Uncontrollable Radioactive Leak Contaminates Hudson River

Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant has been leaking contaminates for over a decade.  Radioactive contaminants that is seeping into the ground water and drinking water of towns along the Hudson River.

Entergy says it has the leak under control, but the Coastal Zone Assessment proves otherwise and has stated concern about the poisons that entering the direct water sources for “Poughkeepsie, Wappingers Falls, Highland, Port Ewen, East Fishkill, Hyde Park, and the Village of Rhinebeck”.

 The real leak contains much worse radioactive elements.  the actual leak contains a basket of radioactive elements, including Strontium-90, Cesium-137, Cobalt-60, and Nickel-63 according to an assessment by the New York Department of State as part of its Coastal Zone Management Assessment.

“Tritium,” explained David Lochbaum, nuclear safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “is just the first item reported. It tends to be the leading edge of any spill since it is the lightest and most mobile of the radioactive contaminants. The other isotopes slow down as they go through the soil. That other stuff is on its way, however. Tritium just wins the race.”

New York State Department of Health has detected deposits of a vast variety of radioactive isotopes both above and below the Indian Point discharge site.  Because the Hudson is a tidal estuary, it has been called by Native Americans as “the river that runs both ways.” Thus, just because one may live upstream from the power plant, it does not mean that the leak won’t effect the upstream water sources.

Indian Point schematics provided by the NRC show the site of the leak or leaks is roughly 69 feet above the Hudson River at the beginning of a groundwater flow that widens to about 80 feet as it rushes downward, pools above the bedrock and then flows inexorably into the Hudson River. Once the contaminants enter that groundwater flow there is no system at Indian Point to remove them. Entergy representatives declined to comment on planned and unplanned radioactive discharges into the environment.

The potential for a catastrophic disaster, where the east coast around the Hudson has drinking water that is at unsafe levels is very real.  To brush this issue under the corporate carpet at Entergy is duplicitous, as they tell the public that the levels of radioactive contaminates are nothing to worry about, yet they cannot fix the leaks, nor are the properly concerned about the “three miles of inaccessible piping under the 239-acre site” and their inability “to properly assess possible corrosion within the pipes”.

Source: Huffington Post