Miami Area Nuclear Plant In Partial Shutdown After Steam LeakSayer Ji South Floridas ailing Turkey Point nuclear power station is in the news again, with Unit 4, one of its two reactors, taken offline Sunday due to a steam leak, according to a Dec. 1st update released by Industrial Info Resources online. Conspicuously, as of the writing of this article, there is no indication that this highly concerning event has received mainstream media coverage. In a recent report, Is Miami on the Brink of a Nuclear Disaster?, we discussed the imminent possibility of a Fukushima-style meltdown at Florida Power Lights Turkey Point facility, only 41 miles south of Miami near Homestead; a reactor so primitively designed that it uses a 168-mile network of open air canals to cool its ancient reactors (built in 1972), reminiscent of a Medieval moat system. Back in 2011, an online article published at Miami New Times titled, Five reasons Turkey Point could be the next nuclear disaster, identified the Turkey Point facility as the countrys next most likely reactor to undergo a full-scale meltdown; one which would make Miami uninhabitable, virtually overnight. It is an article well worth reading to get up to date on the gravity of the situation there. A battery of recent reports reveals that the Turkey Point plant is in an ongoing struggle to keep its reactors cool enough to prevent a mandatory shut down; they are still in operation only because they lobbied for special permission to violate water temperature safety thresholds from the previous 100 degree limit up to their new one of 103 degrees: Even if we assume the Turkey Point facility will pass through this years cooling crises without reaching the 104 degree temperature threshold for immediate shutdown, the problem will not stop there. With increased canal temperatures linked to accumulating salinity and an inadequate water supply within its canal system, climate change, a storm surge from a hurricane or tidal wave associated with an offshore seismic event, a power outage generated by a class X solar flare, or simply sea level rise any of these could theoretically permanently incapacitate the reactors main and diesel back-up cooling systems, leading to a meltdown. What will follow will be irreversible, devastating and beyond remediation. Even if we assume that the sort of eventuality described above will not take place in our lifetimes, or those of our children and grandchildren even then, the Turkey Point facility, like all nuclear facilities around the world, is actively harming countless people within the vicinity due to its routine release of highly carcinogenic radioisotopes. All nuclear reactors in the U.S. are federally permitted to emit radioisotopes into the local environment, exposing the uninformed populations to highly toxic elements, some of which will stay within the human body for a lifetime. A highly concerning case study released over a decade ago, identified the Turkey Point nuclear facility as the cause of a, then, 37% rise in the average levels of radioactive Strontium-90 (Sr-90) in southeast Florida baby teeth from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. As reported in 2003: Additionally, we recently published an article describing how routine releases of radioactive emissions that occur during plant refueling can generate up to 500 times higher releases within 12-hour periods than the industry and their regulators admit. If this occurs under normal operating conditions, we can only imagine what may happen during emergency situations where a reactors cooling system is destabilized, overheated and leaking steam. Clearly the situation at Turkey Point needs closer monitoring and reporting. Please share this article with others, including contacts in media in order to help spread the word. This article first appeared at GreenMedInfo. Please visit to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health. 