(It will be interesting to see how the U.S. Media spins this, if they cover it at all.)
Thu Mar 16, 2006 01:28 PM ET
By Andrew Stern
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois filed suit on Thursday against Exelon Corp. for repeated leaks of radioactive waste water contaminated with tritium into ground water around its Braidwood nuclear plant, with prosecutors accusing the company of putting profits ahead of safety. "Faulty maintenance led to this situation and to this lawsuit," said Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan in announcing the suit filed in Will County, Illinois, Circuit Court.
Braidwood, a twin-reactor plant, has been plagued since 1996 by spills of millions of gallons of water laced with tritium -- a byproduct of nuclear power generation -- from an underground pipeline that normally carries effluent to a nearby river. This week a private lawsuit was filed seeking class-action status on behalf of 14,000 people who live in the vicinity of the plant, located about 60 miles southwest of Chicago.
Exelon has denied breaking the law, and has said it is cleaning up the problem and working on compensating affected residents. Meanwhile, it is storing tritiated water on site rather than discharging it through the pipe to the Kankakee River.
But prosecutors said the company was "disingenuous" in explaining the situation to the public and authorities, and may be endangering the public further by storing radioactive waste outside in steel tanks where they could be vulnerable to a tornado. Glasgow said the storage system in place for tritiated water was vulnerable to tornadoes, which strike frequently in northern Illinois and which could jettison steel tanks loaded with highly radioactive waste and cause a radiological disaster.
(more at link below)
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http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=11558597>
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