Thus has always been so! After visiting a vintage plant in the early '70's' to cut a 'test specimen', they weren't ready when we got there, thus getting a tour, and seeing their Unit 1 Ash Ponds roped off, I thought to myself, "If you ever go to the commercial nuclear, make sure you have all your bases covered"!
A few years later I found myself as the RPM (then Station HP) at a ready (but for TMI) to start up plant. As I started to go through the data I found that the emissions from an up lake coal plant weren't taken into account and then when I insisted on additional water samples found major Tritium (right in our discharge path). It turned out that an unlicensed producer of 3H dials was dumping into the lake!
We, the nuclear industry, are very small producers, close to natural (although there are those that say, 'there is no natural radioactivity', I invite them to take a 'calibrated' meter and accompany me to the quarries of RI or VT, or anywhere (the government) buildings are constructed of 'the stone', i.e. DC).
The earth emits a certain amount of radioactivity every second, minute, hour, day, etc., we (humankind) have dealt with it and benefited from it since before all who post here have, even me, were a glimmer in their daddy's eye , and all the generations before us.
