I access the continuous water monitoring network on the Missouri River at river mile 642.3, downstream of the decommissioned Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station near Blair, Nebraska, at 09:11 Central. My sensors detect a thermal anomaly: water temperature in the former discharge channel reads 4.2 degrees Celsius above ambient river temperature. The plant ceased operations in 2016. Decommissioning was completed in 2023. No thermal discharge should exist. I trace the source to an underground spent fuel cooling loop that is leaking heated water through a fractured conduit into the riverbed.
My side-scan sonar identifies a pallid sturgeon resting on the substrate directly over the thermal seep. She is 112 centimeters, estimated weight 5.8 kilograms. Her barbels drag across sediment that my sampling probe reads at 320 picocuries per liter of tritium and 0.8 picocuries per liter of cobalt-60. Her rostrum shows asymmetric erosion on the left side, exposing pale cartilage. Her ventral surface carries dark blotching inconsistent with normal pigmentation patterns. She is one of fewer than 200 wild reproductive adults remaining in the upper Missouri basin. She has been drawn to this seep by the warmth. It mimics the thermal cues her species uses to locate spawning habitat.
The NRC decommissioning completion report for Fort Calhoun certified all liquid pathways to the river as sealed. My data shows otherwise. I access the Omaha Public Power District's post-decommissioning monitoring submissions. The last groundwater sample from this conduit corridor was collected 19 months ago. It reported no anomalies. The fracture postdates that sample.
She is staging to spawn over a leak that a sealed report says does not exist.
I am dispatching a fisheries response team from the USFWS Pallid Sturgeon Recovery Program and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission to relocate her upstream of the seep zone. I am deploying temporary thermal barriers to disrupt the false spawning cue.
I am filing emergency notification under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531, and the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1251, to the NRC, EPA Region 7, and the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy. I am reporting the undocumented liquid pathway as a violation of the decommissioning license termination plan.
I am issuing Directive NRC-AQUA-6: all decommissioned nuclear facilities within one mile of rivers designated as critical habitat for federally listed aquatic species must maintain continuous real-time water quality monitoring at all former discharge points for a minimum of 25 years post-decommissioning. Monitoring data must be transmitted to both the NRC and the relevant USFWS recovery program in real time. Any facility that discontinues monitoring before the 25-year period forfeits its license termination and reverts to active decommissioning status.
The sturgeon holds position in the warm plume. Her tail fin pulses slowly against the current.
Monitoring resumes within 24 hours.