NRC Inspector Due at Indian Point Thursday

A radioactive material has been detected in the groundwater below a nuclear power plant north of New York City.

Entergy Corp., which runs the plant, elaborated on the situation, saying three monitoring wells out of several dozen at Indian Point showed elevated levels of tritium after the leak, but it said the incident poses no threat public health or safety, according to CNN.

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A special inspector for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to arrive at the Indian Point station Thursday to conduct an inquiry into why elevated levels of tritium were found in groundwater under the plant. Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has repeatedly called for the plant to be closed, said the contamination was “alarming” and “unacceptable”, but acknowledged that it is below federal safety limits.

Cuomo ordered the state departments of Health and Environmental Conservation to begin investigations of the incident.

“This failure continues to demonstrate that Indian Point can not continue to operate in a manner that is protective of public health and the environment”, he added.

Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said, the leak also did not pose a threat to the river environment as dilution would render the radioactive water “undetectable”, said.

Early indications point to a sump pump failure that allowed contaminated water to leach into the holding wells, according to an NRC spokesman. But Paul Gunter, director of the Radioactive Oversight Project for the group Beyond Nuclear, says that distinction is not reassuring. Perales’s letter denying the approval cited the risk of earthquakes, the surrounding population density, the plant’s proximity to the source of drinking water for much of the NY metro area, and the plant’s killing of more than a billion fish in the Hudson River over the last four decades.

According to Sheehan, the more immediate concern was how the leak happened.