After discussing a November 2022 water leak with hundreds of concerned area residents last week, Xcel Energy will again talk about the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant’s plans with the public today, March 27, 2023 at the Monticello Community Center. Staff from Xcel will be on hand from 5 to 8 p.m. tonight.
“I think one of our lessons here is, even though we followed the proper, formal notifications, we [Xcel] have an opportunity to do a better job being transparent with our neighbors,” Xcel’s Chris Clark, president of the company’s operations in Minnesota and the Dakotas, said in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio. “That’s a lesson we take from this.”
Residents expressed frustration and anger with those in charge of the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant (MNGP), which has been “good neighbor,” one person said, since the 1970s. Water, they said, is at the center of Monticello, with the river running on the northern edge of the community. And the lack of information surrounding a major leak of contaminants – possibly impacting that water – for more than four months has many residents worried, for multiple reasons.
The more than 400,000 gallons of tritium-tained water has been contained, Xcel said, but leaks were still occurring as recently as last week, when a capture container was spilling over, officials said. Therefore, contaminated water captured from the ground was being stored, but overflowed, going back into the grounds of the plant, located along the river northwest of the city limits.
Thus far, more than 30 percent of that contaminated water has been remediated, Clark told media over the weekend, with none of it appearing in the drinking water. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Minnesota Department of Health announced Friday they were closely monitoring drinking water and the river – the source of much of the region’s drinking water – for higher amounts of contaminants due to the spill.
Xcel moved up an outage scheduled from April – usually reserved to ‘refuel the plant’ with new uranium rods, while spent rods are stored in heavy-duty steel and concrete casks on the site – to this week. They’ll still complete the refueling process, but steel workers will remove the pipe that has leaked the contaminated water and make appropriate, permanent repairs. The faulty pipe will also be sent to a lab, Clark said, and examined, so Xcel can find out what caused the leak and prevent any future disasters at MNGP or at Prairie Island – a sister nuclear plant located near Red Wing.
Still, residents are concerned that Xcel isn’t being clear with what’s being done to contain this spill, or prevent more.
“The fact we didn’t notification about this reduces the credibility of the company,” Monticello resident Phyllis Woullet told MPR News. “I believe that’s something that should have been made public [in November].”
Monticello Mayor Lloyd Hilgart said in a statement Friday that Monticello’s water has never been adversely impacted by the plant, and the city will test to make sure that streak continues.
