Radioactive Steam Escapes From Ill. Plant

[wakeme2008]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Tritium-Leak.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


pril 7, 2006
Radioactive Steam Escapes From Ill. Plant
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:51 a.m. ET

GODLEY, Ill. (AP) -- Steam containing radioactive tritium escaped from a valve at an Exelon Corp. plant even as company officials met with local residents to discuss efforts to clean up earlier leaks.

About 500 gallons of water pooled on the grounds of the Braidwood Generating Station as the steam condensed Thursday, and some of it flowed into a ditch that lies between the plant and the village of Godley, company spokesman Craig Nesbit told the Chicago Tribune for a story on its Web site.

..more at link...

[juliana24]

1. NuKlear energy is _good_, so says phophet * and company!!!

Chernobyl II, anyone ???

[ClintonTyree]

2. Not Springfield, Illinois I hope.....

HOMER! Relax....it'll make the crops grow better. A little radiation never hurt anybody :sarcasm:

[NickB79]

5. Tomacco's at last!

I've been looking for a way to get my vitamin C and nicotine in one handy package :)

[boobooday]

3. Nothing to see here

We'll just wait until sundown and see what or who is glowing, eh?

The incidents we hear about make me wonder how many we don't hear about.

[Roland99]

4. Great...just when we're trying to cure our addiction to oil.

Guess we better stick with oil. Bush surely knows best.

[Sirveri]

6. This isn't a big deal.

Tritium is a hydrogen nucleid, thus it is lighter than air, so it won't settle down to earth. The farther away it goes, the less radiation you absorb from it. Also the half life of tritium is relativly long for a radioactive isotope (12 years), meaning that it would require a fairly signifigant ammount to signifigantly increase background radiation levels. In this case it appears to be steam, which is a bit differant since instead of two hydrogrens and a water it's a tritium, hydrogen, and water. It will beta minus into He-3, which is actually stable, and the b minus emited is a relativly weak 5.69keV. Basically it would take a fairly signifigant ammount of this stuff compared to something much more nasty like Cs-137 or Co-60 to actually do anything to you.

The real problem I have with the people in this story is that they are showing a lack of training and leak/quality control procedures. Something that with any nuclear reactor, should be one of the highest priority.

[MisterP]

7. Exelon AGAIN!

[struggle4progress]

8. Latest leak sparks call to close down nuclear plant

April 11, 2006

BY CINDY WOJDYLA CAIN Herald News

Will County Board Chairman Jim Moustis said Monday that Exelon should shut down its Braidwood Generating Station if it can't operate the power plant safely.

Moustis was reacting to reports that more radioactive tritium escaped from the far southwest suburban nuclear power station on Thursday, this time in the form of a steam cloud.

"I'm becoming more and more concerned," said Moustis, a Republican from Frankfort. "How many of these have happened that we're totally unaware of? These plants absolutely have to operate safely. ... If Exelon can't do this safely, then shut it down."

Moustis urged Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take a closer look at the plant, which has been under scrutiny since it was revealed earlier this year that tritium leaked onto private property. <snip>

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-tritium11.html