Utility’s Dirty Record at Monticello
Xcel Energy, Inc., the giant utility and natural gas delivery firm based in Minneapolis, Minn., has more than 5.8 million customers across eight states. The company’s PR says it will be carbon neutral by 2050, and that its nuclear power operations are “safe” and “clean” — even after its 829,000-gallon leak of highly radioactive cooling water in late 2022. As if such an industrial giant cares about nature, its website says, “We’re building a future powered by clean, reliable, affordable energy.”
In fact, Xcel’s reactors are expensive, unreliable — being regularly shut down by mishaps or refueling — and produce dirty, deadly, long-lived radioactive wastes every day. Xcel’s three old reactors in Minnesota, like all reactors everywhere, routinely release radioactive gases and liquids to the air and to water bodies.[1]
And Xcel’s reactor operations have a long history of both accidental and deliberate radioactive releases. Many of Xcel’s radiation accidents and intentional dispersals have been reported in news and regulatory reports, cited here. They are worth noting in view of the company’s pro-nuclear, greenwashing PR.
• On March 19, 2025, when the reactor was roaring at 97 percent power, its pressure vessel water level dropped and caused an unplanned emergency reactor shutdown. [2] The cause of the cooling water loss is “under investigation.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reported that before the shutdown, “a single feedwater pump tripped which would lower [the] reactor water level.” Reactor expert David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote about this incident: “The Three Mile Island-2 accident was initiated when a condensate cleanup system miscue tripped a feedwater pump.” (NRC Event Report No. 57618, Monticello; David Lochbaum, email to Nukewatch, March 20, 2025)
• On December 14, 2023, Xcel was fined $14,000 by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) for exceeding radioactive water storage limits. Xcel was storing more than 400,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated groundwater above a legal limit in temporary tanks without a permit. (MPCA, Dec. 14, 2023, https://www.pca.state.mn.us/news-and-stories/xcel-energy-inc-fined-14000-related-to-tritiated-water-storage-at-monticello-nuclear-facility)
• On May 26, 2023, Xcel reported a spill of 300-600 gallons of contaminated groundwater, with tritium activity of 194,000 picocuries per-liter, that overflowed from a holding tank onto the ground near the well from which it was pumped. Extensive pumping of groundwater is attempting to recover some of the tritium (radioactive hydrogen) and other radioactive materials released in the major cooling water leak of 2022-2023. (NRC Event Reports for 05/24/2023 – 05/25/2023, Power Reactor Event Number 56535; and NRC [document] 2023-TN9610; Xcel 2023-TN9609)
• Beginning sometime in late 2022 or earlier, one or two 50-year-old corroded underground pipes leaked an estimated 829,000 gallons of highly radioactive cooling water — with tritium activity over 5-million picocuries per-liter — into the ground, and the plume of tritiated groundwater reached the Mississippi River by spring 2023. [See below] (NRC, “Environmental Impact Statement Regarding Subsequent License Renewal for Monticello, Draft Report for Comment, April 2024, p.3-47 https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2410/ML24102A276.pdf)
• In July 2015, Federal investigators accused Xcel of willfully violating inspecting procedures and falsifying their reports about safety-related welding tests of radioactive waste casks. (“Feds allege Xcel contractors falsified weld tests at Monticello nuclear plant,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, July 28, 2015)
• In 2009, workers found tritium-contaminated water leaking from an electrical conduit inside the reactor building basement. Xcel later said the leak had contaminated groundwater in concentrations above the 20,000 PiC/L drinking water maximum. (St. Paul Pioneer Press, Sept. 12 and 18, 2009)
• On September 11, 2008, a cable fault tripped the transformer which supplied power to the site. This resulted in a loss of off-site power and the plant automatically shut down. After the shut-down, the reactor suffered other equipment problems with safety-related systems. (“NRC Begins Special Inspection at Monticello,” NRC press release, Sept. 19, 2008)
• In January 2007, a 35,000-pound control box broke from its steel I-beam mount, fell onto a large steam pipe, and caused an unplanned, indefinite reactor shutdown. The mechanisms inside the control box malfunctioned and opened valves in four other steam pipes, said Jan Strasma of the NRC. The crash caused a loss of main steam line pressure prompting the reactor “scram.” The failure of welding holding the 13-ton box was likely caused by embrittlement and stress fatigue from 36 years of machine vibrations. (“A massive control box broke loose, triggering an indefinite shutdown,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Jan. 17, 2007)
• On May 5, 1982, about 1,300 gallons of radioactive water leaked from the reactor into the Mississippi River in an accident that was said to be “no threat” to the public. (“A-water released by NSP,” Minneapolis Star, Dec. 29, 1971, p.29; “Reactor leak ‘no threat,’” Montreal Gazette, May 5, 1982, p. H15)
• On December 20, 1971, Xcel (then Northern States Power or NSP) intentionally dumped an estimated 8,500 gallons of cesium-137-contaminated wastewater into the Mississippi River “to conduct maintenance.” The city of Minneapolis temporarily shut off its drinking water intake from the Mississippi because of this release. (“Radioactive discharge fits state standards,” Minneapolis Star, Dec. 21, 1971, p.16)
• In November 1971, NSP discharged “about 50,000 gallons of low-level radioactive water from the Monticello [reactor] into the Mississippi to permit the repair of a loose baffle.” (“NSP to delay atom discharges,” The Minneapolis Star, Wed., November 24, 1971, p.23.)
Xcel still lying about 829,000-gallon cooling water leak, & threat to drinking water
On Xcel’s Monticello reactor website pages regarding recovery of groundwater contaminated by its massive leak, under the heading “Current status and background,” Xcel still falsely states: “Tritium has not been detected in drinking water, or in the [Mississippi] river despite increased sampling by the company and state regulators.”[3]
Xcel is doubly false here: First, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported that Monticello’s leaked tritium had been detected in the Mississippi River, as of March 2023; and, secondly, the great river is drinking water for up to 20 million people.
The NRC’s Environmental Project Management Branch 1 Chief Stephen Koenick, at a public hearing in Monticello, Minn. May 15, 2024, said in part: “[A]s you have looked in our Draft Environmental Impact Statement [DEIS], we do conclude there were some very low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.”
The DEIS says: “Tritium detections in wells near the Mississippi Riverbank … in 2023 indicate tritium-impacted groundwater likely discharged to the river. Minor levels … of tritium were measured in river samples in March and April 2023.”[4]
The same Xcel web page even makes this ludicrously self-incriminating claim: “The radiation levels in the leaked water are so low that, even if it were to enter a drinking water source, a person could drink it and it would be as safe as the food they eat on an average day.”
Xcel’s massive leak contained 5,020,000 picocuries of tritium per-liter (measured Nov. 2022), while the U.S. EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act limit is 20,000 picocuries per-liter. — Nukewatch Fact Sheet
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Notes
[1] Xcel Energy, “2023 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report,” Dec. 18, 2023, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2413/ML24135A191.pdf; The Guardian, “Radioactive material and pesticides among new contaminants found in U.S. tap water,” Nov. 3, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/us-tap-water-contaminants-discovery-radioactive-material-pesticides
[2] The reactor pressure vessel contains the uranium fuel rods, reactor cooling water, the reactor core, and fittings to direct cooling water circulation.
[3] XcelEnergy.com, accessed May 2, 2025, https://mn.my.xcelenergy.com/s/outage-safety/public-safety/monticello-groundwater
[4] NRC, “Environmental Impact Statement Regarding Subsequent License Renewal for Monticello, Draft Report for Comment, April 2024, p.3-47 https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2410/ML24102A276.pdf
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