http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/12/11/2009-12-11_nuke_steam_scare_officials_insignificant_amounts_released.html
Indian Point nuclear plant officials say amount of radioactive steam released was 'Insignificant'
BY Abby Luby
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
Friday, December 11th 2009, 4:00 AM
Traces of radioactivity were released via steam leak at Indian Point nuclear power plant, but officials said there was no cause for concern. Related News·Massive blackout in Brazil plunges millions into darkness ·Three Mile Island leak exposes workers to radiation ·Obama to pledge major U.S. greenhouse gas cuts at Copenhagen climate conference ·EPA on global warming: Greenhouse gasses endangering people's health, according to report ·Blowing us away! GE inks largest wind turbine deal ever · That cloud spewing out of the Indian Point nuclear plant last month wasn't a smoke signal - it was radioactive steam.For two days starting Nov. 2, an estimated 600,000 gallons of boiling, radioactive water escaped through a valve that was stuck open in the Unit 2 reactor of the nuclear power plant in Westchester. The superheated water instantly turned to steam and spread out over the lower Hudson Valley in a cloud containing tritium, a cancer-causing radioactive isotope. A spokesman for plant operator Entergy said the company wasn't concerned about the amount of radioactivity released into the atmosphere. "The steam was from a non-radioactive secondary system," said spokesman Jerry Nappi, "that contains slight amounts of tritium and is insignificant." The accidental release, however, prompted an inspection from the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. According to NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan, the commission ordered a report from Entergy that is due within 60 days. The report will detail exactly what happened during the steam release. "We will be documenting our own findings in an inspection report covering plant activities for the fourth quarter of 2009. It will be due out in late January," said Sheehan. According to Kevin Mangan, a senior NRC inspector on site at Indian Point, the water was highly pressurized at 750 pounds per square inch before it jettisoned for about 42 hours. It took two days for plant owner Entergy to realize the valve was leaking before the plant automatically shut down. Although Entergy officials dismissed the seriousness of the incident, operations at the plant were abruptly halted for four days. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a test of several emergency sirens that warn of an accident at Indian Point performed poorly, according to the NRC. There are 172 sirens within 10 miles of the Buchanan based plant, and 37 of them failed to respond to a radio signal. The new $30 million emergency siren system was installed last year to alert some 300,000 residents living within a 10 mile radius if the plant has an accident. According to the NRC, in Wednesday's test, one out of every 16 sirens in Putnam County failed, rating the utility company's performance at 78%. The NRC requires a 90% average for emergency siren tests. The last test for the Indian Point sirens was in October, when all the sirens scored perfectly. Entergy has applied to the NRC for a new operating license that would keep its two reactors running for an additional 20 years. Indian Point earns about $1 million a day for Entergy.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
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I went looking for something to provide a sense of scale to the release of non-radioactive (secondary side) steam from IPEC in November. The reason this is necessary, in the public blogspace, is that certain linked activist groups operating between Brattleboro Vt. & New York State have begun a fear blitz on this issue, craftily choosing exactly the right hysterical tone to imply something really bad happened, when it did not, by blurring the distinction between "radioactive" and "non-radioactive".
Headlines such as "Radioactive steam poisons 4 counties" have been seen, and the unwary reader has no background on the subject, by which to discern this activist recruitment falsehood for what it is. All water contains tritium. Tritium forms naturally in water because of cosmic rays, and replenishes itself constantly.Therefore, the water in your backyard swimming pool could truthfully be called "slightly tritiated" or "slightly radioactive". Truthfully, but misleadingly.
In this sense, IPEC's steam release was "slightly tritiated", but let's look for comparisons.
The document most useful is the Greenpeace "Tritium from Canadian Reactors" study,
http://bit.ly/cantritrep
which shows us that the Canadian Point Lepreau site is allowed to release 16,400,000 TBq/year of Tritium. This level of release bathes the surrounding 20 mile area with about 73000 Bq/year of tritium intake for the ordinary citizen, or 1,000,000 Bq/year if they eat garden produce.This intake is from a huge 24 / 7 / 365 emission of tritium from the Canadian Candu reactors, which constantly emit tritium in gaseous, liquid, and organic form from every seam, weld, pipe fitting & gasket, due to their use of deuterized heavy water.
And yet, no epidemics have been seen near the Canadian reactors. The massive, constant spewing of tritium by the Candu reactors causes , (apparently) no ill effects. And mind you, it is not as if Canada is officially hiding an epidemic somehow. Canadian activist groups are studying, probing, arguing, investigating this issue with all the resources (and outrage) at their command. Yet still, no deleterious effects have been documented, or even alleged. Maybe the massive amounts of Canadian tritium are JUST NOT HARMFUL.
American reactors are different, and do not make anywhere near the levels of tritium Canadian reactors do.
People living far away from Canadian reactors, and people living in the USA see about the same natural tritium levels, about 2200 Bq/year, 500 times less than people living near the Canadian reactors.
If no bad effects have been able to be uncovered by Canadian antinuke investigators, from 24 hours per day, 365 day per year massive tritium releases over 30 years..... why are activists shouting about 2 days worth of un-tritiated steam coming out of IPEC ?
Answer: Activists are exciting their base.
Activist propaganda writers are fabricating a renewed bogus casus belli for the small sorority of nuke-haters to put on like a hair shirt, and stay emotional about nuclear power via new myths, so they may remain a viable group, and not fade away into curmudgeonly eccentricity.
Again, Ms. Luby has tried her hand at mixing some truth, with a dollop of outright misrepresentation, in an effort to appear journalistically credible, while still advancing her covert agenda to smear Indian Point.
I challenge her to demonstrate the released steam was indeed radioactive. I challenge her to acknowlege (or deny) it originated in the non-nuclear portion of the plant.
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