The 55-year-old Monticello nuclear power reactor, a General Electric designed boiling water reactor like the melted and exploded Fukushima reactors in Japan, leaked almost 1-million gallons of highly radioactive cooling water into the ground under the reactor complex and some of the radioactive tritium reached the Mississippi River which is used for drinking water.
By John LaForge
The 55-year-old Monticello nuclear reactor owned by Xcel Energy was unexpectedly shut down Friday, Feb. 20, and the Monticello Times reports the reactor will be offline for at least 30 days, maybe more to “perform maintenance” and to “determine appropriate repairs.”
No regional or national news service made mention of Xcel’s reactor outage in spite of the “over 1 million users” that rely on its electricity, according to Xcel’s website. The reasons for the embarrassing outage were not made public by the company, which did not name the equipment that is in need of repair.
Further, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission made no announcement of the shutdown, and NRC Sr. Public Affairs Officer Viktoria Mitlyng wrote to Nukewatch Feb. 26 that, “The shutdown at Monticello was a planned maintenance shutdwon (sic) and did not require formal notifications. It’s a routine practice for nuclear plants.” The lack of an NRC notification might explain why not a single state-wide Minnesota news service made mention of the outage.
According to Xcel spokesperson Theo Keith, who spoke to editor Lauren Flaum of The Monticello Times, the shutdown “is not related to the tritium leak discovered at the facility in 2023.” Tritium is the radioactive form of hydrogen, and Mr. Keith’s reference is to the leak of nearly one-million gallons of highly radioactive coolant that contaminated groundwater under the reactor site, groundwater that reached the Mississippi River which is a drinking water source for Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Xcel explained to the press that the regional electrical power grid draws from multiple generators across the Midwest, and that the mix of providers allows uninterrupted service even when individual systems are taken offline.
Myths busted by Monticello shutdown
The shutdown debunks two principal myths endlessly repeated by the nuclear industry.
First, that nuclear reactors provide uninterrupted generation of electricity. The Nuclear Energy Institute’s website page-1 slogan is: “Only nuclear has the power to … deliver 24/7/365.” Let’s call BS. As the NRC’s Mitlyng said, “It’s a routine practice” for nuclear plants to shut down. Nuclear reactors are taken offline regularly and repeatedly by unplanned emergencies, by unexpected repair work, by refueling outages, and by emergencies and accidents that plague the youngest and the oldest reactors. Monticello is the sixth oldest in the United States.
Second: Promoters of commercial nuclear reactors say their electricity “is needed to keep the lights on.” This is BS again, as Xcel told the press that it “does not anticipate any impact to electric service while the plant is offline.”
Imagine a nuclear-free Mississippi River watershed. Xcel’s Monticello reactor isn’t needed to keep the lights on, and it’s so old that it can’t operate without major equipment repairs severe enough to gut Xcel’s profit-taking for thirty days. ###
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