Reply #14: IMPORTANT note I forgot....2 other nuclear plant "leaks" of Tritium

[in_cog_ni_to]

Byron and Dresden have also had Tritium leaks! They are nearby. Read this tidbit.....

<snip>
IS IT SAFE?

Exelon and the NRC say a 1998 spill of 3 million gallons

of tritium -- a form of hydrogen that becomes radioactive water when it contacts air -- did contaminate ground water that breached the Braidwood plant boundary. But the radioactivity had not risen above federal limits where people live or have their drinking water wells.

At Dresden, the 276,000-gallon (1 million-liter) tritium leak is still on-site, and the spill at Byron was found inside concrete vaults along an effluent pipe.

The plants are all within 100 miles of Chicago in northern Illinois, which has the largest nuclear capacity of any U.S. state, about equal to Great Britain's.

The spilled tritium was destined to be discharged as effluent in rivers anyway, authorities said, and they were not explicitly required to notify the public about it -- a reporting loophole Illinois congressmen want closed.

"It's not like people are going to start dropping like flies from this level of radiation," said Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

"What I am alarmed by is the number of years it has taken, and how lax the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been, and how lax the corporation has been in informing the community fully" about the spills, he said.<snip>

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20060304/2006-03-04T173811Z_01_N01404553_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-NUCLEAR-DC.html