The Strontium Fish and Lochbaum and Markey

In a recent post, The Strontium Fish and the Associated Press, I described how AP wrote stories about Vermont Yankee releasing strontium 90 without mentioning the quantities of these releases. As I pointed out in the post, the releases were on the order of 10 to the minus 7 or minus 8 curies a year. The AP described releases, but did not describe the quantity of strontium released. The amounts were in the ten-billionths of a curie range.

Markey and Lochbaum

Representative Markey of Massachusetts, a long-time nuclear foe, saw this plant-released strontium-90 theme and decided to run with it. (Maybe Markey saw it in the AP articles.) Markey wrote a letter to the NRC, accusing the NRC of letting Vermont Yankee get away with lying to the press. Here's a link to Chairman's Jaczko's answer to that accusation. Jaczko said: The quoted licensee statements in your question are not without foundation based on the above information. (Vermont Yankee is the licensee).

Aside: For more information on Markey, Vermont Yankee, and the NRC, I recommend Victoria Barq's posts at NEI Nuclear Notes.

Markey's letter to Jaczko includes a copy of a letter from David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, written to the Entergy spokesman Larry Smith. (You can read the entire Lochbaum letter in the link.)

In his letter, Lochbaum says:

I was forwarded a copy of the statement you (Larry Smith) released on August 2, 2011, which contained the following statement. "There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Vermont Yankee is the source for the strontium-90...."

'Absolutely no evidence'?

Really? Come on.

How about the report that Entergy submitted to the NRC on May 11, 2011...(that) stated that 3.17 E-08 curies were released in gaseous form...during the 1st quarter of 2010...Past reports (show other releases)....

So what you said in the statement about not detecting strontium-90 in the monitoring wells may be true, but it is not the whole truth is it Mr. Smith? In fact, it is so short of the whole truth as to be very misleading bordering on deceitful.

Mr. Lochbaum includes the numbers 31 billionths of a curie, but he uses a shorthand that not everyone will follow. Then Lochbaum calls Larry Smith's statement "misleading bordering on deceitful" for claiming Vermont Yankee releases do not affect the amount of strontium in the local fish. In my opinion, Lochbaum is assuming that nobody reading his letter will have any idea of what 3.17E-08 means. It means 31 billionths of a curie.

However, in the next paragraph of his letter, Lochbaum has to backtrack. After all, he is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Lochbaum just called Smith's statement "misleading," but if he ends there, Lochbaum is in trouble. If he ends there, somebody is going to notice that Lochbaum is saying that a plant release of a few billionths of a curie ...ended up in this fish. Not a scientific conclusion! So Lochbaum continues, trying to get on firmer ground:

The whole truth is that Vermont Yankee routinely releases strontium-90 to the environment. This fact does not mean that Vermont Yankee is the primary or sole source of the strontium found in the fish. But this fact also means that Vermont Yankee cannot be excluded as a potential source, as your very misleading statement sought to establish.

Whew. With a statement that is more propaganda than science "Vermont Yankee cannot be excluded as a potential source," Lochbaum attempts to step back into scientific credibility.

Science and Propaganda

Really, Mr. Lochbaum? We cannot exclude the potential of a meteor hitting Radio City Music Hall tomorrow. In the exact same sense, we cannot exclude the potential that some of that billionth part of a curie of Sr 90 wandered nine miles up the river and got into that fish.

We also must include the fact that Lochbaum chooses to use the least-accessible method of expressing scientific notation. Then he doesn't explain the notation. Lochbaum uses tortured sentence construction, such as "cannot exclude."

In my view, everything in this letter is constructed as propaganda, not science. Lochbaum lards his letter with "oh shucks" verbiage and then accuses Entergy of lying. He makes no attempt to explain anything, or put anything in context. He seems to be just hoping that nobody notices the weakness of his statements.

Really, Mr. Lochbaum? Come ON! For Pete's sake, man! Write science, not propaganda!

My conclusion: Entergy told the truth. I leave it to my readers to judge Mr. Lochbaum's words. Perhaps he has expressed himself in a way that is so short of the whole truth as to be very misleading bordering on deceitful.

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Update: Victoria Barq at NEI Nuclear Notes has an excellent post published yesterday: NRC’s Jaczko Responds to Rep. Markey on the Sr-90 Issue at Vermont Yankee

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Geeky addendum

To see the effluent reports for Vermont Yankee for yourself, you can see radioactive effluent reports from 2005 to 2010 at this page on the NRC website. For earlier years, you have to go to this NRC page and do a search by clicking on Begin Web-based ADAMS search.

Some example results:

2002

Strontium 89 and strontium 90 releases, by quarter.

All as particulate, all from the stack, 2002, all in curies:

• First quarter. Sr 89 --5.5 times 10 exp -5
• Second quarter. Sr 89-- 1.3 times 10 exp -4
• Third quarter:Sr 89--3.5 times 10 exp -5
• Fourth quarter: Sr 89--5.78 times 10 exp -5
• In the second quarter, there was also a release of Sr 90-- 1.75 times 10 exp -7 curies.

Total release of Sr 90 for the year 2002 was 1.75 times 10 exp -7 curies, or approximately 2 millionths of a curie. Total release of all types of radioactive Sr for the year was 2 ten-thousandths of a curie.

2005

The equivalent release numbers for 2005 were: no strontium 90 detected, but Sr 89 release of 6.3 times 10 exp -6 one quarter, and 6.5 time 10 exp -6 another quarter. These were all high-level releases (from the stack) as in 2002. However, in 2005, there were also ground-level releases of Sr 89 and Sr 90 in the first half of the year, at the level of 1 times ten -8 curies. Total releases here are in the neighborhood of 1 ten-thousandth of a curie, mostly Sr 89, not Sr 90. Sr 90 was at 10 exp -8 curie level.

2010

As Lochbaum said, 31 billionths of a curie of Sr 90. But he made it sound pretty scary. Entergy tries to mislead! Deceitful! Sr 90 released! Etc etc etc.

The Strontium Fish and the Associated Press

In August, the Vermont Department of Public Health analyzed some Connecticut River fish for radioactive strontium. To their surprise, they found strontium in the flesh of one fish (they usually find it in the bones). Amounts were background levels, and officials in the Department of Health said that they did not believe the strontium came from Vermont Yankee, there was no pathway from Vermont Yankee to the river for strontium, and the levels of strontium in the fish were very low. The fish would have been safe to eat. (For background on all this, I recommend Victoria Barq's posts at NEI Nuclear Notes and NRC Chairman Jaczko's letter to Representative Markey on the subject.)

Larry Smith, plant spokesman, said there was "absolutely no evidence that Vermont Yankee is the source for the strontium 90."

On the same day as the announcement, AP reporter Dave Gram wrote an article which said that Smith's statement did not mention the plant's announcement in May of 2010 that strontium-90 had been found not in groundwater, but in soil samples taken from the plant grounds.

Indeed, there had been some strontium found in soil near the tritium leak. All such soil was removed and appropriately disposed. No strontium was ever found in the groundwater, which means it did not migrate to the river. As I quoted in my August blog post, Irwin (of the Vermont Department of Health) says he doesn’t believe the Strontium-90 found in the fish was from Vermont Yankee. “We would need to see a pathway between the source and the fish,” he said.

You would think that would be the end of the story. It wasn't.

The Next AP Report

On August 6, Gram wrote another article about the fish. In this article, Gram reported that the Vermont Nuke Plant Had Past Radioactive Releases. Quoting his article: But in at least one of the quarters in each year from 2002 to 2005, Vermont Yankee told the NRC in its annual report on radioactive leaks that it had released some strontium-90, a radioactive substance linked to cancer and leukemia.

A question occurs. Did Gram look at the reports to the NRC, or did he just quote Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear about the reports without checking the reports? Basically, yearly releases of Sr 89 and 90, combined, were about two ten-thousandth of a curie. This information on quantity is in the NRC reports referenced above. I am preparing another blog post with links to NRC reports. (If you are impatient with my blogging, please go to the NRC website and search the Adams files for Vermont Yankee effluent reports.)

All put together, the reported releases are tiny. Strontium 90 releases from the plant are even smaller: I added strontium 89 and 90 to get ten-thousandths of a curie. Strontium 90 releases are on the order of ten to the minus 7 or 8 curies. This is in the level of ten to hundred billionths of a curie. In the biosphere, these releases cannot be distinguished from background strontium.

Why No Numbers?

Those numbers are not in the AP story, however.

So, question arises: why did the reporter write that there were releases and not quantify the releases? The numbers are in the same NRC reports that lead to the conclusion that "Vermont Yankee reported releases" to the NRC. Did the reporter not know the quantities (poor quality reporting)? Did he know, but decide not to admit the quantities were very low (biased reporting)? Obviously, I don't know the answer to these questions.

However, I do not want to just point a finger at a single reporter. This type of reporting looks like Business as Usual for AP about nuclear energy.

AP Reporting on Nuclear

The Pulitzer Prizes are awarded through Columbia University, and the Columbia School of Journalism is widely acknowledged as one of the premier schools of journalism in the country.

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) is a prestigious watchdog for good journalism. In the past three months, CJR has criticized two AP series for disorganized and slanted reporting of nuclear matters. In the first review, September 28, CJR first blasted the Nuclear Energy Institute for a heavy-handed response to the AP articles.. Then CJR got around to looking at the AP articles themselves.

But the AP series, while it tackles a critically important public policy issue, suffers from lapses in organization, narrative exposition, and basic material selection, what to leave in and what to leave out.....As a citizen reader with no particular background in nuclear power generation but residing less than 50 miles (the preferred safety margin, according to the AP report) from one of these old clunkers, I felt throughout like I was clinging to a pendulum, swinging wildly between “Uh oh” and “Phew, false alarm.”

Two months later, AP had an article about the consequences of Fukushima. On November 22, CJR reviewed the AP work on Fukushima.

Journalists often play up the dramatic and alarming aspects of the information they’ve found, and play down or leave out the ameliorative, neutral, or balancing aspects that might help do justice to the truth, but which could “weaken” the story. The AP’s article illustrates what this looks like.

Conclusion: when the CJR gives several negative reviews to a source for biased or confusing reporting on a particular issue, something is happening at that source. I think something is happening at AP. When I read an AP story about nuclear, I expect to see biased reporting.

Update: Canadian Energy Issues blog linked to this post and expanded on some of the themes. The title of their blog post is Why so much anti-nuclear sentiment at a time when the world urgently needs a major expansion of nuclear energy? It is being deliberately manufactured, by leading mainstream media vehicles like the Associated Press Thank you to Steve Aplin of Canadian Energy Issues.

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Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, from Wikipedia.

In full disclosure: our son-in-law is a professor at Columbia, and several members of the family (including our daughter) hold degrees from that institution.

What is the Real Impact? Richard Schmidt on Strontium, Mercury and Potassium in Fish

This opinion piece by Richard Schmidt ran as an editorial in the Brattleboro Reformer on August 26, 2011. Mr. Schmidt was kind enough to allow me to post it on my blog.

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Recently, the Vermont Department of Health (DOH) received a routine test report on one fish that was caught in the Connecticut River nine miles upstream from Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon. The edible portion of this fish contained a very low but surprising level of radioactive strontium-90.

The DOH regularly monitors the environment for many such "radionuclides" to detect possible leakage from Yankee. This analysis of fish is part of that program.

Strontium-90 is a fission product that has spread throughout our environment predominately from pre-1964 nuclear bomb atmospheric testing, and is dissipating slowly with a 29 year half-life. Because strontium-90 is "hard to detect" and was detected in only one sample of fish flesh, a scientist will term such a result to be an "outlier." It lies outside of the norm. This subjects the sample and test process to scrutiny, and the result is held until further review. This is exactly what DOH has done by calling for more fish samples.

DOH said that they cannot associate low levels of strontium-90 with Yankee without supporting evidence. The DOH website also states that the result is "within the range of background strontium-90 in edible portions of fish reported in a 1971 study," prior to Yankee's startup.

Also, according to U.S. Department of Health "strontium-90 is a fairly constant part of the U.S. diet," and New York State has found similar strontium-90 levels in fish.

By taking more samples, DOH is doing a professional job and maintaining a scientific perspective on the matter.

But in a press conference found on YouTube, Governor Peter Shumlin blew this matter out of perspective when he called the strontium-90 level "high," attributed it to Yankee, and said that he would not eat fish from the river, although he did so as a boy.

He said this despite contrary information from his health department, and despite unwarranted damage to tourism. It appeared that his only purpose was to discredit Yankee.

Strontium and Mercury

This brings up two questions. The first is about strontium-90 levels over time. According to the DOH and other sources, the strontium-90 levels in fish that Gov. Shumlin ate as a boy were up to 20 times greater than the levels in this fish because radioactive decay and dispersion have since reduced the radioactivity.

The more significant question is about highly toxic mercury in our fish. Mercury in our environment is primarily due to coal-burning power plants, as coal contains mercury that is released from coal plant stacks.

Vermont and New Hampshire and most states issue advisories to limit the eating of locally caught fish due to mercury. For example, the N.H. Fish and Game Department warns against eating more than four wild-fish meals per month, restricted further to one meal per month for children and pregnant women. Children and the unborn are particularly sensitive to this neurotoxin. There is no direct connection between mercury and Yankee because the plant releases none. But if Yankee is shut down, its power will be largely replaced by low-cost coal power.

Unfortunately for us, most coal plants are to the west of us; New York has 48. The prevailing winds will carry more mercury, cadmium, arsenic, particulates and other pollutants to our environment, to the detriment of our health.

The Environmental Protection Agency wants stronger pollution controls on coal plants. It estimates such controls would reduce deaths in the U.S. by 17,000 per year and reduce related illnesses.

Radioactivity in Fish

Before making public statements about the fish, the governor should have asked "Is this strontium-90 significant?"

Let's compare the fish's strontium-90 radioactivity to the natural radioactivity that we ingest with fish and other foods, which contain the essential nutrient potassium and its inseparable radioactive isotope potassium-40.

A person eating the DOH fish sample would ingest about 2 percent of the radioactivity (6 percent of the radiation risk) from the strontium-90 relative to the natural potassium-40 in the same fish. Interestingly, natural potassium-40 makes our bodies about as radioactive as that fish in the news.

What is the Real Impact?

In truth, neither the strontium nor the potassium are significant hazards at all.

The question "Is this material significant to my health?" was completely lacking in this case. The real health impact of Gov. Shumlin's statements is to encourage the burning of more coal and the continued mercury pollution of our fish, our bodies, and our biosphere.

Richard Schmidt is a chemical and nuclear engineer and energy consultant who is not associated with Vermont Yankee. He lives in Westmoreland, N.H.

Fish shield image is the coat of arms of Narva, Estonia.

Mercury image from Wikipedia.

The Shumlin press conference video is also on one of my earlier blog posts.

That Strontium Fish in the Connecticut: Vermont Yankee, Shumlin, and the Facts

The Fish and the Facts

A smallmouth bass was caught nine miles upstream of Vermont Yankee power plant more than a year ago (June 2010). This fish was not destined to be eaten: it was tested for radiological contamination, according to Vermont's testing program for the river near Vermont Yankee. It turns out the the fish contained radioactive strontium, slightly above the detection limits, in its flesh as well as its bones. Though the fish was caught in 2010, it was tested only last week.

Was that fish contaminated by Vermont Yankee? The Vermont Department of Health didn't think the strontium came from Vermont Yankee. An article by Taylor Dobbs in Vermont Digger said that:

Bill Irwin, the radiological health chief of Vermont Department of Health, said his team doesn’t believe the Strontium-90 came from Vermont Yankee. There is no unequivocal evidence either way, he said. It’s possible, but very unlikely, he said, that cross-contamination of the non-edible and edible fish samples occurred. Irwin says he doesn’t believe the Strontium-90 found in the fish was from Vermont Yankee. “We would need to see a pathway between the source and the fish,” he said.

However, Shumlin thought the strontium came from Vermont Yankee, and he did something about it. He wrote a press release.

On August 3, Shumlin sent a strongly worded press release, directed at Entergy about the fish. Here's a quote: “Today’s troubling news from the Vermont Department of Health is another example of Entergy Louisiana putting their shareholders’ profits above the welfare of Vermonters."

The next day, Shumlin had a press conference, and he had to back off on his statement that this was Entergy's fault. According to today's Digger article by Taylor Dobbs, at the press conference, a day after his strong press release, Shumlin said: "We don't know exactly where [the strontium] came from."

The Fish and More Facts

The Vermont Department of Health website today has a complete listing of the facts about that fish. Basically, the Department of Health catches fish for testing. The bigger the fish the better, because bigger fish are more likely to contain radionucleides. The Department catches fish at two locations: right by Vermont Yankee's outflow, and nine miles upstream. This fish was caught nine miles upstream.

If there is contamination from the plant, it is expected that the fish caught near the outflow would be more heavily affected. However, fish do swim around, and the wildlife biologists said that a smallmouth bass could have swum ten miles upstream. (The problem with nature is that it just doesn't behave like a well-controlled laboratory)

Still, for a first approximation, the fact that the upstream fish had more strontium than any fish near the plant implies the fish was probably not contaminated by outflows from Vermont Yankee. As a friend of mine said: "Amusing when the control group is more contaminated than the sample group."Also, as Irwin said above, there is no clear pathway between the plant and the fish.

Reading the Department of Health website, you can note that:

• The amount of strontium in the bones of the fish in the Connecticut River is the same as in the bones of other fish in other rivers: background levels.
• The level of strontium in these fish is very low, and the Department of Health has to find special labs that can do "hard-to-detect" analysis. They have switched labs recently, due to poor results from one of their contract labs.

In other words, when the head of the Department of Health, Harry Chen, reassured people that the fish had low levels of strontium (hard-to-detect levels, actually) and fishing in the Connecticut River was okay, Chen was showing good scientific judgment.

The Fish and The Wiggles

Science doesn't mean much to Shumlin if it contradicts his plans. Shumlin does his best to use this fish against Entergy, even though he can't actually use it because he can't say Entergy caused the fish to contain strontium. This leads to amusing wiggles at his press conference.

The video below is Shumlin's press conference yesterday, when he reluctantly admits that we don't know where the strontium comes from. However, he continued to attack Entergy for contamination. It's a frustrating video to watch because the sound is very poor. However, you can enjoy:

• Around the three minute mark where Shumlin is asked about the fish and whether he is concerned with health effects (translation, "is he regulating radiological health effects, which is the federal prerogative?") and Shumlin steps quickly into "environmental effects"
• The nine minute mark, when Harry Chen, the head of the Department of Health, says these levels are so low we will never know where they come from and the fish are safe to eat. Shumlin answers it may not be science, but common sense is the reason that that he himself wouldn't fish in the river.
• Around the 13 minute mark, where a reporter tries to understand if Shumlin is attacking Entergy about the strontium in the fish, and or the tritium leak in the past or what? Shumlin says he has been very clear about this. His statement obviously clears everything up.

I find this press conference amusing, but not everyone does. One lawmaker objected that this sort of message from the governor would hurt the tourist industry in Vermont. The governor's office quickly issued a statement explaining that not eating the fish was a "personal choice."

I'm sure potential tourists will find that very reassuring.

Little Update: Thank you to Vermont Tiger for writing that Meredith Angwin's take on this latest dustup between the state and Yankee is, naturally, sharp and bankable.

Alas, I still haven't found the bank....

Update: Ray Shadis, of New England Coalition, a hardworking foe of the plant, quoted on WAMC, says there is no indication, other than Vermont Yankee manufactures the isotope, that the Strontium-90 came from the nuclear plant.

Group of smallmouth bass. Featured illustration from Wikipedia.

Getting Ready for the Trial: Entergy Withdraws Email Request

This video was posted by Vermont Digger on June 3, 2010, at a Shumlin press conference. The two speakers are Peter Shumlin and Shap Smith, respectively the President Pro Tem of the Vermont Senate, and the Speaker of the House. These are key Vermont legislators. They are expressing their concerns about Entergy. All their concerns are with existing and possible leaks of tritium and strontium and cesium and...all kinds of radioactivity.

In face, there was only a tritium leak: Shumlin's statements about radioactive strontium in children's teeth is sheer grandstanding. (See note below* for more on strontium.)

A reporter asks about the NRC (about 1:30 seconds into the video), and Shumlin answers that in his opinion, the NRC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the nuclear industry. In other words, it is up to Vermont legislators like Shumlin and Shap to protect the people of Vermont from leaking radiation.

The Minds of Vermont Legislators

I have posted this ancient video because one of the key points of the Entergy lawsuit against Vermont is that the Vermont legislature based its assessment of the plant on safety, particularly radiation safety. Judgments of radiation safety are reserved to the NRC, not the states, by federal law.

Determining legislative intent is an important aspect of the litigation. That is: what were legislators thinking when they voted to keep the plant from operating?

To understand this intent, Entergy requested many legislative emails. Today, the Brattleboro Reformer reported that Judge Murtha denied Entergy's request for emails. The Reformer article reports that Entergy wanted ten years worth of emails. However, Entergy's request took place in a closed session with the Judge. I am reserving judgment on how many emails Entergy requested. There may be more information later on this subject. At any rate, Entergy will not obtain the emails it requested.

Did Entergy Need the Emails?

I am not a lawyer, and it is possible that Entergy would have found a fabulous smoking gun in one of those emails ("That plant is not SAFE, we must CLOSE it!") On the other hand, to my not-a-lawyer brain, the video above shows the same thing. The video is evidence that the Senate and House were deciding about Vermont Yankee on the basis of radiation safety. I mean, Shumlin and Shap say it, over and over. The claim they have to do something about the radiation leaks (and possible leaks and leaks of material that never actually leaked) from this plant. They have to do it, not the NRC.

Shumlin wasn't hiding his motivations. Neither was Shap Smith. If Judge Murtha just watches this five-minute video of our two leading Vermont legislators, it's probably as good as all the emails in the world. And shorter, too.

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* More about Strontium

Right at the source of the leak, some strontium was found in soil. About two pick-up trucks of soil contaminated with strontium was removed from that spot and disposed in a low-level waste repository. Right around the leak, the water may have carried a small amount of particulate that never got very far: the soil acted as a filter, catching the particulate. Or the water may have carried a small amount of dissolved strontium that was quickly caught by the clay minerals of the soil, the soil again acting as a filter. At any rate, there was no further strontium detected further away in the soil, and none was ever detected in any well-water on site.

Shumlin and Smith speak as if the groundwater was contaminated with strontium and unsafe for children. This just was not so. There was never any strontium found in well-water. These claims are Shumlin and Smith drawing ignorant conclusions about radiation safety. The short description of their actions is "grandstanding."

Editorial Against VY Acknowledges that Groups Against VY Are Not Telling the Truth

The Brattleboro Reformer is not known as a friend to Vermont Yankee. Most people at the plant refuse to read the paper, calling it the MisInformer. The Reformer editorial policy can be summarized in three words: Shut It Down!

So imagine my surprise when I read the July 14 editorial entitled: Just the facts, please.

Now, I don't want to oversell this editorial. It does not support VY's continued operation, and ends by urging people to give money to the most effective anti-VY groups.

But, in the meantime, this editorial lists and refutes the usual pack of lies told against VY. Here are the first few paragraphs:

The opponents of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant’s continued operation are passionate, emotional and rightly concerned about the health of their children, themselves and the environment.

But many of the claims used to support their stance are not hard cold facts but rather exaggerations, misinformation and downright wrong, which do not serve their cause well.

For example, there were cries of distress when the Department of Health revealed that bones from fish caught near the power plant tested positive for strontium-90, proof the plant has been leaking radioactive materials into the environment.

A spokesman for the Vermont Department of Health told the public that the strontium levels were normal and within the background levels that are a result of the meltdown at Chernobyl and weapons testing that went on until 1965. Even the river steward of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, a fierce opponent to the plant’s continued operation, said the levels were normal.

The editorial goes on to refute several of the other calumnies against the plant and against nuclear power (the Tooth Fairy Project, the German children-get-leukemia study). It urges anti-plant activists to

• stop throwing compost at people in meetings
• stop pretending to copulate during public meetings
• stop other antics which please the hard-core zealots, but repulse ordinary citizens

The editorial ends with this ringing suggestion:

So if you are opposed to the plant operating past 2012, put your money where your big mouth is, become better informed and stop the childish outbursts and juvenile foot stomping.

Wow. What happened in Brattleboro?

I think I know.

The Fish Turned

As the editorial noted, the Vermont Department of Health, and a well-informed anti-nuclear group (among others) noted that the fish in the Connecticut River contain only background levels of radioactive strontium. However, as I have noted in earlier posts, that has not prevented groups from marching in the Brattleboro Fourth of July parade as radioactive fish, showing up at meetings as radioactive fish, etc. It did not prevent Shumlin from stating that radioactive strontium was attacking the teeth of children in Vermont.

In a post called Destructive Lies, published in June, I stated that the lies of the anti-nukes were destroying the Vermont Brand. I think that when the (not) radioactive fish walked down the street in Brattleboro in the Fourth of July parade, other people also noticed this. (You can't help but notice a human-sized, three-eyed fish.) Other people saw this and became aware of what the anti-Vermont Yankee lies are doing to Vermont.

People in Brattleboro will no longer accept lies about contamination and dangers caused by VY.

Good News on Indian Point

I want to give a tip of the hat to Rod Adams, for his excellent post on pro-Indian Point citizens coming out to testify in New York. We can all learn from this! We have to be out there and visible.

Especially now that the fish has turned.

New Sites and Old Sights: Blog Carnival, IAMVY, and Communications

Blog Carnival

It's time for the 9th Blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy. This one is hosted by Rod Adams of Atomic Insights, and includes the outcome of a bet (how much uranium was used in 2009) and a description of what wind energy did for Canada in the recent heatwave. (Wind energy did nothing for Canada during the recent heatwave. Just what the dog did in the night.)

Step right up! See the outcome of bets on energy usage! Place your own bets in the comment section!

Or just have a good time at the Carnival.

IAMVY

The IAMVY (I am VY) site is up again, after a long hiatus. A long miserable hiatus. I'm glad to see it back.

A little history.

I AM VY is a site about employees and safety culture at Vermont Yankee. The site was actually launched about six or seven months ago, and began operating just in time for the "They Lied About Piping" issue to come front and center. (I have blogged about this issue extensively.)

Two of the people featured on the original I AM VY site were Dave McElwee, a senior employee at the plant, and his daughter, who also works at the plant. The opponents were ecstatic when McElwee was one of the employees placed on administrative leave during the investigation. You can imagine the ruckus.

Shortly after placing McElwee on leave (late January) Entergy took him off the IAMVY site and rewrote his daughter's description of working at the plant. Greenpeace had a field day with this action. On February 10, Entergy took the IAMVY site down. Great joy was expressed in the camps of the opponents.

Happily, the site was relaunched a few days ago, featuring plant employees and plant culture again. It's definitely worth a look.

Is the Controversy Over?

The IAMVY site is still controversial. As I have noted in several posts, the Gundersens and their followers are very excited about finding background levels of strontium 90 in Connecticut River fish. I'm talking about background levels, you understand. You could get the same quantities of strontium 90 in your fish if you buy your seafood at the grocery store. However, such mere facts have never stopped an attack when ignorant people have decided to attack.

On IAMVY, plant employee Ross Rosinski says he enjoys fishing in the river and eating the fish. Yesterday, on Twitter, Nuclear Fissionary and a local reporter, Shay Totten, were going at it hammer and tongs. The excitement started with Totten's remarks about the employee being willing to eat the fish. I am not sure which person at Fissionary was posting, but I do know that some of the people on the site are recreational fishermen as well as pro-nuclear activists.

I am sure that there will be more fireworks on this subject in weeks to come.

What We Have Here Is A Failure to Communicate

Sometimes, sometimes, we hope there is a better way. That someday, plant opponents won't make mountains out of molehills. (Background levels of strontium in the fish! Close the plant down!) That nuclear proponents will do a better job of explaining themselves, and especially, of listening.

Two excellent recent posts address these problems.

Greg Molyneux, of Nuclear Fissionary, asks What Makes Successful Communication? He advises that you start by understanding the audience. Everyone in communication should read this post.

In Nuclear Townhall, Gwyneth Cravens describes her journey from Seabrook protestor to nuclear supporter. The post includes her excellent answers to the most common anti-nuclear questions. After all, they were her OWN questions, when she started out. She had to answer these questions for herself, first.

Money

Just a little note that Vermont Yankee has been running at 100% during the heat wave, and selling power to Vermont at $45 MWh, by contract. The ISO NE grid was averaging about $130 MWh, as older and more expensive plants come on line. With the cool weather and the end of the workweek, the grid is down to between $43 and $48 MWh today.

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Once again, my picture of the carousel in the main square of Avignon. I like this picture.

It's the Nukes What Gets the Blame: A Fish Story Continued

On Friday, the Vermont Department of Public Health announced they had caught another fish in the Connecticut River, and it contained background levels of strontium 90 in its bones. The Department of Public Health website says that the fish contained 80 to 100 picocuries per kg in "inedible portions" of the fish. Generally, fish bones are tested for strontium, since strontium behaves similarly to calcium in the body.

The Vermont Health Department website made a gallant attempt to put these findings in perspective, noting that: A New York study found background levels of Sr-90 in fish to be in the range of 120 to 360 pCi/kg. Heck, a month ago, I made my own gallant attempt to put strontium levels in perspective in my post, a Radioactive Fish Story.

These Connecticut River fish have the same amount of strontium in them as any other fish.

What They Say

"Perspective" is a weak buttress against the hysteria shown by those who oppose Vermont Yankee. For example, Maggie Gundersen contributes to the Green Mountain Daily blog. Gundersen's post about the fish is thick with innuendo and conspiracy theories. Here are a few quotes:

When the Vermont Department of Health (DOH) does the heavy lifting, Entergy's Vermont Yankee plant doesn't have to lift a finger.

(The) DOH was able to post it on their website late on the afternoon prior to one of the region's biggest holidays... NEWS DUMP.

No wonder Vermont Yankee did not want to let all the press know about more contaminated fish and needed some DOH help with the NEWS DUMP. Hope folks along the Connecticut River aren't planning any fish fries for the holiday weekend. Best to throw them back.

What They Say, but Translated into English

The confusing quotes above require some translation. To understand them, you have to believe the following:

• The fish in the Connecticut River are dangerously contaminated with radioactive strontium.
• This strontium comes from Vermont Yankee.
• The fish in the Connecticut River should not be eaten.
• The Department of Health and Entergy are in deep collusion. Together, they conspire against the people of Vermont.
• Press releases from the Department of Health reveal terrible things about strontium contamination from Vermont Yankee.
• However, the Department of Health prepares press releases just before holiday weekends, in the hopes that nobody will pay attention to these releases.
• The press releases are issued at low-readership times as a favor to Vermont Yankee.
• The Department of Health's attempts to compare this fish with other fish from other rivers is part of their effort to mislead.

This might seem like a grab-bag of assertions, but there is a set of underlying themes.

Underlying Tactics

The tactics above are simple and well-used. They follow two themes:

• Heavy-duty conspiracy theory: They are all lying to you! Believe only ME!
• Scares and warnings of imminent danger: Hope folks aren't planning any fish fries!

When will the plant opponents stop these conspiracy theory plus scare story tactics? When will they stop telling lies about background versus dangerous levels of radiation? When will they stop maligning Vermont public officials and Connecticut River fish?

Probably never.

Fear translates directly into donations, and donations are what anti-nuclear groups require.

In the music-hall song, She Was Poor But She Was Honest, the chorus reminds us that:

"It's the same the whole world over

It's the poor what gets the blame

It's the rich what gets the pleasure

Isn't it a blooming shame?"

I would change the words a little.

"It's the same the whole world over

It's the nukes what gets the blame

It's the scares what gets the money

Isn't it a blooming shame?"

Late News

In an article in the Times Argus today, Arnie Gundersen also expresses his belief that any strontium present in these fish must come from Vermont Yankee. He ignores statements from:

• the river steward of the Connecticut River Watershed Council
• the Vermont Department of Health

Both say that the strontium measurements in the fish are background level.

Hmm. I'm wondering if I should have labeled Gundersen's comment "news"? If it is predictable, is it "news"?

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The graphic, from Wikimedia Commons, shows the Coat of arms of Narva town, Estonia. It appealed to me because of the conjunction of fishes and weapons of war.

A Radioactive Fish Story

The Strontium Fish from the Connecticut River

There was a fish caught in the Connecticut river. It had radioactive strontium in its bones. How much radioactive strontium? The measurement was 59 picocuries per kilogram of fish. Or maybe it was 59 picocuries of strontium per kilogram of fish bones. I couldn't completely understand this sentence:

Irwin said the 59 picocuries per kilogram found in the perch's bones was actually at the low end of measurements taken from fish caught even much farther from nuclear plants.

Bill Irwin made the above statement about the Connecticut River fish. He is the radiological health chief in the Department of Public Health in Vermont.

Meanwhile, the radiological health chief of New Hampshire, Michael Dumond, had this to say about the strontium in the fish:

"It's clearly consistent with the background levels from Chernobyl and weapons testing that went on until 1965."

Similarly, a consultant in radioactive testing, John Till, president of South Carolina-based Risk Assessment Corp. said that the amounts of strontium were too tiny to be a concern. Remembering that a pico is a trillionth of a curie, "tiny" is indeed the correct word.

If there had been 1000 picocuries per kilogram, we would have a billionth of a curie per kilogram in the fish's bones. Thank heavens, there were only 59 picocuries. 59 trillionths! Whew!

As I investigated, by the way, I realized that the confusing sentence about picocuries in fish bones was correct. The reporter referred to picocuries per kilogram of bone. Similar measurements of radioactive strontium in fish from the Hudson River ranged from 200 to 270 picocuries per kg of bone, while measurements of strontium in the flesh ranged of those fish ranged from undetectable to 8 picocuries per kg.

Helen Caldicott

In a rational world, the story might end there. There are incredibly tiny amounts of radioactive strontium in the fish. Three professionals, one from Vermont, one from New Hampshire, and one from a consulting company, said the equivalent of: "Don't worry about eating the fish. The fish are fine." The amounts of strontium are consistent with background radiation from old atomic testing.

However, that would have been a rather one-sided story, so the enterprising AP reporter called Helen Caldicott at her home in Australia.

We all know what Caldicott said: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(rephrased by me of course, not a quote)

However, I must give one of Caldicott's statements some respect. Irwin said they hadn't been testing the fish in the river until recently, and Caldicott said that since this was the first fish they tested, they didn't have a baseline for comparison of strontium in fish. Caldicott's implication was that the plant is leaking strontium like crazy. Nevertheless, she was right about the baseline. You don't have a baseline when you catch the first fish, and that's a fact.

Getting a baseline for radioactive strontium in fish due to fallout. How hard can it be? I have access to Google. I decided to try.

Update: Arnie Gundersen feels the fish "raises a lot of concerns." A great blogpost, Blinky, on this fish story in Capacity Factor.

Strontium in Fish

How hard can it be? Very hard.

The first thing I noticed is that most of the strontium-in-fish stories were repeats of the same AP story that I referenced above. Google "advanced search" came to the rescue. I looked for strontium in fish without the word "Vermont" in it, and I got some moderately useful results.

The first was the one listed above: fish in the Hudson, near and far from Indian Point. 200 t0 270 picocuries per kilogram in the bone, less than 10 picocuries in the flesh.

Then there was an entire set of literature about tracing fish lives through the strontium in their ear otoliths (who knew?) Turns out that natural strontium isotopes vary in different areas, and you can trace a fish's migration by the measuring the isotopes in the layers of strontium in its ears.

I also learned that strontium is necessary for reef building organisms, and you can buy strontium to add to your advanced aquarium. Similarly, I learned that fish segregate strontium to their bones and their scales, parts of the fish that we rarely eat.

Unfortunately, there really does not seem to be baseline measurements of radioactive strontium in fish. I found fish measured in the Hudson River near Indian Point. I found warnings about removing the bones from fish from the Savannah River before eating them. I even found an article about fish in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. In other words, nobody measures the radioactive strontium in fish unless there's some reason to believe there might be some radioactive strontium in the fish.

Or as my friend Howard said: "Why don't they measure some fish from Lake Champlain for a baseline?" I agree.

Radioactive Strontium and Food

Finally, after all of this, I found radioactive strontium as a toxic substance in the Center for Disease Control archives. A quote from section 1.3 of their toxic assessment:

90Sr is found nearly everywhere in small amounts from past nuclear accidents and fallout from nuclear explosions. You can be exposed to low levels of 90Sr by eating food, drinking water, or accidentally eating soil or dust that contains 90Sr. Food and drinking water are the largest sources of exposure to 90Sr. Because of the nature of 90Sr, some of it gets into fish, vegetables, and livestock. Grain, leafy vegetables, and dairy products contribute the greatest percentage of dietary 90Sr to humans. The concentration of 90Sr in fresh vegetables grown in the United States is less than 9 pCi (or 0.3 Bq) in 1 kg of dried vegetables (in a hot oven). The intake of radioactive strontium for most people will be small.

In other words, the picoCuries of strontium in fresh vegetables (less than 9 picocuries per kilogram) is about the same as in Hudson River fish (less than 10 picocuries/kg in the flesh). Fish are not a source of radioactive strontium in the diet.

The Other Fish Story

This "radioactive" fish was truly Much Ado about Nothing. I wasted my time with fish ear-bones and picocuries. There is no baseline for strontium in fish, but considering the tiny amount of radioactivity present, there probably doesn't need to be a baseline. There's less radioactive strontium in fish flesh than in fresh vegetables. In either case, we are talking about less than ten trillionths of a curie. (1o picocuries).

Meanwhile, the entire Gulf of Mexico is being contaminated by carcinogenic, toxic oil. Fisheries are being wiped out and may not recover for decades. I don't like to knock other technologies (nuclear good! everybody else bad!) There's no free lunch, and everything has its downside. And yet, when I think of the truly horrible devastation in the Gulf, I wonder how Vermonters can waste time and energy on the picocuries in this fish.

I imagine myself back in geothermal energy, at the geopressured zones near Houston. I remember eating the most magnificent seafood I have every had in my life. Houston has restaurants that serve seafood Cajun style, French style, Japanese style. Every style. You name it. That is a city where they know how to cook fish.

Is that world gone forever? And all the people who made a living at catching fish and cooking it and serving it in little tiny restaurants or fancy white-tablecloth restaurants. Is that world gone? Has our thirst for oil destroyed it?

I believe that more nuclear power and less oil and gas drilling would be a very good thing for the world.

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Postcard image from the Safe and Green Campaign, aka the Anti-Vermont Yankee walkers. I think the image is supposed to show that Vermont Yankee is ripe for a disaster. To me, it shows that so many other disasters have happened, and all Vermont Yankee has done is release a small amount of radioactivity to the ground within the plant boundaries.