Fears for a city in Minnesota where 400,000 gallons of toxic waste leaked from a nuclear power plant

In a small Minnesota town of about 14,564 people, there have been two major leaks of radioactive water from a nearby nuclear power plant, months apart.

Xcel Energy spilled 400,000 gallons of toxic material in November – the public only learned about it this month – and a second hundreds of gallons spilled last week.

In the most recent incident, the Minnesota Pollution Control Authority found that at least 230 fish had died in the Mississippi River adjacent to the plant.

The agency and the company claim that “the death of the fish was not caused by tritium, a radioactive isotope, but by a change in water temperature.”

The plant temporarily closed on Saturday to fix the latest leak and cut off the warm water supply to the river, drastically changing the temperature to which “the fish are accustomed”.

“The killing of fish is unfortunate, but not unexpected, given the significant temperature change that can occur when warm water from a plant stops flowing into a river during a shutdown,” the Minnesota Pollution Control Administration said Monday.

DailyMail.com contacted Xcel Energy and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Xcel Energy will resume operations “next week” but will temporarily close in mid-April for annual maintenance.

Theo Keith of Xcel said more than 30 percent of the tritium has been recovered from groundwater and the cleanup process will continue over the next year.

Chris Clark, President of Xcel Energy – Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, said on Thursday at statement regarding the recent leak: “While the leak still does not pose a risk to the public or the environment, we have determined that the best course of action is to shut down the power plant and perform an immediate overhaul.”

The water contains tritium, a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with a half-life of about 12 years.

Tritium can enter the body through inhalation, ingestion, or absorption through the skin.

According to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), it increases the risk of cancer when consumed in extremely high amounts.

This was stated by Minnesota Health Commissioner Dan Huff. MPR news: “Although tritium is radioactive, it has a low energy and is therefore not like plutonium.

“If you planted it next to you in a glass, it wouldn’t hurt you.

“If you drank it, it would increase your radiation exposure. And we want to limit exposure to radiation because radiation can cause tissue damage.”

The Monticello plant is located about 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis, upstream of the city on the Mississippi River.

After the first leak was discovered in November, Xcel Energy made a short-term decision to collect water from the leaking pipe and redirect it back to the plant for reuse.

The solution was designed to prevent new tritium from entering the groundwater until a replacement pipe was installed during a regular scheduled outage in mid-April, the company said.

However, monitoring equipment showed on Wednesday that a small amount of new water from the original leak had reached the water table.

According to Xcel Energy, operators have found that the temporary solution no longer captures all of the water leak.

In a statement, Xcel Energy announced the first leak from the Federal and State Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Nov. 22.

Since the leak, Xcel Energy has said it has been pumping groundwater, storing and treating contaminated water below the federal threshold for tritium.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has stated that tritium spills occasionally occur at nuclear power plants, but it has repeatedly determined that they either remained confined to the plant site or were associated with off-site levels so low that they did not affect health or safety. population.

Xcel reported a small tritium leak at Monticello in 2009.