Well, this isn't good:
An oil cooling system on the turbine of a southwest Michigan nuclear power plant leaked oil into Lake Michigan for about two months, according to plant officials.
Officials with the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant near Bridgman reported the leak to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as state and local authorities, on Dec. 20, according to an event notification posted on the NRC's website. Plant officials believe 2,000 gallons of oil leaked into the lake, and a retroactive examination of system oil levels leads plant personnel to believe the leak may have been ongoing since about Oct. 25, said Bill Schalk, communications manager for the Cook Nuclear Plant.
"One of the first things we did when we looked at the potential for a leak is examine the lake," he said. "Oil floats on top of the water and you see a sheen, but we could find no evidence of oil in our reservoirs, in the lake or on the beach. It has been dispersed."
The leak involved an oil cooling system on the two-turbine plant's Unit 2 main turbine. The series of tubes runs in a heat exchanger where hot oil is cooled by water from Lake Michigan. It's believed the oil leaked into a tube or tubes and was mixed into the cooling water, Schalk said. The turbine system is separate from the plant's radioactive facilities, so the leaked oil is not contaminated with radiation, he said.
Plant officials extrapolate that the oil leaked at about 0.04 gallons per minute, which did not allow detection in the total water discharge flow of 1.5 million gallons of water per minute, Schalk said.
But remember folks, nuclear power is "clean" energy.
Yeah, right.
H/T FreakOutNation
