NEW YORK: New York’s Indian Point Energy Centre, a three-unit reactor power plant, reported on Saturday afternoon that radioactive tritium had been detected in groundwater testing wells near the facility.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement that “this latest failure at Indian Point is unacceptable and I have directed the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Acting Commissioner, Basil Seggos, and Department of Health’s Commissioner Howard Zucker to fully investigate this incident and employ all available measures, including working with Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to determine the extent of the release, its likely duration, cause and potential impacts to the environment and public health’.

He said the leak does not pose a threat to the people living in the state.

US Department of Energy said: “While elevated tritium in the ground onsite is not in accordance with our standards, there is no health or safety consequence to the public, and releases are more than a thousand times below federal permissible limits. The tritium did not affect any source of drinking water onsite or offsite.”

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2016