Nuclear Plant Workers Dump Large Amount of Radioactive Tritium Directly into Mississippi River
Now, according to an article in the Natchez Democrat, the U.S. nuclear industry is making its presence felt, as it scrambles to explain how radioactive tritium was released directly into the Mississippi River from the Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant in Port Gibson. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) is investigating how tritium – a highly toxic nuclear byproduct – came to be present in standing water at the plant’s abandoned Unit 2 turbine building, and why workers released it directly into the Mississippi River. Apparently, on the heels of heavy rains in the area, plant workers dumped the tritium-laced storm water into the river before conducting any of the required testing.
In fact, the ostensibly illegal release may have gone completely unnoticed by regulators and the public except alarms were triggered while workers were dumping the radioactive material. Senors engaged the “stop flow” on the unit’s release pump. It’s clear from this disturbing event that, as with other industry “accidents” and discharges, regulation is woefully insufficient. I guarantee you that if fines were significant enough and regulatory enforcers were patrolling the field in significant enough numbers, nuclear workers would not dump radioactive waste into waterways. Period. It just wouldn’t happen, because workers would fear for their jobs.
Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen commonly used in the making of nuclear bombs, is known as a low-energy beta emitter. That means it cannot penetrate human skin, but tritium poses a grave health risk when ingested via food or water. Thus, the release of the still-undetermined amount of tritium directly into the Mississippi River presents a threat to drinking-water sources as well as the food chain. When ingested, tritium will indeed wreak havoc on human cells and damage DNA, which can result in birth defects and cancer. Tritium has a half-life of more than a decade so the threat will persist for a good while around and plant and in the river.
We hear echoes of how Japanese officials downplayed the initial radiation releases from Fukushima in our own country’s “official” dismissals. According to NRC public affairs officer Lara Uselding, we shouldn’t worry about the Grand Gulf release – which should neither surprise nor assure anybody. Ms. Uselding: “Although 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.” If we all had a nickel for every time we heard that, we’d all be sitting on our own private islands somewhere in the Caribbean sipping ice-cold bottled water.
http://www.stuarthsmith.com/nuclear-plant-workers-dump-large-amount-of-radioactive-tritium-directly-into-mississippi-river/
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