The company that owns the shuttered nuclear plant that once provided the bulk of New York City’s zero-carbon electricity is suing the state over a law passed last year specifically to block the Indian Point power station from carrying out routine releases of treated wastewater into the Hudson River, HuffPost has learned.
Virtually every nuclear power plant all over the world releases tiny volumes of a radioactive isotope known as tritium from its cooling water into surrounding waterways. Unlike the long-lasting and dangerous radioisotopes that form during the atom-splitting process, tritium ― an isotope of hydrogen ― laces into water, making it almost impossible to extract. Luckily, tritium, which has never been linked to cancer in humans, is too weak to penetrate skin and decays quickly in 12-year half lives, so power plants spew small amounts into the environment at rates indistinguishable from what naturally occurs from cosmic rays from space or what ends up leaked into waterways via dump neon signage.