Xcel: Radioactive water leaked in November at Monticello nuclear plant

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

<https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/16/xcel-radioactive-water-leaked-
in-november-at-monticello-nuclear-plant>

Water containing tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, leaked out of
Xcel Energy's nuclear power plant in Monticello, Minn. in November, state
officials said Thursday.

Xcel reported that about 400,000 gallons of the tritiated water leaked
from a water pipe between two buildings.

State officials said the tritium was found during routine checks of ground
water.

“The leak has been stopped and has not reached the Mississippi River or
contaminated drinking water sources. There is no evidence at this time to
indicate a risk to any drinking water wells in the vicinity of the plant,”
the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said in a statement.

How did the leak start?
Xcel reported the leak to government regulators on Nov. 22, the day it was
confirmed, but Xcel Energy Regional President Chris Clark said it's
unclear when the problem began.

"As we do a full root cause analysis, we'll have a better understanding of
whether that was a few days, a few weeks, a month. But we just don't know
that at this point," Clark said.

Clark said workers have pumped about 25 percent of the tritiated water out
of the ground and are treating it on site. He said it’ll take about a year
to remove the rest.

The steel pipe that leaked is about four inches in diameter and carries
condensate water away from the steam turbine that drives the plant’s
generators. Pat Flowers, Xcel’s manager of environmental services said the
damaged pipe was in an inaccessible spot.

“The leak took place in that tiny little space and it wasn’t really
visible until you drilled a hole through two feet of concrete to get to it
to physically see what was leaking,” Flowers said.

Xcel will analyze the pipe to try to find out what caused it to break,
Flowers said.

"In order to really understand what happened to this pipe, we're going to
have to take out several feet of concrete around the pipe so that we can
get access to it,” Flowers said. “That's not going to happen until our
[routine refueling] outage that starts here in mid-April, and we've got
plans in April to remove that pipe so we can do the metallurgy, we can
repair it, and we can also understand what took place, what caused the
failure."

Though both state and federal regulators knew about the leak around the
time Xcel staff discovered it, state officials did not inform the public
about it for nearly four months.

The NRC’s November public notice was not in a news release, though it can
be seen online at the bottom of a list of “non-emergency” event
notification reports.

Both state and company officials said they did not notify the public when
the incident occurred because the tritiated water was not moving toward
toward drinking water wells and did not pose a danger to people near the
plant.

“If at any time, we had felt that there was any threat to Minnesotans,
their health or their safety, we would have notified people immediately,”
said assistant Minnesota Health Commissioner Dan Huff.

2009Xcel finds elevated tritium levels at Monticello plant
The company said it is monitoring the groundwater plume at two dozen
wells, and is considering options to dispose of the collected tritium.
Minnesota regulators will review those options, MPCA said.

How dangerous is tritium?
Tritium occurs naturally in the atmosphere. But it’s also produced through
fission in nuclear reactors. Because it’s a type of hydrogen, it reacts
with oxygen to produce radioactive water.

Tritium is hazardous but only if ingested in large concentrations. The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said tritium emits beta particles at
such a low level that they are unable to penetrate human skin.

“While tritium is radioactive, it’s low energy, and so it’s not like
plutonium. If you were to sit it next to you in a glass, it wouldn’t hurt
you,” Huff said. “If you drank it, it would increase your radiation
exposure. And we want to limit radiation exposure because radiation can
cause tissue damage.”

Brian Vetter leads the Department of Radiation Safety at the University of
Minnesota, where he oversees nuclear materials in the U’s research labs
and medical facilities. He doesn’t work for Xcel or its government
regulators.

“We’re drinking extremely small quantities of radioactive water all the
time: radium, tritium,” Vetter said. “It’s just a part of our naturally
radioactive world that we all live in. Very extremely small quantities,
but you want to keep them extremely small.”

Both the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Xcel said testing
indicates that the underground plume of contaminated water has not spread
outside plant boundaries.

The MPCA says the closest public well is less than a mile from the plant,
but is on higher ground, so the tritiated water isn’t flowing to it.

There’s also a potable water well on the Monticello plant property that
employees use. Chris Clark, the Xcel executive, said there’s no evidence
of tritium in that particular well, and he said he would drink from it.

“I’d be happy to drink that water. I’ve actually drank that water there at
the plant,” Clark said. Our employees are there and of course we care
about our employees, we care about our community. Our employees live in
the community of Monticello and communities around there.”

MPCA assistant commissioner Kirk Koudelka said the agency is overseeing
Xcel’s cleanup efforts.

“We are monitoring the area. Xcel is taking actions to remove contaminated
groundwater from one series of wells, and in addition using other wells to
control the contamination to prevent it from going offsite, whether that’s
the river or outside its property boundaries,” Koudelka said.

The leak report comes as Xcel is asking federal regulators to extend
Monticello’s operating license through 2050 — when the plant will be
nearly 80 years old.


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[Leroy N. Soetoro]