400,000 gallons of radioactive water leak from Minnesota nuclear plant

Minnesota regulators said Thursday they're monitoring the cleanup of a leak of 400,000 gallons of radioactive water from Xcel Energy's Monticello nuclear power plant, and the company said there's no danger to the public.

Reported from the CBS TV channel that the leak was first detected in November of last year.

"Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment," the Minneapolis-based utility said in a statement.

While Xcel reported the leak of water containing tritium to state and federal authorities in late November, the spill had not been made public before Thursday.

"If at any point there had been concern for the public safety, we would of course, immediately have provided more information," Chris Clark, president of Xcel Energy-Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, told CBS Minnesota on Thursday. "But we also wanted to make sure we fully understood what was going on before we started raising any concerns with the public around us."

According to the TV channel, state officials said they waited to get more information before going public with it.

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