Green | December 23, 2009 | 16 comments

Nuclear plant spills tritum into Lake Ontario

source: http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/742225--nuclear-plant-spills-tritium-into-lake?bn=1

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JanforGore
Workers at the Darlington nuclear station filled the wrong tank with a cocktail of water and a radioactive isotope Monday, spilling more than 200,000 litres into Lake Ontario.

Ontario Power Generation is investigating how the accident happened and officials say hourly tests of the lake water show that the level of tritium – the radioactive isotope of hydrogen – poses no harm to nearby residents.

The spilled water contained 0.1 per cent of the plant's allowable monthly release of tritium, said OPG spokesman Ted Gruetzner.

"It was a very small amount that was in the tank," he said.

However, the fact the spill happened is reason enough to worry, watchdogs say.

"Negligence at a nuclear plant can lead to catastrophic consequences. It's an unforgiving technology," said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, an energy campaigner with Greenpeace. "This may be presented as a pretty minor spill, but it's a bad sign when you see these types of breakdowns."

The accident happened around 3 p.m. at the Clarington facility, after which officials notified the Ministry of the Environment, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the Durham Medical Officer of Health and water treatment authorities.

The spilled water – enough to fill more than two Olympic-sized swimming pools – came from an underground tank that is used for backup cooling in the event of an emergency.

"We know what happened, we just don't know why it happened," said Gruetzner, explaining that staff charged with filling up the underground tanks inadvertently filled one that was already full.

The water also contained an unspecified amount of hydrazine, a toxic inorganic chemical compound that keeps pipes and tanks from rusting.

The tank overflowed and water ran onto the ground, much of it flowing into the lake. Cleanup crews have already taken care of the puddles of water that didn't reach the lake, many of which froze over and had to be chipped out, Gruetzner said.

"Our priority right now is to make sure the testing is done and the cleanup is completed," he said. "There will be an investigation to make sure this accident doesn't happen again."

Tritium can be harmful when ingested in enough quantity. It immediately travels to the gastrointestinal tract and is absorbed into the bloodstream within two hours.

Durham Region said in a statement that water sampling and testing is taking place at water supply plants in Oshawa, Bowmanville and Newcastle.

"Residents are advised that their water is safe to drink," according to the statement.

Still, Oshawa city councillor Tito-Dante Marimpietri said the spill was worrisome.

"As a councillor and a parent, it's concerning. But I'm confident that everyone involved will be working tirelessly to find out what happened and where to go from there," said Marimpietri, a member of the city's Environmental Advisory Committee.

The spill comes a month after the Sierra Club of Canada released a report warning that "routine and accidental releases of tritium" are rising and that accumulation in the environment is a growing health concern. It criticized Canada for allowing tritium levels in drinking water that are 70 times higher than in the European Union and 473 times higher than in California.

Canada's nuclear safety commission dismissed the Sierra Club report as "junk science," but Linda Keen, former head of the commission, told the Star that community concerns should be taken seriously. She said tritium is an operational by-product of Candu nuclear reactors, making Canada the world's largest producer of the otherwise rare radioactive isotope.

"Accumulative effects of tritium are what really worried me (as head of the commission), not just the dose at a certain date," she said.
  1. groups:
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16 comments // Nuclear plant spills tritum into Lake Ontario

  • futuregen
    • 0
      futuregen  

    • Another excerpt from Solar Living Source Book by real Goods:

      page 103: "(The area of) the Nevada Test Site and Nellis Air Force Base could deliver twice the needed energy to meet the entire US needs using existing photovoltaic technology".

    • 2 years ago
  • futuregen
  • futuregen
    • 0
      futuregen  

    • The half life of tritium is 12 years, the hazardous life is 120 years. Once again the nuclear industry fails life and fails the planet. Shut these plants down!

    • 2 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  

    • If you add up the solar, the wind, the crappy geothermal that's just been indicted for causing increased quake activity, add them all up and cover the landscape "from sea to shining sea" with em and what've you got? NUTHIN. You still need 75% MORE POWER.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Gravity_Man:

      Jan, if you were to get the nuclear plant shut down that wouldn't accomplish a thing. They make a plea deal, one wrist slap they go open another one down the road. The Judges want to get re-elected. Prosecutors know their Bread & Butter depends on keeping their job.

      It's all a big game of musical chairs. Shoot, I caught Apco in several lies and scams. Nothing's happening. I caught the owners of my apartments fleecing the residents of 168 apartments $45.00 a month apiece for several YEARS for excess billing for a drought that had ended two and four years ago!

      None of us got paid back any money, and I have very good reason to believe several male residents got hot at Office personnel and got thrown in Jail and now have a Jail Record hindering their employment prospects for the remainder of their lives. I can know that because when I moved here and saw what was happening I raised a complaint with women apartment managers.

      So one day I noticed a police squad car sitting just to the other side of the bushes. They had laid a trap for me. Son of a bitch girl. These people have constructed fail proof ways to stay on top. You don't see it but I have seen it.

      You are shouting peeing and pissing your face off in the damn wind.

      Pardon my French. They -whoever they are- have decided they want nuclear,

      and you and your one vote aren't going to change that. You can mail in all the

      legal petitions and letters ya want. If you succeed in any way it will only,

      only be after they have set up ways to keep them from harm first.

      I've seen it already a number of times. They laugh at you Jan.

      Are they some "elite"? You Bet'cha. They're every college graduate out here. They formed into a click while in college, decided who they would let into their god almighty fraternity. I've even run into it driving a truck! I had three of my company drivers driving ahead of me doing 90 miles an hour through upstate West Virginia coming south on I-77. They kept egging me to mash the gas and keep up but I wouldn't. I let them go on out of sight.

      They gave their special signal to the trooper and he jumped through the interstate median grass to pull me over. You have no idea how widespread this is. I believe it's common among ex-military. Those drivers ahead of me found out I was religious and they signaled their friend to put the big fuck on me.

      The damn Congress of the United States is stuffed with these people.
      The damn Congress of the United States is stuffed with these people.
      The damn Congress of the United States is stuffed with these people.
      The damn Congress of the United States is stuffed with these people.
      The damn Congress of the United States is stuffed with these people.
      The damn Congress of the United States is stuffed with these people.

      And when Obama went in & suddenly had a Personality change they threatened his family.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Gravity_Man:

      The sooner you get it through your head that all this Freedom and Choice is a bunch of crap the happier you're going to be. Become like a Chinese citizen and accept your life the way it was when you were born into it. Orientals don't have our ulcers and heart disease. They accept what they're born into, live their lives, find some enjoyment in their family, and if someone in a Red White and Blue jet plane strafes them with napalm they accept that too.

      Well, that's the game. If you really did catch somebody dead to right at something they would take care of their own, slap his wrist and he'd be making hand over fist even while in jail... because they all agree from the start they know eventually one or two of them will get caught for the good of the group.

      They have a silver spoon for life even while in jail. Look at how many criminals and felons Bill Clinton pardoned the last day he was in Presidential Power. Look at how Bush did and he's still getting his library right?

      Right Jan? hahahahaha Your eyes are open now.

      Have a good life in 2010 and give up your foolish and wasteful efforts.

      Probably, realistically, 2/3 of the s.o.b.'s commenting here are in a similar group.

      They're positioned here to make people like you think the oasis has water.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Gravity_Man:

      Even when I caught them charging all the residents here Drought~Time Water Rates they have a shell game solution to work around having gotten caught => they just stand up from their chairs, walk around to another seat and keep making more money. I've caught them at poisoning electric power customers with AC radiation poisoning => they just stand up from their chairs, walk around to another seat and keep making more money. I've caught them at charging power customers DOUBLE RATES => they just stand up from their chairs, walk around to another seat and keep making more money.

      => they just stand up from their chairs, walk around to another seat
      => they just stand up from their chairs, walk around to another seat
      => they just stand up from their chairs, walk around to another seat
      => they just stand up from their chairs, walk around to another seat

      How much damn plainer can it possibly get?

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Gravity_Man:

      Americans are brainwashed because they have been trained like a pet monkey to think along strict lines that gives people power over them. #1, you think electricity has to be HARD it isn't. You think it has to be produced in GREAT QUANTITY it doesn't. You think Space travel is confined to the SUPER HEALTHY i.e. THEIR MILITARY Nope, another brainwash job, another successfully molded American brain thinks what they want it to think.

      Electric power so far has only been produced as a FIFO. FIFO means First In First Out. When you see a fuel-consuming power plant or car engine you automatically KNOW some exhaust is coming out the ass end because to you the brainwashed you think in terms of FIFO. Truth is, up to a few years I was brainwashed also in all those ways.

      Only after I was touched by God to understand there are higher levels of Physics and I designed some engines that uses those laws. My engines are NOT FIFO they are like a flawed subroutine in a computer program that is stuck in a repeating loop. If you understand a computer software FLOWCHART you know what I am talking about. When computer software is incorrectly written and a repeating loop occurs the software cannot progress to any further routines.

      Well, in 2003 I learned to make circular engine designs that are deliberately designed to have that very "flaw", producing non-stop electric power or locomotion. More recently, just last year I came to understand how to design a solar engine that is not FIFO it circulates hot air in a repeating loop. After just a few minutes of sunlight it begins building an exponential solar charge til it goes into motion.

      Once in motion it will crank out enough electric power in several hours running time likely enough to power your Home for 1-3 days. A simple storage system being so charged your Home would have gosh a plenty electricity for 1-2 weeks off one decent day's worth of sunlight. I can know that because the system also has a Windmill tied in, so that when the solar goes down usually the wind increases, especially in the night.

      That's how incredibly easy electricity it is, and how I KNOW you are being sold a Bill of Goods with nuclear. I can know it because this is the absolute WEAKEST ENGINE SYSTEM I KNOW HOW TO MAKE. My systems are not FIFO they all go exponential one way or another. They are all 100% Natural, no pollutants exhausted in fact, nothing exhausted at all.

      If everybody wasn't so darn brainwashed and I had some help you would have em before now, but the brainwashing engine used against you has been nonstop and very powerful. It has had you in its grip all your lives. I no longer harbor any illusions of helping anybody. A few posts in a few obscure threads can't possibly be a contender. I like writing about them though because they show a Higher Glory in this Universe than many want to admit, but especially the politicians and corporations who all have you standing at their gas pump.

      You are become like beggars in Jesus' parable, the one hoping for crumbs to fall off the Rich Man's table. Fact is, that beggar got better than us today. He wasn't being poisoned by out-of-control chemists and scientists. It looks like we're all headed straight into the jaws of hell on earth. Our only hope is prayer. I have the miracles, blessed for me to see, figure out and understand, but I don't own a Fox News.

      The future if it is to be better is in God's Hands now. If Jesus doesn't show up soon ain't none of us worth a bit part in the first Terminator movie because when the drone planes armed to th teeth finish kicking alien azz I mean Afghanistan's pitiful derrieres overseas they'll bring em back here. We are already suffering the Bible's "pangs of distress" and they haven't got started good yet, but when it does get started up good I hope you remember some of my posts and pray for all you're worth that you are given protection... because the running this nation and world plan for you to live & die FIFO lives.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  

    • You get more radiation from your computer monitor than water, and the fish will have to fend for themselves it's a dog eat dog world. Those who are strong -including the poor little fishie poos- will survive a little stray sun rads from water.

      Those who can't survive well, we need to fix the gene pool anyway. The whiners need some thinning out too. Along with those people who think voting will fix anything. All these new immigrants pouring through the borders will vote for whoever likes immigrants. That blots out your one little vote with a giant ink stamp. Swipo. Gone Gone.

      Once we're free of whiners the earth will repair itself fast just like it has at Chernobyl. You'll see or maybe you won't. Have a Toaster Popup.

    • 2 years ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • Move along? Who are you? Nuclear power is safe my eye. That's why millions of fish die every year from nuclear waste dumped in our water. Nuclear power isn't only unsafe, it is a security threat, a water waster, and a cancer causer. I agree with Oly, time for a major investment in solar power and an END to these antiquated corporate government backed threats to our environment and health.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  

    • Nuclear power is safe. These incidents are very insignificant. Once the leaked tritium gets into the nation's MASSIVE groundwater stores no one will be adversely affected. Once the radiation gets in there all it will do is probably zap the 317 other chemicals and hormones and prescription drugs.

      Quit making something out of nothing.
      Nothing to see here move along Naysayers.
      Just like Afghanistan, a very small amt of $$$$ to GNP.

    • 2 years ago
  • oly90808
  • Progresshiv
    • 0
      Progresshiv  

    • Prescribing strict controls of tritium release may be labeled as "junk science" by Canada's nuclear safety commission, but cancer is empirical misery.

    • 2 years ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • And yes, I know it should be tritium not tritum, but for some reason if I go in to edit it I lose the picture, so it will have to stay as spelled.

      Hmm, and would I trust the plant telling me my water is safe to drink? No way in hell.

    • 2 years ago
  • futuregen
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