Tainted nuke plant water reaches major NJ aquifer

Tainted nuke plant water reaches major NJ aquifer

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Radioactive water that leaked from the nation's oldest nuclear power plant has now reached a major underground aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey, the state's environmental chief said Friday.

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From the second article... www.istockanalyst.com...

"But how far and deep the contamination has spread at the Lacey plant is unclear, according to state officials. The tritium concentration has risen in the Cohansey aquifer, which is used by some nearby residents for drinking water and irrigation, they said."

Now this is alarming. It seems radioactive water from the power plant was leaked into nearby soil last year. This water has now seeped into an aquifer layer above southern NJ's water supply. What recourse do these residents have? What bothers me the most is that this is barely a blip on any news outlet locally or nationally. The oil spill is everywhere, but an immediate threat of radioactive drinking water is ignored!

While an estimate of 15 years has been given before it will reach the region-wide supply, what damage is this going to do to the surrounding environment, not to mention, those living the the area? As of this time, there is NO clean up plan put in place for either the local water supply or the state resource! What is to keep the company from pulling out and leaving this mess behind, fees and fines? Where are the environmentalist? Where are the "Green Police" that have been so promoted lately? Or do does it only matter theoretically and on paper, for tax purposes, of course and in reality the middle & lower class are left to drink poison water and eat tained crops?

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(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 5/15/2010 by thomasblackraven]

But the mere fact that the radioactive water — at concentrations 50 times higher than those allowed by law — has reached southern New Jersey's main source of drinking water calls for urgent action, Martin said.

50 times whats allowed by law, for something that underground doesn't sound very potent.

"We have monitoring wells on site, and the tritium concentration is down steadily, sometimes by as much as 90 percent," he said. "We are drilling more wells, and we will work closely with the state. We have been all along."

Its because the earth will be actiing as a giant, chromatogrphy, filter for tritium. It'll also provide the raw many compounds to react with, and therefore end up chemically trapping the radioactive particles. Of course the stuffs advance can be detected, and no dount in time will reach major water supplies. But that's only because we have equipment capable of detecting incredibly small, changes in roadioactivity.

If you ask me, I think this leak was a careless-reckless mistake, one that naturally makes you question the regulation of the nuclear plant. However I imagine that the implications of this accident are being blown widely out of all proportion (but as far as the adult, imagination will reasonably permit). So I suspect the leak is being used as Green propaganda, that's being used as a "political football".

what is suspicious to me is timing

WHY wait a year to publish this story???

or is to coincide with the oil spill??

I bet there's more environmental catastrophes
we haven't heard about yet.

reply to post by Liberal1984


Will you move into the area and live for a few years?
Someone should begin tracking the cancer rates and birth defects now.

I live in south Jersey and have not heard a thing about this. Thank god for ATS! I drink a lot of water, guess ill stick to bottled from now on.

I do remember about 10-12 years ago there was quite a big story in ocean county NJ about young children having a much higher rate of cancers. I vaguely remember the details but I believe it had something to do with the water supply. Then the story just faded away... I wonder if there is a relation there?

reply to post by thomasblackraven


Nothing big, I hear the government has come out with a study that has proven that radioactivity mixed in with fluoride is really good for the teeth.

No I really meant it.

Originally posted by thomasblackraven
What bothers me the most is that this is barely a blip on any news outlet locally or nationally.

That's because environmentalist propaganda has US using 30+ year old reactors, and its their fault we're using ancient inefficient relics such as this.

The oil spill is everywhere, but an immediate threat of radioactive drinking water is ignored!

Well, that's the ENVIRONMENT. You know, turtles and stuff. It's not a big deal if a million humans are to get tainted water. No biggie. Whats new?

Originally posted by drock905
I live in south Jersey and have not heard a thing about this. Thank god for ATS! I drink a lot of water, guess ill stick to bottled from now on.

Wait... WHAT?!?!?! You drink "lots of" tap water?? Tap water (everywhere) has radioactive isotopes, illicit street drugs, hormones, pharmaceutical drugs, radon, lead, mercury, and a barrage of other nasties in it. And so does most bottled water. While we're at it, majority of all plastic containers leech synthetic estrogen hormones into the water inside them. Look it up, its not hard to find the info I'm talking about. You need to switch to reverse osmosis filtered water, stored in polycarbonate jugs. I pay $.30 a gallon for mine locally (to refill my array of jugs).

[edit on 16-5-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Not good for those that depend on H20 to live. All kinds of stuff getting into the aquifers from dumping all over the planet. Sorry to hear about the problem in NJ and I hope it shows as a warning to people in other parts of the world how fragile the environment really is. Wonder why this story not in the news?

Excuse my ignorance but is this the same event?
hisz.rsoe.hu...

Originally posted by drock905
I live in south Jersey and have not heard a thing about this. Thank god for ATS! I drink a lot of water, guess ill stick to bottled from now on.

Good luck showering with your bottle of water!

IRM

"50 times the legal limit"

The legal limit for Tritium as set by the EPA is 4 millirem per year. 50 times that would be 200 millirems. A full body CT scan will give you an exposure of 3,000 to 10,000 millirems.

Look for a rise in cancers, because once that radioactivity contaminates the water supply, it will be there for thousands of years. I am surprised that this particular story has not reached the airwaves nationally as well. This could be as serious as the oil spill and a public health disaster. Gotta love run-off, any time that crap gets into the soil, all it takes is a good rain and that stuff gets everywhere. Another point of contention, is why has this power plant at least been refurbished with modern equipment? It seems it would be the power companies responsibility to ensure their plant is operating safely and with the newest equipment.

Perhaps, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Environmental Protection Agency needs to look into how this happened? Furthermore, are there not agencies within the state of New Jersey to monitor things like nuclear power plants? Maybe the power company had good lobbyists and kept the cash filled envelopes flowing for all the underpaid bureaucrats? Out of sight out mind? Sometimes I wonder what these people do with their days at the office, and what we are paying them for. It seems government employees are getting more neglectful with their work.

If I lived in New Jersey, I would be very angry about this. It seems these corporation are getting more shoddier with each day regarding their work performance. I find it odd, when the President and his buddies are slowly gearing up for "Cap N Trade," legislation, we are suddenly having a smorgasbord of environmental disasters. Maybe all this is just an attempt to prime the people into accepting "Cap N Trade?" These disasters certainly give the administration a lot of leverage in selling their idea to the people. I suppose we will just have to wait and see.

[edit on 16-5-2010 by Jakes51]

You people don't have a clue, do you?
The amount of radiation that we are talking about is so miniscule that you could drink this water for over 20 years and still get less radiation than having an x-ray taken. They use stronger radiation in the dye that they sometimes inject to look for CANCER.

reply to post by JIMC5499


That's reassuring, but could you break down the math involved here? Pretty please?

just curious cuz i have no idea how carcinogens are absorbed/processed by the body....is there a substantial difference between the way a contaminated liquid is processed through drinking it and being irradiated by a machine? im just thinking that perhaps the mechanisms employed by the body to deal with these two different exposure methods might be different...but again im not an expert and i havent googled it.....

Don't worry, they'll change the law soon so that this concentration will be allowed.

[edit on 16-5-2010 by ickylevel]

Not that any of this discussion matters, but we are the only people that care us, you and me crazy conspiracy believers. All of the rest of the world will say Hmmmm if a doctor says ima be ok i wont worry. Nothing to see here move along! The trick is we need to motivate people too see what is happening, whether they are right and this leak is no big or it is a major health concern.
People will someday realize there are problems but how much of the population will we have to lose for them to see.
Sorry i always thought i was a realist, but as of late i think i am a fatalist.
Please ignore me and move to the next post.

After seeing some of Jersey Shore I have to say this could be a good thing

Originally posted by Violator1

Someone should begin tracking the cancer rates and birth defects now.

Agreed, as its the only way to know the true effects of radioactivity.

Will you move into the area and live for a few years?

Its a few too many, thousands of miles away, for convenience. However I have often spent much of the past year living, near the "Bristol border", side of the leaky Hinkley Point power stations in Sumerset...
Hinkley Point B Still Open: www.environment-agency.gov.uk...
Hinkley Point A: Closed en.wikipedia.org...

These power stations (like many others around the U.K) have been legally allowed to "discharge" large amounts of radioactive water, into U.K waters, for decades, and will be well into the future
See "don't worry" it's legal: www.food.gov.uk...
There's even a government strategy: To "manage" how radioactive, the nuclear power stations, are making, our tiny, island, nation, become. See... www.scotland.gov.uk... Or easyier reading: www.british-energy.co.uk...

Years of Hinkley discharges have apparently created a 50Km2 "dump" (I mean "wildlife reserve"!!!) (since it has lots of rare birds). This contaminated area is also producing its own, "Cancer Cluster", in the local population. www.llrc.org...

My Point...
England is a tiny country, that built the worlds first Commercial power station (at Sellafield), en.wikipedia.org... (so great was our talent for extracting the most of assets, that was only closed it down after 47 years, in 2003). This compares with the 1957 U.S one that was closed down in October 1982 en.wikipedia.org...
(Probably justified because U.S one was indeed, a shorter lasting desighn, however I do wonder about the age of many U.K nuclear reactors).

In 1957 we also had the first major nuclear accident, when the radioactive, graphite, core, of one of our bomb producing nuclear reactors, caught on fire for at least 4-5 days... en.wikipedia.org...

This is just the tip of a very large "ice-burg"
Yet our crowded country is still alive. The worst is also behind us, probably even if we wanted to generate all our electricity from nuclear power for the next 100 years.
It's because no (Western) country will ever build reractors as costly, wasteful, and unsafe as the first generation. 50 years of experience has meant countless lessons have been learnt, and many regulations developed.

"Built in" desighn saftety is being improved the whole, time, the Pebble Bed reactor (for example) is protected against meltdown by the laws of phyisics en.wikipedia.org... . Also government laws are unlikely ever to permit the same amount of radiation, legally released into the waters, as we have had in the past.

So be careful about over-reacting to nuclear power. Clearly the human body is an increbibly robust thing. Who would have even thought it could smoke a whole pack of cigerattes, let alone one-two packs a day for say 40 plus years? I find the idea of radioactive particles in the air very scary, but (as a scientifically minded person) I find the thought of it being in slow moving, ground water (espically when water is itself a great absorber of radiation) more of a psychological problem (and anti nuclear movement advantage).

PS Whoever drinks bottled water because of this scare, will probably do themselves more damage from the chemicals leaching, after the plastic bottles production. You can use glass bottles, but that they are real bad for the environment. Do we really want a special pipeline to transport water that's like 0.1percent less radioactive than a "contaminated" environment?

[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]