It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
I wonder if this is a mistake or for real. I checked another radiation tracking site and they don't show anything out of the ordinary.
That cloud spewing out of the Indian Point nuclear plant last month wasn't a smoke signal - it was radioactive steam. For two days starting Nov. 2, an estimated 600,000 gallons of boiling, radioactive water escaped through a valve that was stuck open in the Unit 2 reactor of the nuclear power plant in Westchester. The superheated water instantly turned to steam and spread out over the lower Hudson Valley in a cloud containing tritium, a cancer-causing radioactive isotope. Read more: www.nydailynews.com...
Beyond Nuclear’s April 2010 report Leak First, Fix Later 1 documents radioactivity leaks at over 100 nuclear power plants in the U.S. since the early 1960s. The frequency and size of leaks is growing worse as reactors, and their underground piping systems, degrade with age. But in addition to controversial leaking pipes, as at Vermont Yankee beginning in January 2010, the U.S. has suffered a growing number of leaking irradiated nuclear fuel storage pools, as first highlighted in early 2006 by Dave Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists’ Nuclear Safety Project Director. 2
The highly-publicized leaks of radioactive hydrogen – or tritium – from buried pipes at the Braidwood, Oyster Creek and Vermont Yankee nuclear power plants have drawn attention to a more widespread and longstanding problem analyzed by a new report from Beyond Nuclear. Leak First, Fix Later: Uncontrolled and Unmonitored Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Power Plants finds leaking U.S. reactors are now ubiquitous. There is evidence of 15 radioactive leaks from March 2009 through April 16, 2010 from buried pipe systems at 13 different reactor sites. At least 102 reactor units are now documented to have had recurring radioactive leaks into groundwater from 1963 through February 2009.
The report finds that the federal regulator – the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) – has replaced its own oversight responsibilities in favor of industry self-regulation. Instead of mandating compliance with established license requirements for the control and monitoring of buried pipe systems carrying radioactive effluent, the NRC cedes responsibility to industry voluntary initiatives that will add years onto the resolution of a decades-old environmental and public health issue. Of further concern, the agency and the industry continue to downplay and trivialize the health risks of prolonged exposure to tritium which is shown to cause cancer, genetic mutations and birth defects.
The delinquency of the NRC is made more alarming by the fact that the nuclear industry has deliberately misrepresented the truth about its leaking reactors to state governments, most dramatically in Illinois and Vermont. Given the history of untrustworthiness of the nuclear industry, it is even more important to have a vigilant and responsible regulator. The report found this not to be the case with the NRC and its oversight of increasing leaky reactors.
The report examines radioactive leaks in Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, New York and Vermont
that illuminate concerns over continuing groundwater contamination, the accelerating
deterioration of buried pipes, the lack of integrity of industry’s reporting of leaks and pipes and
the questionable replacement of federal oversight and enforcement with industry “voluntary
initiatives.”
State officials said similar testing was done in California, Pennsylvania, Washington and other states, and showed comparable levels of I-131 in rain
The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement (NCRP) published a study in 2009 that found that nearly half of the radiation to which the US population is exposed comes from medical sources such as CT scans, x-rays, and nuclear medicine.
In response to requests for information related to the radiological aspects of the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Accident, NCRP has made Commentary No. 10, Advising the Public About Radiation Emergencies available for free download >