North Carolina nuclear facility leaking radioactive cooling water

A nuclear research reactor at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh, NC, was recently shut down after it was discovered that the plant has been leaking about ten gallons of nuclear cooling water per hour for at least the past week. Officials from the university, however, claim that the leak, which stems from the 15,000 gallons of water used to cool the superheated uranium reactor core, poses “no public health threat.”

The announcement comes on the heels of several others involving US nuclear plants, including the potentially ill-fated Fort Calhoun Nuclear facility near Omaha, Neb. (http://www.naturalnews.com/032870_F…), and the Los Alamos National Laboratory that was threatened by wildfires last week (http://www.naturalnews.com/032871_w…). In the NC case, reports do not indicate why radioactive cooling water is leaking from the facility, but its operators insist, just like the experts associated with the other nuclear plants are doing, that everything is just fine.

“The leak is the size of a pinhead,” said NCSU spokeswoman Caroline Barnhill concerning the incident, in an attempt to quell concern. The school insists that the radioactive water poses no threat whatsoever to humans or to the environment because exposure to it is allegedly the equivalent of undergoing an X-ray. The school also says that because the leak is under 350 gallons per hour, it did not even have to notify the public about it (but decided to anyway).

It is interesting how every time there is a radioactive discrepancy, experts insist that it is harmless — and they almost always, especially in recent days, refer to it as being no different than an X-ray.