Tritium is Three

The on-going issues about tritium at Vermont Yankee have been moving fast and furiously. I've had a hard time drawing a line and saying "Okay, I'll blog about it now." For example, one day there's a newspaper article that there
is tritiated water in a second test well and then, the next day, look again, there's no tritium in the water in the second test well. Let's face it, this stuff gets confusing.

I finally decided there are three issues about the tritium, and I would have to blog about them separately.

Fact: There's tritiated water at one test well at Vermont Yankee.

Issue 1: Is this tritiated water a health hazard?

Issue 2: Does the tritium in the test well show that Vermont Yankee is being managed in an incompetent manner or is too old to be run safely?

Issue 3: Did Vermont Yankee managers and/or engineers lie about having underground tanks that contain tritiated water?

As you can guess, the third question has garnered the most press.

Only the first issue is technical. I will address it in the next post. The next two issues (are the managers incompetent? did the managers lie?) join few facts with much opinion. I'm still deciding whether to post on these issues.

So, here goes. Three questions. Probably three posts over the next several days. The first one today, on health effects.