Elevated levels of tritium — a radioactive form of hydrogen — have been found at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, but pose no risk to public health or safety, officials from Southern California Edison said on Thursday, Sept. 5.
The Environmental Protection Agency has set a “maximum contaminant level” of 20,000 picocuries per liter for tritium in drinking water. Routine monitoring at San Onofre found a low concentration of 3,430 picocuries per liter in one well, and a higher concentration of 19,100 picocuries per liter in an adjacent well.
Neither, however, is a drinking water well, officials said.
The plant is just yards from the ocean, so groundwater beneath and around it is salty. It typically flows east to west — that is, inland toward the ocean — and wouldn’t enter the drinking water supply, said Ron Pontes, Edison’s decommissioning manager.
“We’re bringing this up now so you know we’ve got an issue here, we’re aware of it, monitoring it, taking action,” Pontes told the Community Engagement Panel at its quarterly meeting. “We’ve engaged a hydrogeologist so we can understand the spread of this tritium, where it is exactly, and how to mediate it,” he said.
It’s not the first time tritium has been found at the site. In 2006, it prompted the temporary closure of one drinking water well in southern Orange County (tests revealed no detectable radioactivity and the well was returned to service); in 2009, it was found in the ocean off the coast and in groundwater protection wells (attributable to sampling shortly after a planned discharge of filtered wastewater from the plant); and in 2012, pumps extracted tritium water from near Unit 2 (pumps were shut off in 2015 and there was no rebound of tritium in that area, Pontes said).
Small tritium leaks were common at aging nuclear plants, but the health and safety threats of such leaks were characterized as “next to zero,” an investigation by the Associated…
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