Entergy said Monday that workers at the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant near Scriba, N.Y., had identified the source of a lubricant leak that had contaminated the power plant's discharge canal on Sunday, causing a visible sheen to spread across Lake Ontario. The oil “contains no PCBs, is non-radioactive, non-hazardous and has low potential health effects,” the company said, announcing the leak had been stopped.
The company also said that any unintended release to Lake Ontario “is not in accordance with Entergy's standards.”
The incident began Sunday, when a sheen on the lake was first observed. The U.S. Coast Guard quickly established a “safe zone,” as media reports noted the sheen was found near the nuclear plant.
The plant is located about 40 miles north of Syracuse. The safe zone established by the Coast Guard's Station Oswego was laid out as a two-mile radius from the center of the sheen.
Entergy said the source of the oil leak had been found and the leakage had been stopped by Monday morning.
A preliminary investigation determined that a tank that stores lubrication oil overfilled due to an apparent equipment failure, the company said. A pipe that acts as an air vent from the take exits onto a building roof. Excess oil flowed through the vent pipe and pooled on the roof, then migrated to a roof drain and eventually reached Lake Ontario, Entergy said.
"We are taking appropriate actions to mitigate the environmental consequence from this event and working closely with appropriate local, state and federal agencies," said Brian Sullivan, FitzPatrick's site vice president and Entergy's top official at the site. Sullivan said Entergy was putting protective absorbent material and physical barriers in place to prevent additional oil from reaching the lake. “Environmental protection is a hallmark of our operations, and we are taking all appropriate actions,” he said.
The incident occurred while FitzPatrick was shut down. Operators took the reactor off line on Friday following a loss of power supply affecting water pumps at the plant.
The FitzPatrick plant is scheduled for a permanent shut down in 2017, as Entergy has said the plant is no longer profitable. State officials have protested that decision, but no legislative fix to the plant's economic problems has been forthcoming.