Dilution's the solution!

The Oyster Creek nuclear power plant's operating license was due to expire in early 2009.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission deemed the plant good to go for another 20 years, despite some serious questions regarding the integrity of the drywell containment shell (think big metal can that keeps the bad stuff in).  Not two weeks after relicensing, tritium (carcinogen, half-life: 12.3 years) turned up in local groundwater outside the plant.

The spill at Oyster Creek - the nation's oldest, continuously operating nuclear plant - measured as high as 6 million picocuries in some monitoring wells, about 300 times the level the federal Environmental Protection Agency considers unsafe for drinking water. Since then, some of the drawn samples have fallen to safe levels during the past year, even without human intervention.

In response to public outcry, Exelon, the plant's owner-operator, promised to address the problem immediately (read: whenever they felt like it?).  So it is that almost 18 months later, the company has finally arrived at a winning solution to a problem that has already leaked upwards of 180,000 gallons of tritium tainted water.  Pump contaminated groundwater back into the plant, use it in the cooling process, and then discharge it with the flood of cooling water into public waterways. (Aside: When did we stop arguing about closed cycle cooling?)

"This water will be extensively diluted as it cycles through the plant. The amount of tritium released will be indiscernible from background radiation levels," Benson said. "It won't impact the discharge canal or the Barnegat Bay."