We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. The company also shut the plant down after discovering the second leak but said it would reopen this week. Smith said she agreed that the leak did not pose a significant safety risk but “learning about it months after really doesn’t help the industry”.Īfter the announcement, Xcel held two open houses about the leaks. “Making the announcement when we did allowed us to provide the public a more accurate and complete understanding of the leak and our plan to resolve it.” “While we immediately informed state and federal agencies, with no immediate safety risk, we focused on investigating the situation and containing the affected water in concert with our regulatory agencies,” Kevin Coss, an Xcel Energy spokesperson, stated in an email to the Guardian. The regulators concluded that the spill had not reached the Mississippi River or contaminated drinking water sources near the plant. The company reported that about 400,000 gallons of water containing tritium leaked from a pipe at the facility. Photograph: Adam Bettcher/ReutersĮven though Xcel did not announce the leak publicly, they notified the Regulatory Commission, which is a federal agency, and the state and in November, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Patrick Flowers of Xcel Energy speaks to the public about the Monticello plant in Minnesota on 27 March. “It is an industry that is highly scrutinized compared to other industries, and I think the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does a really good job at ensuring that safety is something that is practiced in the industry.” “Nuclear is the only clean energy sector that has the capacity to” transition away from fossil fuels “on a large scale”, said Charlyne Smith, a senior nuclear energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, an energy thinktank.
While some scientists see increasing nuclear energy as a crucial, safe way to reducing carbon emissions and increasing the country’s energy independence, the disasters at the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima nuclear power plants continue to cause fears of the power source.
“This leak, even though it was contained and poses no danger”, according to the official reports, “it should be used as some sort of wake-up call”, said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor who specializes in nuclear safety at the University of Southern California. Independent nuclear energy experts agree that the company should have been more transparent, but they say that based on reports from state and federal agencies, they also do not think the leaks pose a health risk to residents or that the incidents will serve as a significant setback to efforts to promote the carbon-free power source in the US. While Xcel Energy representatives have said the leaks did not affect local drinking water or pose a safety threat to residents, residents such as Jammes want more answers from the company. “We don’t know for sure if” side-effects from the leaks “will happen or when anything will happen but just the lack of transparency is very concerning”, said Jammes, a 36-year-old mother of four. Moreover, Jammes is upset that the company did not alert the public about the leak until March – and then detected a second leak, which the company described as smaller than the first one. But now she worries that her water could be contaminated by a leak of about 400,000 gallons of radioactive water that occurred in November at the plant, which is about 40 miles north-west of Minneapolis.
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