03/01/2025
NUKEWATCH
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, January 3, 2025
NRC Okays 80-Year License for 3rd Oldest U.S. Reactor
Approves Xcel Energy Application to Run Leaky Monticello 20 Years Past 2030 Closure Date
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved Xcel Energy’s application to run its 54-year-old Monticello nuclear reactor on the Mississippi River in Minnesota until 2050, twenty years beyond its previously required closure, and 40 years beyond its initially engineered lifetime.
The NRC’s Dec. 30, 2024 decision is based on a 527-page “Final Environmental Impact Statement”or FEIS [1], which concluded that the hazards of operating the reactor until 2050 are “not so great” as to deny the application. The NRC found that Xcel’s license extension application is not “unreasonable,” although no power reactor has ever operated for 80 years. Without the NRC’s approval, Monticello — the 3rdoldest of 93 operating U.S. reactors — would have had to close on Sept. 8, 2030.
The NRC’s FEIS says that Xcel “did not identify any major refurbishment or replacement activities necessary for the continued operation of Monticello beyond the end of the current renewed operating license period.” The NRCalso granted Xcel’s request to inspect its aged underground pipes merely once every ten years in spite of the enormous November 2022 leak of 829,000 gallons of highly radioactive cooling water that sprang from an old, corroded underground pipe.
The NRC decision is the second license extension approval and was surprising in view of the radioactive release accident. But the commission has granted 87 of 92similar license renewal applications in a process critics have called a rubber stamp.[2]
According to the FEIS, some the massive radioactive leakeventually reached the Mississippi River — the source of public drink water for Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Metro and 20 million people downstream. The FEISstates on page 3-48: “Monticello reported an abnormal discharge to the Mississippi River from tritium contaminated groundwater of 0.167 curies of tritium between 07/27/23 and 12/31/23, based on tritium levels in wells and groundwater flow model calculations.”[3]
When it is ingested or inhaled, the internalized tritium can cause problems with pregnancies as well as birth abnormalities partly because tritium can cross the placentawhere it threatens the fetus. [4]
In December 2023 Xcel revised and more than doubled its400,000 gallon “estimate” of the volume of the leak, reporting it was 829,000 gallons, according to the Monticello Times. [5] The FEIS notes that the underground plume of highly radioactive cooling water had a total radioactivity of fourteen curies of radioactive tritium — a very large amount. [6] (For a reference, the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island released an estimated 15 curies of gaseous radioactive iodine-131 to its Pennsylvania surroundings. The accident released more radioactivity to the Susquehanna River.)
In spite of Xcel’s major accidental leak, no formal sanction or even reprimand was issued to the company by the NRC —even after the contamination of the Mississippi River was confirmed.
The river’s contamination was publicly acknowledged by NRC Senior Environmental Project Manager Stephen S. Koenick at a public meeting in the city of Monticello, May 15, 2024. Mr. Koenick told the gathering, “I know we had meetings in which we reported there were no indication[s] of tritium leak making it to the Mississippi. However, in our Draft Environmental Impact Statement, we do say, we do conclude there were some very low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.” [7]
The Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River, made up of environmental, climate, and peace-&-justice groups, has vowed to see the reactor closed well before the licensed limit. (https://www.savethemississippi.com/the411)
“There is too big a risk of accidents with reactors this old. Tritium leaks, broken welds, leaking underground pipes, radioactive waste cask deficiencies, and dangerous imbrittlement of reactor fuel tubes, all risk catastrophic radiation releases. This amounts to a violation of public trust by Xcel,” said John LaForge, a staff person with coalition member Nukewatch. /30/
Notes for verification only
[1] Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Subsequent License Renewal, Monticello, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Nov. 15, 2024, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf, p. 3-43
[2] Power magazine, June 5, 2023. https://www.powermag.com/subsequent-license-renewal-extending-nuclear-power-reactors-to-80-years-of-operation-and-maybe-more/
[3] Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Subsequent License Renewal, Monticello, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Nov. 15, 2024, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf, p. 3-48
[4] Arjun Makhijani,PhD, Exploring Tritium Dangers, IEER 2022, p. https://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Exploring-Tritum-Dangers.pdf
[5] Monticello Times Dec 21, 2023; https://www.hometownsource.com/monticello_times/xcel-groundwater-recovery-enters-final-phase/article_7e834ce8-9ea3-11ee-8e03-9f36a6b5d962.html
[6] Ibid, note 3, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf, p. 3-43
[7] “NRC apologizes, changes its stance on tritium leak,” Monticello Times, June 6. 2024, p.1
Contact:John LaForge, +01-715-491-3813, [email protected]
https://nukewatchinfo.org/
Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979
