HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — A worker at TVA’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant doing regular walk-around monitoring Jan. 7 identified a leak of radioactive water at the plant last week.
A Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman said today the leak resulted in a spill of between 100 and 200 gallons and some of that water, mixed with millions of gallons of cooling water, could have migrated to the Tennessee River.
TVA acknowledged that, while no elevated levels of radioactive pollutants have been discovered at the plant near Athens, the water that spilled exceeded federal guidelines for safe drinking.
The leak took nearly three hours to stop and is blamed on a faulty valve. It occurred in a common area for all three of the plant reactors and involved water that was being re-condensed after serving as steam to power the plant’s turbines.
TVA officials said this morning they are monitoring water going back into the river and have detected no elevated levels of tritium. TVA is still reviewing how the leak occurred.
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◇See also Browns Ferry: Shrinking the Safety Margin at Alabama’s Largest Nuclear Plant
And Browns Ferry Engineer Never Expected to Be Nuclear Plant Whistleblower
