgae to even out baseload generation.
| Instead, the uneducated, anti nuclear sentiment that you and
| your kind spread activley leads to MORE polution, climate
| damage and (most ironically) release of radioactive and
| carcinogenic by-products as governemtns instead need to turn to
| natural gas and coal generation, both of which have
| significanlty worse polluting and safety profiles than nuclear.
|
| People don't understand how tightly nuclear is regulated. If we
| had anywhere near these same regulations in other industries
| we'd never have a SVB or Lehman failure. We wouldn't have
| airplanes crash from lack of maintinence. We wouldn't have oil
| spils from rigs detaching or drilling too agressively.
| parineum wrote:
| As if giant solar and wind farms don't work on the exact same
| model...
|
| That happens for a really good reason, it's cheaper.
|
| It's less durable than a distributed system but distributed
| systems don't get the benefit of scale. People choose to not
| have solar panels on their houses and windmills in their back
| yards because the power from the power company is often cheaper
| and comes with out initial investment or personal intervention.
| All thought is taken out of the process and customers like
| that. Dollars converted to energy with the least amount of
| intermediary steps is preferred.
| enslavedrobot wrote:
| Regulation is the reason that it's not cheaper. In Australia
| solar on your roof is 40 cents a watt installed because they
| deregulated the industry.
|
| In reality grid maintenance and transmission costs are 80 to
| 90% of your electricity bill. Our existing electricity system
| is a lot like the old world of mainframe computing, rooftop
| solar and storage is like the introduction of the PC. We all
| know how that worked out.
| [deleted]
| RobLach wrote:
| Whatever. The system is working well.
|
| The amounts of tritium measured in a test well to initiate repair
| of leaky pipes and cleanup is well below any potential risk.
|
| Every issue was responsibly reported to regulators and acted
| upon.
| tucosan wrote:
| Right. Nuclear power is absolutely safe. Nothing to see here.
| Move on.
| daveguy wrote:
| You must have misunderstood what you were replying to. The GP
| said that there are test wells around the facility for
| detecting leaks and they detect at levels much lower than is
| dangerous.
|
| The post wasn't implying that nuclear power is absolutely
| safe. Simply that safety measures in place worked in this
| case and the incident was handled correctly with respect to
| response and reporting.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I can tell you that many monitoring wells are rarely tested
| before they're "operational".
|
| Typically they're just installed according to a site model
| and assumed to function like that.
|
| Happened to koch along the Mississippi where they assured
| regulators for a decade that you'd never see their
| contamination. Eventually someone was sampling along the
| Mississippi and there it was.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| [dead]
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| With these kinds of headlines you always have to figure out how
| many actual radioisotope solutes are in the water solvent.
| Otherwise, dilution seems to make it worse. 1 liter of
| radioactive water diluted into 50 billion liters of water becomes
| 50 billion liters of radioactive water to the headline writers.
|
| > The EPA safe drinking water concentration for tritium is 20,000
| picocuries/liter. It is not expected or likely that this
| concentration would be exceeded as a result of this event.
|
| https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/air/t...
|
| I think radiation just freaks people out in general, so these
| headlines are super effective at getting engagement.
| grecy wrote:
| I assume you'd be happy to live just downstream of that and be
| drinking it daily?
|
| The leak happened in November and it's just being made public
| now, so you would have been drinking it for all those months
| completely unaware. Who's to say the level couldn't be 10x or
| 10000x and they still won't say anything for months ?
| pornel wrote:
| Level of dilution is crucial here. It may be less radioactive
| than a banana.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yeah, nothing to worry about, it's all safe, trust us!
| pornel wrote:
| You have the same "trust is" situation about safety of
| fracking, mining, chemical industry, water treatment
| plants, lead leaks from pipes, baby formula, plastic
| bottles, and air quality downwind from fossil power
| plants.
|
| Radioactivity level is actually one thing you can easily
| measure yourself without having to trust the big bad
| government.
|
| BTW: did you know coal power plants release uranium into
| the air? Coal is "clean" only in election ads. The real
| one is too expensive to filter, and burned in such
| massive volumes that even tiny impurities are
| significant.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _did you know coal power plants release uranium into
| the air?_
|
| Yes. A small amount, and not in concentrated form the way
| nuclear output or nuclear power plant waste is...
|
| I also don't have concerns with bananas
| pornel wrote:
| > and not in concentrated form the way nuclear output or
| nuclear power plant waste is
|
| So we're back to square one: it's not actually
| concentrated. The report says "the levels of tritium in
| the water are below federal thresholds".
|
| These aren't barrels of green goo like in the Simpsons.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I do happen to have radiation detection equipment and can
| always check my water to see if it's even remotely above
| background. I know that with doses below 100 mSv (nearly 20x
| avg natural background for a year), there is no measurable
| risk of long-term cancer increase (not to mention acute
| radiation sickness, obviously) [1]. I'd happily drink water
| with trace contamination well below known hazardous levels.
| In fact, we all do this every day.
|
| In this case, increases of trace contamination have not been
| found or expected in any drinking water supply from this
| event.
|
| Dept of Health says [2]:
|
| > Currently, there is no health risk due to this situation.
| Monitoring wells are being sampled frequently to track the
| migration of the plume while the plant works to recover the
| tritiated water. Should the monitoring well results indicate
| protective action is necessary, it will be taken at that
| time.
|
| [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-
| ioni...
|
| [2] https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/ai
| r/t...
| enslavedrobot wrote:
| Background radiation is very different from drinking alpha
| or beta emitters.
|
| Don't drink those if you can help it.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Radon is the primary component of natural background
| radiation. It's an alpha emitter.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-sources-and-doses
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon
| flangola7 wrote:
| And radon kills thousands of people a year through lung
| cancer. Alpha particles are bad inside you
| grecy wrote:
| EDIT COMMENT ABOVE: As per Dang's advice, I would take out
| the first line above if I could, but I can't edit that
| comment anymore.
|
| Consider it gone.
| karlshea wrote:
| It didn't reach the Mississippi or into drinking water
| sources, so no one is drinking it at all.
| hammock wrote:
| According to whom? The regulators who hid this from the
| public for four months?
| karlshea wrote:
| Given some of the ridiculous takes here if I were them I
| would also have waited four months for a resolution and
| not mentioned it unless it was an emergency.
|
| And as someone who lives just downstream from this plant
| and would have been directly impacted from drinking the
| water: yes, I will continue to be trusting the Minnesota
| Department of Health over reactionary HN commentary.
| hammock wrote:
| How long did you trust the Minnesota Department of Health
| when it came to the PFAS discharges from the 3M plants?
| Decades? Do you still trust them?
| dang wrote:
| Please edit out swipes, as the site guidelines ask. Your
| comment would be fine without that first bit.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hammock wrote:
| More than that the problem is that authorities knew about this
| in November but the news is only reporting four months later.
| Why?
| dariusj18 wrote:
| Because it wasn't a big deal but someone out there wants to
| take attention away from something else.
|
| My guess
| yunohn wrote:
| Well, this confusion could be solved by disclosing exact
| details on the leakage, but despite my research I can't seem to
| find any other number than 1.5M liters. I don't see any
| evidence that the reporters made up the number.
|
| Instead, the company and government agencies just reiterate
| that "it's safe".
| bandyaboot wrote:
| I could be wrong as it was a couple days ago that I read this
| and I didn't go through and parse out the differences between
| the two, but I think this local article may have a bit more
| detail:
|
| https://archive.is/p0hTx
|
| According to that, the concentration of radiation in the
| water directly under the plant is at least 50x above EPA
| limits. But that is where virtually no dilution will have
| occurred. If plant officials and state regulators are to be
| believed, the other monitoring locations around the site
| don't yet show anything to get super worried about.
|
| Edit: Just to note, I live in the general area, but not
| particularly close to this specific location. Lucky for me I
| live in the area with water contaminated by 3M PFCs rather
| than Xcel Energy radiation. /s
| cinntaile wrote:
| Yes it's kind of weird that they leave out this information
| because this negatively impacts the trust you have in the
| decision.
| fsh wrote:
| There is remarkably little information in this press release.
| The volume of leaked water is meaningless without specifying
| the tritium concentration. Even if they have nothing to hide,
| they certainly make it look like they do.
| hedora wrote:
| It would be nice if they reported radiation leaks like this in
| terms of equivalent hours of coal plant emission.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Or in term of electrons wasted talking about coal when the
| problem is nuclear plants leaking like newborn babies (again)
| fsh wrote:
| You would probably have to measure it in years or decades of
| equivalent coal plant emissions.
|
| According to a 1978 paper [1], a 1 GW coal power plant
| releases something like 50 GBq per year. The Minnesota
| Department of Health did not release the activity of the
| water that was leaked from the nuclear plant. However,
| according to one article, "In water directly below the plant,
| the picocurie-per-liter count was in the millions." [2]. 1.5
| Ml of water at 1 million pCi/l would correspond to 1.5 Ci or
| 56 GBq of total activity. This is a very conservative
| estimate, since the water below the plant is probably already
| significantly diluted by ground water.
|
| [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045
|
| [2] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-
| minnesota.htm...
| gus_massa wrote:
| From https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-
| minnesota.htm...
|
| > _" We are well above the 20,000 picocuries per liter EPA
| standard," Clark said. In water directly below the plant, the
| picocurie-per-liter count was in the millions._
|
| I'm not sure if the millions of picocuries per liter are
| measured in the leak site or after it's diluted.
|
| Anyway, I made an approximate calculation
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35205070 and with tritium
| 10 millions of picocuries per liter is 9uSv/L. So if I made no
| mistake and you drink 1 liter of it, it's like 2 dental x-ray
| or 1/4 of a flight from NY to LA. https://xkcd.com/radiation/
| xchip wrote:
| Most probably it could be:
|
| 1- it is not water, it is deuterium (AKA `heavy water`, the
| hydrogen atom has an extra neutron, this way it is heavier and it
| can carry more heat) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium)
|
| 2- the water used to cover the still radioactive uranium that has
| been used as fuel
|
| So... thoughts and prayers :/
| accrual wrote:
| The article indicates it is tritium, hydrogen-3.
|
| Though if it was heavy water, "Poisoning would require that the
| victim ingest large amounts of heavy water without significant
| normal water intake for many days to produce any noticeable
| toxic effects." [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biologic...
| pjscott wrote:
| It's not heavy water. It's very slightly tritiated water, and
| the tritium concentration is low enough that you could drink it
| without worry.
| xchip wrote:
| [flagged]
| ethagknight wrote:
| I was curious, so I looked it up.. 1.5M litres is roughly a half-
| sized Olympic swimming pool, more or less.
| u320 wrote:
| Light water plants doesn't even produce much tritium to begin
| with, so it's hard to imagine this would pose any danger.
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