Radioactive Strontium-90 found at Vermont Nuclear Plant

A leak of radioactive tritium occurred in the power generation company Vermont Yankee. After the leak the company officials went on a check and found a more potent radioactive isotope Strontium-90 near the soil where the leak occurred.

Strontium-90 is an offshoot of nuclear fission which is known to cause bone cancer, cancer of the soft tissue and leukemia. The company took instant action as soon as it found out the hazardous chemical. It cleared out all the soil and water that been affected by the chemical as quickly as possible and declared there was no threat of it spreading around. They are still continuing to do soil sampling to avoid any future possibilities of Strontium-90 being found.

The leak occurred on January 7, 2010 and the company reported cleaning it up on March 25, 2010. It took almost 3 months to clean up the damage that the chemical caused to the soil around. In this time span the chemical could have spread to a lot of areas which might have gone un-noticed by the company’s officials.

The tritium leak occurred in two separate underground pipes inside a concrete tunnel that allowed tritium-containing water to overflow a floor drain and seep through an unsealed concrete wall joint. The drain, which would normally take the water to processing inside the plant, was clogged with debris and mud. Technical expert said it could have been transferred from the reactor to the ground through airborne leaks, waterborne leaks, poor handling of low-level radioactive waste or through leaks in a condensate storage tank.