I found out in 2000 that my dad had been a lawyer for NSP (that became Xcel) - when I was born in 1971. When I was six weeks old I flew to Puerto Rico and I asked me dad if that was a "celebration vacation" after he won the lawsuit against his old AG office (where he had worked for two years). Yes was his reply. Mom says he was the lead lawyer.
somebody did their Ph.D. on the Monticello radiation precedence!!
That lawsuit set a national precedence that state AGs could not regulate nuclear emissions pollution at a stricter standard than the "military intelligence" federal standard. And here we are 53 years later (actually 54 for me).
I had gotten arrested protesting NSP in 1994 - over 30 years ago! I also got a letter published in our corporate-state newspaper. That raised some eyebrows since obviously I had the same name as my dad who had represented the same nuclear utility. He was not the only lawyer of course. thanks, drew hempel
Xcel eventually acknowledged that the volume of the leak, from an old corroded underground pipe, was 829,000 gallons, and that the groundwater plume of reactor cooling water — some of which would later reach the Mississippi River — had a radioactive footprint of some fourteen curies of tritium — a very large amount. (For reference, the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island released an estimated 15 curies of gaseous radioactive iodine-131 to the Pennsylvania atmosphere. Other radioactive materials went into the Susquehanna River.)
Xcel’s 829,000-gallon leak was always a direct threat to drinking water because — as the company’s own 2023 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report states on page 13 — “It is assumed groundwater continuously flows to the river…” The Mississippi is the drinking water source for 20 million people, including Minneapolis, St. Paul, and their surrounding suburbs 37 miles downstream from the leaky reactor.
NRC Senior Environmental Project Manager Stephen S. Koenick publicly apologized for the fudge, at an NRC open meeting in the city of Monticello, May 15, 2024. Koenick told the gathering, “I know we had meetings in which we reported there were no indication[s] of a tritium leak making it to the Mississippi. However, in our Draft Environmental Impact Statement, we do say, we do conclude there were some very low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.”
The figure “0.167 curies” may give the impression of a small amount, but this amount of tritium contamination leaked to the Mississippi translates to 167 billion picocuries. Again, 20,000 picocuries-per liter is the current EPA allowable drinking water limit.
a total of 0.388 Ci [curies] of tritium (released via natural evaporation from the temporary tanks and the groundwater remediation pond) was reported during calendar year 2023.” This is to say 388 billion picocuries of tritium were sent floating around Minnesota’s Wright and Sherburne counties. This underreported and unplanned, emergency stop-gap response poses some risk for the surrounding residents who breathe.
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