Xcel’s proposal to renew license of its aging Monticello, Minnesota nuclear power plant raises eyebrows, questions

Xcel Energy, formerly known as Northern States Power (NSP), is one of South Dakota’s leading investor-owned utilities, providing electricity to Sioux Falls and many small communities in the southeastern part of the state.

Based in Minnesota, Xcel serves an 3.7 million electric customers and 2.1 million natural gas customers across eight states. They are also a visible bad actor, having withheld for 5 months the news of a leak of radioactive water into the Mississippi River, which is the drinking water source for over 20 million Americans, including residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Significantly, Xcel Energy is currently seeking to extend the license for its Monticello, Minn., nuclear power plant, situated between the Twin Cities and St. Cloud, for another 20 years, until it has been in operation for eighty years. No commercial nuclear reactor has been in operation that long, and there are legitimate concerns about brittle pipes and infrastructure, as well as the ever-growing pool of radioactive waste which accumulates on-site, as no suitable waste disposal site, or method, has been developed or approved. 

More than three million people live within 50 miles of the Monticello nuclear power plant (seen above in a public domain image posted on wikimedia commons). The reactor sits in the floodplain of the Mississippi River, so extreme weather events, including those exacerbated by climate change, could cause a catastrophic leak of radioactivity, just as an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Monticello sits on the line between Wright and Sherburne counties, which have cancer death rates that were 9% above the Minnesota state average in 2022 and 20% above that average in 2023. During that same time period, child cancer mortality in Wright and Sherburne was 14% above the state average. 

While the aging nuclear reactor at Monticello cannot be shown to be the sole cause of that disparity, it is nevertheless concerning. 

What we do know is that the Monticello nuclear reactor leaked a large quantity of radioactive water, contaminated by tritium, in November 2022, and Xcel chose not to disclose this accident to the appropriate authorities. That changed four months later, when the reactor suffered a second leak of radioactive water. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which will ultimately decide whether Monticello can continue to operate until it reaches octogenarian status, had initially provided assurances that none of the radioactive water that leaked from the plant had been detected in the Mississippi River. At a public meeting in May of this year, the NRC’s senior environmental project manager, Stephen Koenick, “apologize(d) for this miscommunication,” acknowledging that tritium had indeed been found in the river. 

If you happen to call Xcel Energy in an attempt to discuss these matters, you will remain on hold for a very long time. You may hear an anodyne suggestion that you can “save the environment” by switching to paperless billing. 

Those of us who clearly remember the partial meltdown of the commercial nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in central Pennsylvania in 1979, and the catastrophic meltdowns at Chernobyl in Ukraine and at Fukushima in Japan, may have more substantive concerns about saving the environment.

While South Dakota would not be directly affected by a catastrophic accident at the aging nuclear reactor in Monticello, Minn., unlike our friends and relatives in the Twin Cities, we must remember that recent leaks from that reactor have revealed Xcel Energy to be less than forthright with the authorities.

In the meantime, Xcel Energy customers can be forgiven if they decline the offer to go to paperless billing. 

Much of the information in this article was gleaned from the Summer 2024 issue of the “Nukewatch Quarterly,” which is published by the Progressive Foundation of Luck, Wisc.

Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney who regularly writes for The South Dakota Standard.