What is arguably America’s least-well-placed nuclear power plant is leaking radiation into the sea. 
 
 The University of Miami has found that the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant, located just south of Miami, has caused levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope, in Biscayne Bay to spike to 200-times higher than normal levels. 
 
 “This is one of several things we were very worried about,” South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard, who is also a biological sciences professor at Florida International University, told the Miami New Times. “You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge.” 
 
 Turkey Point came online in the early 1970s; it supplies power to more than one million homes in South Florida. The new study blames the leaks on the reactor’s cooling canals, which were recently found to have caused a massive underground saltwater plume to migrate west, threatening a wellfield that supplies drinking water to the Florida Keys. 
 
 Critics alleged the canals began running too hot and salty after Florida Power and Light (FPL), which operates the plant, overhauled two reactors to produce more power, the Miami Herald reports. A judge already recently found that FPL had failed to prevent hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater from seeping into the bay. 
 
 Mayor Stoddard argues the new study might point to violations of the federal Clean Water Act, and says only two solutions are viable: Building new cooling towers to replace the canals or shutting down the plant, the New Times reports. 
 
 “There’s a certain validation to critics in seeing this result in the study,” he says, “but more importantly, it’s now crossed the threshold of federal law here.” 
 
 Turkey Point is not the sole leaky plant in America. Last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged that the state’s Indian Point Nuclear facility was leaking tritium into groundwater. Meanwhile, The Vermont Department of Health has noted ongoing investigations into leaks at Vermont Yankee since 2010, while New York’s FitzPatrick Plant has been “plagued by water leaks” in 2014, Gizmodo notes. 
 
 FPL is not responding to requests for comment. ||||| A radioactive isotope linked to water from power plant cooling canals has been found in high levels in Biscayne Bay, confirming suspicions that Turkey Point’s aging canals are leaking into the nearby national park. 
 
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 According to a study released Monday by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, water sampling in December and January found tritium levels up to 215 times higher than normal in ocean water. The report doesn’t address risks to the public or marine life but tritium is typically monitored as a “tracer” of nuclear power plant leaks or spills. 
 
 The study comes two weeks after a Tallahassee judge ordered the utility and the state to clean up the nuclear plant’s cooling canals after concluding that they had caused a massive underground saltwater plume to migrate west, threatening a wellfield that supplies drinking water to the Florida Keys. The judge also found the state failed to address the pollution by crafting a faulty management plan. 
 
 This latest test, critics say, raise new questions about what they’ve long suspected: That canals that began running too hot and salty the summer after FPL overhauled two reactors to produce more power could also be polluting the bay. 
 
 How much damage is that cooling canal system causing the bay is a question to be answered. Everglades Law Center attorney Julie Dick 
 
 “How much damage is that cooling canal system causing the bay is a question to be answered,” said Everglades Law Center attorney Julie Dick, who had not had a chance to review the report. “There are a lot more unknowns than knowns and it just shows how much more attention we need to be paying to that cooling canal system.” 
 
 County commissioners, who have kept a close eye on the canals and objected to the state’s management plan, ordered the additional monitoring of bay water last year. The commission is scheduled to discuss the canals, along with another study by University of Miami hydrologist David Chin examining problems linked to adding more water to the canals, at a meeting Tuesday. 
 
 FPL officials declined to comment Monday evening. 
 
 Over the last two years, problems with the canals have worsened exponentially. After the 2013 plant expansion to increase power output by 15 percent, the canals began running dangerously high. FPL officials blamed problems on an algae bloom that worsened after the canals were temporarily shut down during the project. But when a summer drought hit in 2014, temperatures spiked. At least twice, when temperatures soared to 102 degrees, the utility was nearly forced to power down reactors. 
 
 After obtaining permission from nuclear regulators to operate the canals at 104 degrees, the hottest in the nation, FPL officials began plotting a course to fix the canals by pumping in millions of gallons of fresh water from a nearby canal as well as increasing the amount of water drawn from the Floridan aquifer. 
 
 But the growing saltwater plume triggered regulatory scrutiny. After the county complained, the state ordered a new management plan, called an administrative order, to address problems. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection declined to cite FPL for violating state water laws and instead crafted a plan that critics said gave the utility license to continue to pollute. The plan, hastily approved two days before Christmas, was quickly challenged by county officials, as well as environmentalists and rock miners. 
 
 The county settled its challenge in October after FPL agreed to a series of actions to clean up the plume that included constructing a barrier made up of extraction wells. The utility also agreed to try to use salty water from the Floridan aquifer, rather than freshwater from the nearby canal intended for Biscayne Bay, or treated wastewater from a nearby county sewer plant. 
 
 The decree also called for increased monitoring that in the fall gave the first indication the canals had leaked into the bay when monitoring detected elevated levels of ammonia and phosphorus. After those findings, staff and FPL returned for another round of tests and to get a better read on what was happening in the bay. 
 
 Earlier sampling was taken near the bottom of the bay, where researchers expected to find evidence of the groundwater plume that had been documented west of the canals. For the most recent round, water was studied at varying depths. Samplers found that while water at the surface met most county water quality standards, nearly all the standards were exceeded at the bottom. 
 
 The county also looked for traces of tritium, a naturally occurring hydrogen isotope often found in minute amounts in groundwater but also commonly produced by high energy neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Tritium emits a relatively weak form of radiation that is not considered hazardous at low levels. 
 
 130 to 215 timesThe higher rate of tritium in Biscayne Bay 
 
 Over the last five years, the report said, cooling canal water typically has tritium at levels 60 to more than 800 times higher than in the bay. Tritium at the bottom of the bay close to the canals ranged from more than 130 to 215 times higher — high enough to suggest a consistent flow from the sprawling cooling system. 
 
 County staff concluded the findings are “the most compelling evidence” that canal water has spread into the bay. 
 
 While the county’s consent decree requires FPL to address the spread, staff said more study is needed to determine exactly what’s going on and come up with a long-term remedy for cleaning up the canals. ||||| Update 12 p.m.: FPL has responded to the study, saying it needs more time to review the specific data but defending its efforts to protect Biscayne Bay. "Our top priority is the health and safety of the public, and there is no threat to the health and safety of the public," says Bianca Cruz, an FPL spokeswoman. 
 
 As Florida Power & Light finalized plans to expand its nuclear reactors at Turkey Point three years ago, critics were aghast. The nuclear plant already stands on environmentally fragile land, and upping the power production would seriously threaten the ecosystem, they argued. 
 
 Turns out they may have been right. This morning, the county released the results of a study into whether Turkey Point has been leaking dangerous wastewater into Biscayne Bay. County water monitors found more than 200 times the normal levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope linked to nuclear power production, in the bay water, a finding environmentalists say justifies their concerns. 
 
 "This is one of several things we were very worried about," says South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard, who is also a biological sciences professor at Florida International University. "You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge." 
 
 The study is just the latest blow to FPL, which lost a state court ruling last month when a judge found the utility had failed to prevent hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater from seeping into the bay. 
 
 County commissioners and other local politicians are scrambling this morning to get answers about how threatened Biscayne Bay is by the leakage. 
 
 "I was shocked to read this," says Commissioner Xavier Suarez, who in a letter demanded answers from FPL "by the end of the day." County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, meanwhile, says the county has "aggressively enforced its regulations" and would demand that the state force FPL to fix the problem. 
 
 Adds State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez: “For years our state regulators have failed to take seriously the threat to our public safety, to our drinking water and to our environment posed by FP&L’s actions at Turkey Point. Evidence revealed this week of radioactive material in Biscayne Bay is the last straw and I join those calling on the US EPA to step in and do what our state regulators have so far refused to do - protect the public.” 
 
 At the heart of the troubling issue revealed in the new report is a system of canals surrounding the nuclear plant in southeast Miami-Dade. Nuclear cores must be constantly cooled to avoid meltdowns. The canals circulate water through the plant to leach heat off the reactors. 
 
 As FPL prepared to expand the plant's reactors in 2013, critics such as Stoddard warned that relying on the canals was a mistake. For one thing, environmentalists argued, the hot, salty canal water would inevitably leak back into Biscayne Bay and the Everglades. 
 
 "They argued the canals were a closed system, but that's not how water works in South Florida," Stoddard says. 
 
 In the two years since, environmentalists have pointed to a growing litany of concerns, including spiking heat levels in the canals and saltwater plumes exploding from the power plant into nearby groundwater systems. Stoddard says salty water has intruded as far as four miles inland through groundwater. 
 
 But FPL resisted new monitoring, Stoddard says, and deflected blame. "FPL has argued and argued and denied and denied there was any connection to their canals," he says. "They've tried to prevent monitoring. They were successful until the county commission finally demanded this study." 
 
 FPL hasn't returned New Times' phone calls for comment on the study. The county's numbers are cited in another report released today, which was conducted by University of Miami scientist Dr. David Chin, who analyzed how an influx of new water could affect the cooling canals. 
 
 As for those elevated tritium levels, it's not clear whether the isotope itself is dangerous to people or wildlife at that concentration; that's one topic on which the commission will demand answers from FPL, Suarez says. 
 
 But the hot, salty water is certainly a problem for the delicate ecosystems in Biscayne National Park and the Everglades. Stoddard — who argues the new study might point to violations of the federal Clean Water Act — says he believes only two solutions are viable: building new cooling towers to replace the canals, or shutting down the plant. 
 
 "There's a certain validation to critics in seeing this result in the study," he says. "But more important, it's now crossed the threshold of federal law here." 
 
 Update 12 p.m.: While FPL says it needs to review the new county data on tritium levels in Biscayne Bay, the utility strongly defended its work to protect Biscayne Bay. Cruz, the FPL spokeswoman, points out the agency reached an accord with the county last October. In the agreement, FPL promises to clean up its act by pumping wastewater into a deep aquifer, among other steps. 
 
 "We'll continue to comply with regulatory agreement we reached with the county in October," Cruz says. 
 
 Cruz also emphasized that FPL has collected its own data on impacts to Biscayne Bay and has seen no indication of a larger pollution problem. 
 
 "We've collected this data for many years, and this data has reviewed by independent scientists," Cruz says. "We're going to continue to work closely with regulatory agencies." 
 
 Cruz also criticized Stoddard for slamming the agency over the latest report. "He's selecting portions of the data to further his anti-FPL campaign," she says. 
 
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 As we continue our recovery and cleanup efforts, please visit the Emergency website for the latest information on openings and closings in Miami-Dade County. 
 
 Study on the Cooling Canal System at FPL Turkey Point Power Station 
 
 The Cooling Canal System (CCS) serving the FPL Turkey Point facility consists of a network of approximately 5,900 acres of canals that serve as a heat exchange system for the power plant units. Water quality monitoring during 2014 and early 2015 indicated that the salinity levels and the temperature of the waters within the CCS were increasing. The Board of County Commissioners adopted Resolution No. R-517-15 on June 2, 2015 directing that a study be conducted by a third party to examine available data, including the long-term monitoring data from FPL, and analyze what has happened with the cooling canal system. 
 
 The study was completed by Dr. David Chin of the University of Miami, which addresses issues regarding salinity and temperature levels, and the migration of the plume of cooling canal water into the groundwater. 
 
 Interested parties and members of the public will have 30 days to submit written comments or questions about the study, which will be relayed to Dr. David Chin to be addressed in the final study report, which will be completed within 60 days after the closing of the public comment period. Feedback on this topic will close on Friday, March 18, 2016. 
 
 Opportunity for Public Comment 
 
 Page Last Edited: Thu Feb 11, 2016 5:58:09 PM 
 
 environment
– A nuclear power plant in Florida described by critics as "environmentally fragile" is almost certainly leaking radioactive cooling water into the nearby ocean, the Miami New Times reports. "You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge," South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard says. The Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant near Miami has been around for four decades and powers more than 1 million homes, according to Fusion. But problems started being detected with the system of canals used to cool it two years ago after Florida Power & Light increased the plant's power output. Now a study released Monday found tritium levels in Biscayne Bay up to 215 times higher than normal, the Miami Herald reports. It's unclear at the moment if those levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope, are dangerous to people or animals, but they are high enough to "suggest a consistent flow" from the cooling canals into the ocean. A state representative calls the study "the last straw" and is asking the EPA do something to "protect the public." Stoddard says he and others warned Florida Power & Light about the canals years ago but were ignored. "They argued the canals were a closed system, but that's not how water works in South Florida," he tells the New Times. Just two weeks ago, a judge ordered the utility to fix the canals because they were contaminating groundwater and potentially endangering drinking water. Stoddard says there are only two solutions: replacing the canals with cooling towers or shutting the whole thing down.(Radioactive groundwater was detected in New York City.)