Temporary shutdown of Monticello nuclear power plant causes fish kill
Update (March 28): Xcel Energy says the radioactive water leak is fixed, and the plant will reopen within the next week.
MONTICELLO, Minn. – A Minnesota nuclear power plant says it fixed a radioactive leak, but the process killed hundreds of fish.
The Xcel Energy Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant sits close to the Mississippi River. The utility company started powering it down on Friday, which cooled the surrounding water.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) says the temperature change killed about 230 fish, including bass, channel catfish, carp and sucker fish.
The plant went offline so crews could fix a leak that spilled 400,000 gallons of contaminated water late last year. The temporary fix failed last week, spilling even more of the water.
Monday night, Minnesotans living near the plant had another chance to ask questions during a community meeting.
One Monticello resident, 82-year-old Gary Scherber, told WCCO the leak did not bother him, but more so the lack of communication from Xcel.
"They should be communicating with the area immediately," Scherber said.
Xcel has since committed to being more transparent, but it says fish kills have happened before.
Last week, Xcel Energy said some of the contamination made it to the groundwater, which flows toward the Mississippi. Still, the company says there's no threat to the public or environment.
"It is a very rigorous testing protocol and we've got layers of protection in there to make sure that something doesn't slip past us," Pat Flowers, an employee of Xcel Energy, said.
According to Xcel, its environmental crews recovered and cataloged the species and weight of each fish killed and then properly disposed of them.
The MPCA released this statement Monday evening about the fish kill:
Xcel Energy notified the state duty officer that a change in water temperature led to a fish kill near its Monticello nuclear power plant. As part of its normal operations, warm water from the Monticello plant enters the river, which the fish get used to. The fish kill is unfortunate but not unexpected given the significant temperature change that can occur when warm water from the plant stops flowing to the river during a shut down in operations. At the time of the report, 230 fish had died including bass, channel catfish, common carp, and one or more species of sucker fish. The fish kill was not caused by tritium.
On Friday, March 24, Xcel Energy began a temporary shutdown of the Monticello plant to address a second leak of water containing tritium into groundwater at the facility. The Minnesota Department of Health and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency are monitoring samples taken from groundwater wells and have no evidence that the tritium has reached the Mississippi River or contaminated drinking water sources. The MPCA, MDH, and DNR continue to work together on this response.
Xcel Energy says the plant will be returned to service in the next week and a mid-April refueling service outage is scheduled as planned. After the refueling outage, the plant will be back online for the summer.
Water that leaked contained about eight curies of tritium, Xcel says. As of Monday, Xcel has recovered 32% of the tritium and will continue this process over the course of the next year.