Callaway Energy Center will install 19 additional groundwater monitoring wells on plant property. This decision comes after a recommendation from GZA GeoEnvironmental, a company that performed a groundwater study on plant property near the cooling tower.
Barry Cox, the Callaway plant's senior director of nuclear operations, said the plant has installed seven so far.
"The company recommended that we install additional groundwater monitoring wells to ensure that we could properly characterize any tritium that is in the area, which is contained completely within plant property," Cox said.
The nuclear facility asked GZA GeoEnvironmental to perform the groundwater study shortly after the plant found radioactive tritium and Cobalt-60, both byproducts of a nuclear reaction, in water in a ground water monitoring well on plant property.
After the plant reported the contaminated water in late July, Ameren Missouri and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) both stressed that public drinking water was safe. Also, as a precaution, Cox told the Fulton Sun in September that the Callaway Energy Center would start routinely testing water at its monitoring wells monthly instead of quarterly.
After discovering the tritium and Cobalt-60 levels above EPA drinking water limits on plant property, Callaway Energy Center stopped the flow of water to the area and investigated the source of the chemical leak. The nuclear facility made temporary modifications and repairs to piping that goes through the manhole near the plant's cooling tower and near the groundwater monitoring well.
The new monitoring wells are within about a half mile of the site where the plant found the contaminated water in July. Ameren Missouri will install 12 more monitoring wells between the plant's cooling tower and the Missouri River, which is about 5.5 miles from the plant's cooling tower.
Within the past 10 days, the plant has taken samples from four of the new groundwater monitoring wells along that path. Cox said the samples came back with chemical levels lower than EPA requirements.
Cox said the plant will continue to perform routine water tests monthly.
"We have no issues with taking it monthly to verify that drinking water is safe," Cox said.
The plant performed a routine water test to its 14 monitoring wells at the end of August. Cox said all of those tests came back normal, with no reports of elevated chemical levels. The plant's September samples also came back clear.