Canada has nuke plant event - "Negligence" happened

[ensho]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?glide=NC-20091223-24276-CAN&cat=dis&lang=eng


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.
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not good.

[snagglepuss]

1. Canada allows tritium levels in drinking water 473 times higher than in California

WOW. I did not know that.