"Update 12 p.m.: FPL has responded to the study, saying it needs more time to review the specific data but defending its efforts to protect Biscayne Bay. "Our top priority is the health and safety of the public, and there is no threat to the health and safety of the public," says Bianca Cruz, an FPL spokeswoman.
As Florida Power & Light finalized plans to expand its nuclear reactors at Turkey Point three years ago, critics were aghast. The nuclear plant already stands on environmentally fragile land, and upping the power production would seriously threaten the ecosystem, they argued.
Turns out they may have been right. This morning, the county released the results of a study into whether Turkey Point has been leaking dangerous wastewater into Biscayne Bay. County water monitors found more than 200 times the normal levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope linked to nuclear power production, in the bay water, a finding environmentalists say justifies their concerns.
"This is one of several things we were very worried about," says South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard, who is also a biological sciences professor at Florida International University. "You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge."
The study is just the latest blow to FPL, which lost a state court ruling last month when a judge found the utility had failed to prevent hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater from seeping into the bay.
County commissioners and other local politicians are scrambling this morning to get answers about how threatened Biscayne Bay is by the leakage.
"I was shocked to read this," says Commissioner Xavier Suarez, who in a letter demanded answers from FPL "by the end of the day." County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, meanwhile, says the county has "aggressively enforced its regulations" and would demand that the state force FPL to fix the problem.
Adds State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez: “For years our state regulators have failed to take seriously the threat to our public safety, to our drinking water and to our environment posed by FP&L’s actions at Turkey Point. Evidence revealed this week of radioactive material in Biscayne Bay is the last straw and I join those calling on the US EPA to step in and do what our state regulators have so far refused to do - protect the public.”
At the heart of the troubling issue revealed in the new report is a system of canals surrounding the nuclear plant in southeast Miami-Dade. Nuclear cores must be constantly cooled to avoid meltdowns. The canals circulate water through the plant to leach heat off the reactors."
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/tu...ne-bay-8304252
Link from RT news:https://www.rt.com/usa/334927-florid...-leak-tritium/