Taking the High Road with Yankee Water: Guy Page Guest Post

Tritium

It rains in Vermont. It rains a lot. And rain contributes to groundwater. Everywhere else in Vermont, groundwater moves subsurface into nearby rivers or lakes, usually with little or no treatment.

But Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon is not "everywhere else." After examining groundwater that had intruded into the lower basements of the facility, Vermont Yankee determined that it contained traces of tritium. Even though the extremely low radiation level of this tritiated groundwater is approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to be discharged into public waters, Vermont Yankee made the decision to ship this water to Tennessee for processing.

If Vermont Yankee wanted to discharge groundwater into the Connecticut River, it almost certainly could have done so with the approval of the NRC. At the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire, stormwater and groundwater with harmless levels of tritium is sent right into the ocean. Many other nuclear plants do direct discharge, with the approval and oversight of the NRC. Instead, Vermont Yankee has taken the high road by transporting this groundwater to a water treatment plant in Tennessee. Shipping water over 1000 miles costs more time and money than routing it directly to approved discharge paths, and could cost as much as $1 million per year depending on success in eliminating the sources of intrusion water into the plant's Turbine Building.

This is just one more example of Vermont Yankee setting an example for high standards in decommissioning safety practices. The downside is that every dollar spent on shipping is a dollar no longer invested in the facility's decommissioning trust fund. Less money in the fund means more time must elapse before the site can be reused for in the future. The final work of decommissioning — including tearing down the reactor building and removing all radioactive material — cannot begin until the fund accumulates sufficient value, an estimated $1.2 billion. At present, the fund contains about half that amount.

Vermont Yankee is doing its part to be frugal by draining unnecessary systems, minimizing power consumption and reducing workforce. The plant finished its most recent fiscal year about $15 million under budget. VY took out a line of credit of more than $145 million to pay for spent fuel management. But the State of Vermont must also do its part. Officials for the state have suggested or announced a series of VY-related initiatives including "billing back" oversight and monitoring costs that are of dubious necessity to a non-operational nuclear plant, but are guaranteed to draw alarming amounts of money out of the decommissioning fund. Now would be a good time for the state to better prioritize its spending.

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Guest post by Guy Page, Communications Director, Vermont Energy Partnership

Guy Page is a frequent guest blogger at this blog.  His most recent post was More Bad News for Vernon in April of this year.

Tritium: An example of Unreasoning ALARA

Unreasoning ALARA: The need for examples

In Protecting Against Nothing: The Failings of ALARA, I described the ALARA strategy (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) for radiation safety.  This strategy is based upon the idea that there is no safe level of radiation, so radiation protection must constantly attempt to "do better."   The words "reasonably achievable" can be interpreted in unreasonable and expensive ways.

In contrast, protection from contaminants in drinking water is regulated on the basis of drinking water standards: concentrations of harmful substances are kept lower than agreed-upon values.  This is a better and more cost-effective strategy than the ever-more-expensive strategy of ALARA.

I would like to give some examples here. The need for examples was raised (in rather insulting phrasing) in a comment on an earlier post by Howard Shaffer. This is my understanding of what the questioner actually meant to ask:

"You have explained how ' reasonably' achievable could be misused in a regulatory context.  But can you give examples of where ALARA has actually been misused, examples of where excessive radiation protection measures have led to unnecessary costs? I want examples of the supposed excess costs of ALARA in terms of day-to-day operations. This isn't a question about accident prevention costs."

In a few posts, I will describe examples of the unreasonable costs of ALARA at Vermont Yankee.  These are cases in which Vermont Yankee had to go to great expense about radiation protection or paying for elaborate radiation measurements---for trivial amounts of radiation. The levels of radiation had no possible public health consequences.

Today's example: tritium.

Tritium and the Zero-Discharge Plant

Vermont Yankee is a zero-discharge plant.  No tritium must leave the plant boundaries. Why is this?  There is nothing wrong with small discharges of tritium. Canadian plants legally release thousands of curies of tritium per year.

So, Vermont Yankee had a leak in a pipe. The pipe was in a concrete conduit, but eventually, some tritium found its way out of the conduit and into the soil and water.

The small leak was a huge problem for the plant. It cost the plant a great deal of trouble and expense to find, fix and "remediate" this leak, even though the leak released less than a curie of tritium. Meanwhile, the plant gathered a great deal of negative publicity for having had the leak.

In contrast, exit signs containing about ten curies of tritium can be shipped through the mail (or at least they could be at the time that Howard Shaffer bought his tritium sign about three years ago).

In further contrast, Canadian plants are allowed to discharge thousands of curies of tritium per year.  There are no health effects in Canada from these discharges.

Though I posted extensively on tritium, Rod Adams has the best post on the subject. 

http://atomicinsights.com/how-much-tritium-leaked-from-vermont-yankee-before-the-leak-was-stopped/

Adams compares the Vermont Yankee leak with the tritium levels just north of the border.  Vermont Yankee's leak was less than one curie of tritium, while Canadian plants routinely discharge over 5000 curies of tritium a year.

Remediation 

Vermont Yankee found and fixed the leak within a few weeks.

Then,  Vermont Yankee began "remediation."  They pumped groundwater and disposed of it as radiologically contaminated. By doing so, they captured most of the tritium.

Meanwhile, famous hydrological engineers (such as Governor Shumlin) asked Vermont Yankee to pump even more groundwater, for further safety.  Vermont Yankee agreed to pump more.  I don't know how much they spent on pumping, but I suspect the amount was non-trivial.

All for less tritium than is held by a single exit sign.

ALARA Plumbs Some New Depths

As low as reasonably achievable reached some new depths with the great Vermont Yankee tritium scare story.  Of course, a plant should fix a leak if it has one.  Even if nothing but super-pure water is leaking, you fix leaks.  But the remediation?  All the pumping? Large amounts of money and time were devoted to protecting the public from---trivial amounts of radioactivity.

It is often thus with ALARA.  More to follow.

Actually, They Did Fix the Cooling Towers. Or, the importance of confronting falsehoods

My blog post It Was Safety Safety Safety. Lawyers can't rescue a weak case was originally published as an op-ed in my local paper, the Valley News, on February 10.  (It may be behind a paywall at this point.)  In the paper, it was illustrated by a picture similar to this one:

After  one of my op-ed pieces appears in the Valley News, I get myself emotionally ready for the replies in the letters to the editor section.   I usually handle this sort of thing pretty well.  After all, the negative comments are not really about me.  It's all about nuclear power...

The First Letter Blows My Cool

Whoops. Actually, I don't always handle it that well.  As I proved by reading the first letter that appeared, about four days after my op-ed ran.

Before we get to that first letter and what happened afterwards, let's look at that picture again. That first  letter didn't discuss my article, it discussed the picture: A Telling Picture of Vermont Yankee.  Here's the first substantive statement in that letter:

"You can tell it’s an old photo because both banks of cooling towers are working. One has since collapsed (in 2007) due to lack of maintenance and has never been repaired."

I read this and hit the roof.   What-What-What!  He claims that the cooling towers had never been repaired!  Broken since 2007! What an outright...outright...outright.....

A cooling tower is repaired or not-repaired.  It's not an ambiguous situation.   Of course the cooling towers were repaired since 2007!

I called the editor of the paper and asked him to run a correction.  Before doing so, he wanted more than my word that the cooling towers had been repaired.  He wanted the date when the cooling tower repair was completed.

This date for the completion of the repairs wasn't mentioned in any article I could find, though I did find an article that implied that repairs were complete in spring 2008.   I contacted the plant and obtained the repair-completion-date information that the editor needed. The plant sent me an email from one of the engineers, and they gave me permission to forward the email to the editor.  That took care of the matter from my end.  The Valley News editor,  Martin Frank, wrote a correction.

 Here's the correction that now appears  on the Valley News website at the end of the "Telling Picture of Vermont Yankee" letter.

CORRECTION

The following correction appeared in the Feb. 28 edition of the Valley News:

The cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant that collapsed in 2007 was permanently repaired and back in service by May 2008. A letter published Feb. 14 incorrectly asserted that the structure had never been repaired.

Whew!  And a big thank you to editor Martin Frank for his professional handling of the situation.

Howard's Letter

This was not the only letter about my post, but it was the most difficult to deal with.  Happily, Howard Shaffer wrote a great letter refuting several negative letters. His letter, The Facts About Vermont Yankee discusses the the tower repairs, the economic requirements for owning a nuclear plant, and more. Here is one of my favorite paragraphs from Shaffer's letter:

"The third letter claims tritium is dangerous. So is arsenic in our drinking water — or not, depending on the amount. Drinking water is needed for life, but can kill you — as was proven by the tragic case of the marathon runner who drank too much. (Meredith's) op-ed never said that tritium in any amount was not dangerous, just that the tritium-tainted water that leaked from Vermont Yankee was not. “The dose makes the poison” is true of radiation, too."

Was It Worth It?

Decision Tree
from Wikipedia

All's well that ends well? Since Martin Frank wrote a correction and Howard Shaffer wrote a letter, is the problem solved? In other words, was it worth the time it took to get this correction made?

Maybe yes and maybe no.

The letters claimed all sorts of things about the dangers of the spent fuel pool, the dangers of tritium, thermal discharge into the Connecticut River etc.  (Only one letter even mentioned the economic contribution of the plant to the area, which was the gist of my op-ed.)

Yet the only thing that we countered was that the cooling towers were actually repaired.  Did that matter?

I think it did.  Most of the statements in the opponent letters are non-falsifiable. They are more matters of opinion or faith than of science.  They provide nothing to test or to verify, though there may be something to argue about.

However, when nuclear opponents begin using incorrect facts, something has to be done about it.  You have to get a correction in print.  You really have to do so if you possibly can.  At least, that's how I feel about it.

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Extra Credit Reading: About Some Other Letters

One letter was the usual thing: Safety and economics are linked.  It included the odd statement that: "Is it possible that the law regarding regulation of nuclear power was designed to present the illusion of their (safety and economic) separability in an attempt to eliminate the possibility of legal challenge by states and local communities?"

Well, that's one way of looking at federal-level  safety regulations, I guess. My main response to this letter was "ho-hum, same-old."

Another letter was somewhat more annoying.  Titled Misinformation on Vermont Yankee,  it starts with "Defenders of Entergy’s attempts to continue operation of the controversial Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon are waging a strategic war of misinformation..."It goes on to talk about the dangers of tritium. The letter finished by explaining that the letter-writer had read the "small print" at the end of the op-ed. He discovered that:  I worked for the nuclear industry in the past,  I blog as "yes vermont yankee," and I am associated with the Ethan Allen Institute.  

Gosh, I didn't think the type at the end of the op-ed was that small!  Should I ask the editor to put that information in a bigger font next time?   

Basically, once again, however, my response was "ho--hum."  Though I admit I don't like to be accused of  "waging a strategic war of misinformation."

At any rate, the accusation that I am waging a "strategic war of misinformation" is sort of....non-falsifiable.

Letters and Inspiration

The Safe and Green Campaign is part of the Sage Alliance, dedicated to shutting down Vermont Yankee.  Recently, Safe and Green did us a favor (sort of).  They have been annoyed at all the letters in favor of Vermont Yankee that have been published in local papers recently, and they want their supporters to answer these letters.  So they put a bunch of pro-Vermont Yankee letters on their website, with links to the letter as it appeared in the local paper.

I looked at the page and thought---wow!  How convenient! All these good letters in one place! I wish I had thought of that.

The Letters Themselves

Here's a link to Sage and Green web page with the letters.  If you prefer, you can look at the list below, the same letters, instead of visiting an opponent website.

• Nuclear Fuel: The Win-at-any-cost philosophy of anti-nuclear activists.  Let's shut down Yucca Mountain and then complain there's no place to store spent fuel!  Jim DeVincentis in the Brattleboro Reformer
• Vermont Yankee helps in the fight against climate change.  Without nuclear power, there's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "Mother Earth will not be shouted down by nuclear opponents"  Harriet Green in the Brattleboro Reformer
• Economic Impact of Vermont Yankee.  Up to 1500 well-paying jobs in the local area, due to Vermont Yankee. Michelle Joy in the Brattleboro Reformer
• The Vermont Yankee Economic Benefit Zone. Opponent signs always call the "Emergency Planning Zone" the "Evacuation Zone."  Wrong name.  Whatever you call that zone, though,  the Vermont Yankee Economic Benefit Zone is much bigger.  Richard January in Vermont Digger
• Trojan Horse about Energy:  It's the Fossil Fuels.  Opponents brought a "Trojan Cow" to the plant's gates, and pulled fake solar panels from within it.  Trojan Horses (or cows) are the symbol of deceit.  In this case, the deceit was that VY would be replaced by renewables if it closed.  It would be replaced by fossil fuel plants. Meredith Angwin in the Brattleboro Reformer.

Not really a favor

Of course, Sage and Green had no desire to make things better or easier for us.  They placed those letters on their website because they wanted to inspire their followers to write counter-letters.  I guess I should be worried.  Letters may flood in.

However, I have seen responses to these letters in the website comment streams, and these responses have not worried me.  For example, my letter was in the Burlington Free Press, and one comment there said that I claimed "there was as much tritium in a banana as leaked from the plant." Even when they make up a fact (tritium in a banana?) they get it wrong.

The actual facts are on our side.  The factual facts, so to speak.

I hope that some of the people reading this blog in Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire will be inspired to write a letter in favor of VY to their local paper. If you plan to write a pro-VY letter and want some fact-checking, please email me at mjangwin at gmail. I will be happy to hear from you and to help. (If you are writing an anti-VY letter,  just go ahead with business as usual and make up your own facts.)

Let's keep those pro-Vermont Yankee letters coming!

Update Grab Bag: Tiny Tritium, Big Lawsuits, and Small Spats.

So Much Action

I haven't blogged since Sunday. I'm trying to catch up. My three topics are tritium (surprise!), the Entergy Earnings Conference call, and a little on-line spat.

Tritium Again

What: Vermont Yankee may have shot itself in the foot in terms of public relations by not submitting some water samples.

Exactly What? Apparently, Vermont Yankee did not notify the state about tritium found in a new well....as quickly as the state expected notification. Entergy said that their sampling apparatus was down for repair.

Consequences: The Public Service Board (PSB) is mad, and has required VY managers to submit samples under oath. (No, not drug test samples. Tritium test samples.)

And It Means: Very little. The amount of tritium in the samples is tiny, less that 1000 picocuries per liter. In the newspaper stories I read, it was not clear that VY was required to submit the test samples on a certain schedule or it had chosen to do so. Whichever it was, VY shot themselves in the foot in terms of public relations by not submitting a water sample on time. Unless, of course, they weren't required to submit the sample in that time-frame. So the PSB is angry and fed up and won't take it any more. Or the PSB wants Entergy to think they are angry and fed up and won't take it any more. To me, this whole thing is like a set of chess moves. It's not about the tritium.

The Earnings Call

What: Entergy, like all large publicly held company, has quarterly earnings calls. In the most recent one, Wayne Leonard, President of Entergy, made some strong statements.

Exactly What Did He Say? States or governors are certainly free to voice their opinions, but the NRC, which has jurisdiction on these matters, must deal with the facts....Efforts also continue to secure a new power purchase agreement with the Vermont Utilities. Negotiations had been ongoing for some time now..... However, while we would certainly prefer to sell power in state, that is not a necessary condition, of course.

The Consequences: In only slightly-veiled terms, Leonard raised the possibility that Entergy might file a lawsuit on the grounds that the Vermont Legislature has pre-empted federal rules. (Recently, I listed three possible grounds for lawsuits.) The words were also a clear statement that Entergy considers that it holds some cards in the negotiations with the Vermont utilities. No law requires Entergy to sell power only to Vermont. As I pointed out in a previous post, a state always gets the best deal from its in-state power suppliers. That is, the state gest the best deal if the state and the supplier aren't suing each other. If they are suing each other, the court decides the deal.

And It Means: A lawsuit would be a game-changer about negotiations. Even the threat of a lawsuit is a game-changer. Shumlin responded by calling Entergy a liar, though he restrained himself from the L-word. He said it was A company that has a history of saying one thing and doing another. The Shumlin honeymoon is over, as far as I am concerned.

A Minor On-Line Spat

What: Howard Shaffer wrote a post about our Vermont activities for ANS Nuclear Café.

Exactly What Happened: Bob Stannard, an anti-nuclear lobbyist in Montpelier, wrote a negative comment on the post. I commented on his comment, and we had an on-line discussion. Or spat. Or something.

Consequences: Stannard decided to set me straight about Vermont Yankee's importance to Vermont. It's not that important, in Stannard's opinion. As he said: Approx. 1/3 of Vermont does not use or depend on VY power

And It Means: Two-thirds of Vermont uses or depends on VY power. I didn't say it: the anti-Vermont Yankee lobbyist said it. Sometimes the opponents tell it like it is.

Boxing Glove Image from Wikipedia.

The same image might have been used to illustrate the Earnings Call section.

The Truth About Tritium: A Guest Post By Thomas Curphey

This letter appeared in the Valley News (my local newspaper) on January 19 2011. I have never met Thomas Curphey, but I phoned him when I read the letter. He graciously allowed me to use his letter as a guest post in my blog.

The Truth About Tritium

To the Editor:

A Valley News editorial some time ago decried the rise of "truthiness," the attitude that facts matter not at all and that perception is everything. The editorial closed by saying, "History is full of frightening examples of what can happen when individuals and political factions come to believe they are entitled to their own facts. Let's not go there."

In light of these noble sentiments, it is unfortunate that the Valley News continues to publish articles misrepresenting the risk of exposure to the radioactive element tritium. For example, on Jan. 12, the Valley News published an Associated Press article ("Hearing on Vt. Yankee Leaks") stating that tritium "is a carcinogen when ingested in high amounts." This statement is a particularly slippery example of "truthiness," one designed to play on our fears of radioactivity and cancer.

How has tritium been linked to cancer? In none of the ways that the reader is likely (and perhaps intended) to assume. As pointed out in previous letters to the editor, there is no documented case where a human has ingested large amounts of tritium and has subsequently developed cancer. Results of animal studies have been ambiguous. There are no statistical studies linking tritium exposure to cancer. In fact, the so-called link between tritium and cancer is purely hypothetical: because tritium is radioactive and exposure to radiation can lead to cancer, therefore, exposure to tritium leads to cancer.

Perhaps to cover up a paucity of actual facts and to lend credibility, the qualifiers "ingested in high amounts" are added. Why? Because the radiation emitted by tritium is of such low energy that it cannot penetrate human skin or even a piece of paper. Therefore, to have any chance of causing cancer, tritium, would have to be ingested in large amounts.

A balanced assessment by the California EPA of the health risks from tritium may be found on the Web at

http://oehha.ca.gov/water/phg/pdf/phgtritium030306.pdf.

I urge readers interested in learning the facts about this issue to read this document.

Apparently, for the Valley News, some people, in this case environmentalists opposed to Vermont Yankee, are entitled to their own facts.

Thomas J. Curphey

Hanover

The writer is a retired research professor of pathology at Dartmouth Medical School and a retired adjunct professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College.

Taking It Personal. Shumlin Accuses Dubie of Serving the Interests of "Entergy Louisiana"

The link below shows part of a debate between the two gubernatorial candidates in Vermont: Lt. Governor Brian Dubie and Senator Peter Shumlin. The energy section of the debate starts when reporter Terri Hallenbeck of the Burlington Free Press says "turning now to the environment." (Note, I have not been able to embed the video successfully, as you can see by the comments on this post. Therefore, I am providing a link.)

Link to the video here.


This is what passes for political discourse in Vermont, with one of the ugliest campaigns I have ever seen. If Shumlin were just getting nasty with Dubie, it would be too bad, but it wouldn't be much of a subject for a blog called "Yes Vermont Yankee." However, Shumlin is running against Vermont Yankee as much as he is running against Dubie. If you listen to the clip, you will hear Dubie respond to Shumlin's accusation that Dubie is most concerned about the "shareholders of Entergy Louisiana"

(Dubie) "I don't work for the shareholders. I resent you questioning my integrity. I take it personal. I'm a lieutenant governor who's served my state. I'll continue to serve my state. Please refrain from questioning my integrity, senator, and I won't question yours."

.......

(Shumlin) "My experience with both you and the governor is that you are an apologist for Entergy Louisiana stockholders and Entergy Louisiana and you won't stand up for Vermonters."

Transcript from Vermont Public Radio.

A few minutes after this insulting exchange, Shumlin says that Entergy Louisiana doesn't want to sell power to Vermont anyway!

Shumlin is on the attack partially because 1000 picocuries per liter tritium was found in one drinking water well on the plant site. This is 1/20th of the EPA limit for tritium in drinking water. When I discuss 1000 (as opposed to 20,000) picocuries per liter, I can't really use bananas as an analogy anymore. 1/400 part of a banana? This is not easy to visualize. I may have to move on to comparisons with potatoes, a less potent source of dietary potassium and beta radiation. Beta irradiation from mashed potatoes kind of matches the level of radiation from drinking the water in this well.

Oh yeah. Did I mention? The well is on the plant site, and has been closed as a precautionary measure for months. Nobody drinks the water.

In his post at ANS Nuclear Cafe this week, Howard Shaffer has a concise summary of the differences between the two candidates.

• Lt. Governor Dubie thinks that regulatory agencies should be allowed to regulate.
• Senator Shumlin wants to take over the regulatory roles himself.

Howard also some quotes from Shumlin. For example: The NRC is a wholly owned subsidiary of the industry.

Out of State is Evil?

One of Shumlin's tricks is to constantly describe the plant as "Entergy Louisiana" as if it were not located in Vermont at all. This is a deliberate policy. As I noted in May, Shumlin issued a press release addressed to Entergy Louisiana, on the subject of a photographer visiting the plant during an outage. Some TV anchors have picked these words up, and are now referring to Vermont Yankee as Entergy Louisiana.

This is so weird and naive. What kind of yokels does Shumlin think we are, here in Vermont? What on earth is wrong with a plant being owned by a Louisiana company?

When I lived in California, most of the big companies I worked for were "Delaware Corporations." Meanwhile, my husband worked for a startup, a nice little homegrown place. The startup was sold and went through a series of owners, including Sony (Japan) and TeleAtlas (Holland and Belgium). The layoffs at each merger were certainly subjects for discussion. The fact that the new owners were out-of-state (or out-of-country) was not considered as important.

Letter to the Editor

We are not hayseeds up here, Mr. Shumlin! We are willing to work for out-of-state companies!

I just wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper. It may be printed soon. But you have read it here first.

Senator Shumlin says that "Entergy Louisiana" and its "stockholders" are a major source of evil in Vermont. He accuses Lt. Governor Dubie of being in league with these out-of-staters. Senator Shumlin has said "Entergy Louisiana" so often that TV commentators are beginning to refer to the company the same way.

I find Senator Shumlin's statements quite bizarre. Many Vermont employers are owned by bigger companies from out of state. Will we begin scornfully saying "IBM New York" or "Energizer Missouri" or (heaven help us) "Ben and Jerry's Rotterdam" ? After all, Ben and Jerry's is part of Unilever, a Dutch-British food conglomerate.

Most states actively recruit national or multinational companies to open branches and factories. Right now, Governor Douglas is headed to China to encourage Chinese investment and tourism in Vermont. Except for Senator Shumlin, I have never heard of a politician who choses to attack a company as undesirable because its headquarters are out of state. This attitude does not bode well for jobs in Vermont if he becomes governor.

For Sticklers About Facts

Entergy Louisiana is a real company, which has nothing to do with Vermont Yankee. It is a utility serving Louisiana. Entergy Nuclear owns Vermont Yankee. Both are owned by Entergy itself. Why Shumlin would accuse anyone of being an apologist for Entergy Louisiana stockholders is unclear.

Not that this matters to Shumlin, who has never needed a fact-checker. He just makes them up as he goes along.

• Entergy is behaving like the Republic of China. (Like Taiwan?)
• Germany gets 30% of its juice from solar. (It took him days to admit it didn't.)
• Children's teeth are being attacked by radioactive strontium in fish due to Vermont Yankee. (Only background levels of strontium have ever been found in local fish.)

Need a fact to bolster an anti-Vermont Yankee argument? Shumlin has one! Of course, it isn't a fact. It's a fantasy.

Carnival of Nuclear Energy (Fresh New Information) and Tritium (Old News Rewarmed)

The 22nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy

The latest Carnival of Nuclear Energy is posted now at ANS Nuclear Cafe, the American Nuclear Society blog. Gail Marcus introduces her new book, Nuclear Firsts, which covers the early days of nuclear power development. Dr. Marcus has been Deputy Director at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Energy Agency at the Office of Economic Development. She holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from M. I. T. Her book describes advances during the development of nuclear power, covering eighty facilities and ten countries. This book is a real asset to the industry. I sometimes get tired of reading about Mr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the big boom. I'd rather read something upbeat once in a while, and Dr. Marcus has provided the book.

Meanwhile, at Nuclear Green Revolution, Charles Barton reverse-engineers the future of energy, and makes an excellent case for advanced reactors that can provide load-following and process heat. At PopAtomic, Suzanne Hobbs has designed a nutritional label for utilities. Gosh, who knew coal had so many calories? Oops, I mean: Who knew coal had such huge carbon dioxide emissions? Well, yeah, we all knew it, but the graphic makes it visible.

And there's more! Update on Vogtle construction, the true story of the SL-1 reactor accident, the future of nuclear fabrication. Always something new at the Carnival!

Something Old: Tritium

Rewarmed news. The tritium leak has been fixed for months, but you would never know it if you read the papers around here.

Months ago, when Vermont Yankee found tritium in shallow wells near the plant, they immediately closed down an on-site drinking water well. A sample from this well now shows 1,300 picocuries per liter of tritium. The drinking water standard is 20,000 picocuries of tritium per liter. On the banana scale, the sample in this well isn't even measurable. Maybe 1/400th of a banana? Since two liters at 20,000 picocuries is about 1/20 a banana's worth of radiation, then 2 liters at 1,00o picocuries is 1/20th of 1/20th of a banana. Feel free to check my math (20 x 20 equals 400)

Of course, the local outcry from plant opponents is terrific. People who were very anxious that the tritium was going into the river are now equally anxious that some of it may go into an aquifer. They generally admit that the tritium will be diluted and probably undetectable but Dilution is No Solution to Pollution.

Aside: Plant opponents say Dilution is No Solution to Pollution frequently, whenever someone says that the amount of tritium is not detectable in some body of water. I have noticed that the opponents still get their chimneys cleaned. They cheerfully put all their combustion pollution into the atmosphere, instead of blocking their chimneys and containing the smoke in their homes. Don't they know dilution is no solution? I hope they learn the error of their ways. End Aside.

Anything special happening with this warmed-over news? Well, according to the Brattleboro Reformer, Arnie Gundersen is worried about radioactive strontium turning up in the groundwater, despite the fact that radioactive strontium has never found in test well water. (A small amount was found in a soil sample near the leak.) Mr. Gundersen believes the situation is a gravity problem.

What worries Gunderson (sic) and many others is the possibility of Strontium-90 and Cesium-137, radioactive isotopes, moving into the ground water. "If Entergy keeps shucking and sucking the tritium out of the soil, it'll prevent the isotope from moving," he said. Gunderson (sic) added that the recent rainfall had nothing to do with the sample being found. "Rainfall can't be attributed to anything 2 or 3 feet below the ground," he said. "This a gravity problem, which is pulling the tritiated water down further into the groundwater."

According the same article: more than 265,000 gallons of tritiated water have been remediated from the ground into storage tanks.

The Worst Thing That Ever Happens To You

No Vermont Yankee problem would be complete without a pronouncement from Peter Shumlin. Here's Shumlin's take on the problem, according to WPTZ.

"I have been saying for some time, the leaks at Vermont Yankee from the underground pipes will result in the biggest environmental disaster in the history of the state. The next governor needs to have the courage to stand up to Entergy Louisiana."

This reminds me of my grandmother. She didn't put up with whining. If I complained about something, she would stare me down and say: "May that be the worst thing that ever happens to you." Kind of kept my problems in perspective.

In this spirit, I do hope these leaks are the worst environmental disaster Vermont ever has. However, Vermont already has some environmental problems that are far worse.

Strafford is a lovely town about ten miles from me. It is home to a beautiful Meeting House with a summer series of poetry and fiction readings. Less elegantly, Strafford is home to an old copper mine, the Elizabeth Mine, an unremediated Superfund site that leaks acid drainage into the Ompompanoosuc River, occasionally turning the river orange.

I usually don't write about such things, because I have taken the informal Vermont Oath. According to this oath, I have promised to always say that Vermont is lovely and unspoiled and free of industrial pollution. I have broken the Vermont Oath now! But I had to say it.

The Elizabeth Mine is an environmental disaster, and the VY tritium leak is no big deal.

The Local NRC and the Local Earthquake

It's been an exciting two days at Vermont Yankee.

Yesterday Vermont Yankee managers held a meeting to release a report on the root cause analysis of the tritium leak. A blocked pipe was the main cause of the leak, and more aggressive groundwater monitoring should have been implemented.

Last night, the NRC held a meeting about the 2009 operations evaluation of Vermont Yankee. They gave the plant a clean bill of health, while local activists claimed it was run more badly than a hot dog stand. I admit to being annoyed when a long-time activist is identified as a person who simply "lives near the plant." They mostly live about twenty miles away in Massachusetts. Still, the weather is far too lovely for me to be angry about this.

But is it earthquake weather? Today there was an earthquake, felt from Canada (the center) to New York City. Due to the earthquake, Vermont Yankee had to file a report to the NRC stating that an "unusual event" had taken place. VY stayed at full power. As an article today notes,, the plant suffered no damage.

Lots of excitement, but the plant is running, the earthquake didn't affect it, and the tritium leak is over.

Perhaps we can just enjoy the long days of summer for a while. My daylilies are doing well. Thank you for asking.

Daylily photo from Wikimedia.

Canadian Tritium Study: What Does It Mean for Vermont Yankee?

A study of tritium releases and health effects was recently issued by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The final report contains a compendium of studies undertaken between 2007 and 2010, and includes information on the fate of tritium in the atmosphere and biosphere. The entire study is available, and the Studies Project Synthesis Report is particularly useful. The report was issued this month, and I thank my friend in French Canada for sending me a link to the study. I also thank him for continuing to be on speaking terms with me, after I took a recent trip to France and he didn't.

The Carnival is Up

Before I begin the somewhat heavy work of summarizing the Canadian tritium study, I want to note that that the Sixth Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at NEI Nuclear Notes. Where else can you read about climate, AND read an excellent deconstruction of the nuclear-equals-proliferation argument AND see a recent picture of Chernobyl's control room? Follow the link to the Carnival. Carnivals are fun.

Also, I want to include a link to a recent Nuclear Fissionary post, comparing the results of coal environmental effects (like ash pond spills) with tritium discharges at nuclear plants. Thanks, Fissionary!

The Scope of the Canadian Study

This was a compendium of studies, including air, water and food studies of both power reactors and waste disposal sites. The DOE and NRC dose limits for ionizing radiation for the public is 100 millirem/ year (from nuclear facilities) and that is the same as the Canadian dose limit of 1.0 mSv/year. (Canadians, like Europeans, use Sieverts, causing American bloggers to keep multiplying by 100 to get to our own familiar terms of millirems.) In comparison, the background radiation from natural sources in the U S in 3 mSv per years, or 300 millirems. (Data derived from a standard handout prepared by NF Meeting, from data contained in the DOE/BER database.)

Page 12 of the report shows that dosages to members of the public from people living near Canadian nuclear generating facilities varied from 0.00045 to 0.000236 mSv/year, well below 1 mSv. Some other installations, such as Chalk River Laboratories, had higher dosages for people in the area, due to old spills. All dosages were orders of magnitude below any doses known to cause health effects.

Background on Canadian Reactors

As a bit of background, one should note that tritium releases from Canadian types of reactors (which use heavy water) are orders of magnitude higher than releases from U.S. reactors. Rod Adams post on the tritium release from Vermont Yankee has the most readable description of the overall situation. Adams notes that Pickering B (a Canadian power plant) is allowed to release 13 million curies of tritium (liquid emissions) a year, though the plant only releases about 5000 curies. In contrast, an estimate of the entire tritium-leakage from Vermont Yankee was 0.35 curies.

In the Canadian case, the relatively high tritium release allowances do show up as measurable tritium in drinking water of 2 to 20 Bq/L (54 to 540 picocuries/L) while background is about 2 Bq/L (54 picocurie/L) (page 14). Some groundwater monitoring wells at facilities (not power plants) are much higher, up to 3,000, 000 Bq/L. (page 11) These waters are not used for drinking, and they are not causing similarly high numbers in local aquifers.

(1 Bq is 27 picocuries. If you choose the read the report yourself, multiply the Bq numbers by 30 in your head while you are reading it. That's what I do.)

Organically Bound Tritium

There was some new information about organically bound tritium. Organically bound tritium in soils and vegetables was higher than expected, as far as I can tell from reading the report. Page 22 of the report says that near nuclear sites, the ratio of organically bound tritium (OBT) to HT (tritium in water) in plants was 2 to 3, and for animals it was 10. This ratio also showed a lot of variation.

The report also notes (page vii) that people consuming local produce (near Pembroke) received less that 0.004 mS per year from produce, a negligible amount, even taking into account organically bound tritium.

Conclusions

As the report concluded (page 25)

In conclusion, tritium exposures are highly unlikely to cause adverse health effects in the public or in workers. The doses to which these groups are exposed are far below doses where radiation effects have been shown:

• In Canada, doses to the public from tritium releases from nuclear facilities are far below the public dose limit. Doses from tritium exposures among people living near Canadian nuclear facilities are in the range of 0.0001 to 0.1 mSv/year... These doses are not only well below the limit, but also are negligible compared to natural background radiation, including that from radon (approximately 2 to 3 mSv/year depending upon geographic location).

However, the Canadians also recommended that the drinking water limits on tritium be changed to 100 Bq/L, or 2700 picocuries per liter (p ix).

Conclusions for Vermont Yankee

There will undoubtedly be those who will seize on the lower tritium limit suggested by the Canadians and think it is relevant to something-or-other about Vermont Yankee. However, no tritium has been found above background or detection level in any water near the VY plant, so limits of 2700 picocuries per liter (suggested by the Canadian study) or 20,000 picocuries per liter (current NRC and Canadian rules) don't matter, in terms of plant operation.

Vermont Yankee is a zero-discharge plant. Even during the leak, it discharged only undetectable amounts of tritium. Therefore, guidelines of 2,700 picocuries or 20,000 picocuries per liter allowed in drinking water make no difference. The Canadian guidelines are interesting, but irrelevant to people in Vermont.

Conclusions for Canada

I believe the Canadians did this study and reached these conclusions because of historically high tritium discharges at some of their research facilities. If you read the report, table by table and graph by graph, you can see that there are some facilities that have discharged too much tritium and need some attention. Of these facilities, the Chalk River research area leads the list.

I think this study was the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's way of insuring attention to these areas.

A Gallon of Water and Calls for a Shutdown: Vermont's BP!

As reported in the Seven Days blog (and elsewhere) some water with tritium leaked from a pipe at Vermont Yankee. The leak contaminated a one-foot radius of soil, and was perhaps one gallon of water. Then the leak was found and fixed. The pipe from which it leaked is only used at plant start-up.

Naturally, some lawmakers are calling for an immediate shut-down of the plant. Peter Shumlin is more "moderate" and wants a three- month shut-down while they reroute lots of piping. Now Shumlin is an expert on power production methodologies? He learned that Germany doesn't get "30% of its juice from solar" and he's making rapid progress on the technology front.

Fine. This is exactly what I would expect. "Every trickle is seen as a torrent" as a friend of mine put it.

What I simply cannot stand, and am actually too angry to blog about, is the comparison of this incident with the Gulf Disaster.

Here are some quotes:

Shumlin called the ongoing leakage of tritium, strontium-90, cesium and other radionuclides as the "greatest environmental crisis in Vermont's history."

"This is Vermont's BP," said Shumlin, referencing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico due to an offshore drilling operation gone awry under the watch of British Petroleum.

Speaker Shap Smith said one lesson from environmental disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is to prevent them before they happen. Replacing the pipes at Vermont Yankee would stop more leaks from occurring, he said.

"We've already seen the consequences of what happens when you don't take care of the piping," said Shap Smith, referring to earlier leaks at Vermont Yankee.

You can watch Vermont legislators making these kind of outrageous statements in a WPTZ video.

They claim that one gallon of water, and two pick-up trucks of contaminated soil near an earlier leak...they claim that these things are the equivalent of the on-going disaster in the Gulf.

People who say things like that are just beyond reason. I'm sorry. I simply can't express myself strongly enough on this matter. The Gulf is an environmental disaster. A leak within the plant boundaries is pretty much a non-event. That's all there is to it. Only a crazy person would say the two types of things are the same.

I usually don't call the opponents of the plant "crazy." I assume they have their issues and they have their reasons. Once in a while, however, some of the opponents cross the boundary of sanity.

People who compare in-plant leakage of small amounts of radiation with the Gulf disaster are crazy.

And a thank-you to Rod Adams for his post about Vermont legislators, and for describing me as a gentlewoman!

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Note: I will be out of town for a week, starting tomorrow. Blog posts will be infrequent, I suspect, but I will do my best to be responsive about comment moderation.

The Legal Report

While I took the weekend off and left town (silly me!) the report by Morgan Lewis & Bockius was issued. Entergy had hired this law firm to do an internal investigation who-knew-what and who-said-what about underground pipes and radionuclides. The report was much discussed, even before its release. In an earlier post, I suggested that some of the report might not be released because it contained personnel matters which should not be made public.

The report was released over the weekend. A storm of commentary has followed: it is incomplete, Entergy isn't playing straight, etc.

I have to admit, I haven't read the report yet.

Until I do read the report and blog about it, I suggest two sources of information.

The Blog: Rod Adams wrote an excellent post on the report and miscommunications as weapons. His post includes links to the legislative acts that formed the oversight panels, background on the panel participants, and even some comments by one participant. A very strong and well-written post, and he got this blogger off the hook!

The Report Itself: If you want to go straight to the horse's mouth on the report, read the actual legal report here. It is over 100 pages long. You have been warned.

The graphic is an illustration of a barrister by Henry Holiday. The original is in the book The Hunting Of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll.

Leak Over, Remediation Begins

At a press conference today, Vermont Yankee announced that all sources of the leak have been found, and remediation will begin. Water will be pumped from the ground to be re-used at the plant, and some soil will be disposed of as radioactive waste off-site. Here's the press release. I have updated this post with a link to the video of the press conference which announced the end of the tritium leak.

I knew the leak was over when I read a comment from Peter Alexander yesterday on my David O'Brien and Nuclear post. Mr. Alexander wrote:

I don't think many people were in a panic about the tritium itself. The real issue with Vermont Yankee, in addition to Entergy's really bad record of preventive maintenance, is the company's breakdown in credibility. Finding and fixing a tritium leak "quickly" is small potatoes.

Gee, Mr. Alexander, thanks for telling us! As I pointed out in my answer, the anti-s sure seemed to be in a state of panic:

Where on earth have you been? What about the new docket, "shut the plant down NOW because of the tritium leak," that the PSB opened at the request of the Conservation Law Foundation? It's costing me money, because I live in this state, and opening new dockets isn't free.

(By the way, I predicted in an earlier post that they would have the leak fixed before these docket hearings got underway. Maybe I should hang out my shingle as a fortune-teller.)

Maggie Gundersen (see the video in an earlier post) predicted that the tritium would end sport fishing in the Connecticut River because it bioaccumluates in fish. Senator McDonald rolled his eyes and repeated his question to Bill Irwin (of the Department of Health) over and over....you mean tritium is going to the river? It will be in the river?

Alexander wouldn't have written the equivalent of No-problem if the leak weren't fixed. His remarks are proof positive that the leak is truly a non-issue at this point.

Mark Savoff, V P of Entergy, did an excellent job of explaining the technical issues while respecting people's concerns about radioactivity. He was asked several times about the dangers of tritium. He was very politic. He explained the low-level radioactivity of tritium, while re-iterating that Entergy took it seriously and he was NOT dismissing people's concerns. When people asked about how much contaminated soil was present, he used both dimensions and analogy (two pick-up truck loads) to make the amount clear. A very classy show.

Entergy is to be congratulated both on stopping the leak so quickly, and on the communication clarity of this conference.

Watch live streaming video from bfp_news at livestream.com

Moving on

Of course, the antis are moving on to new topics. The latest...the new NRC inspector used to work for Entergy! Perhaps it is all a conspiracy? Here's a tweet about it from a few hours ago. The leak is over, and the antis are searching for new ground.

Shocker! New NRC inspector at #VT Yankee is former #Entergy employee (via Rutland Herald):http://bit.ly/93eTGO #btv #vty

David O'Brien and Nuclear

On Saturday, Commissioner David O'Brien spoke to a Republican breakfast meeting in Rutland, Vermont. In his speech, reported in the Rutland Herald, he expressed his support of Vermont Yankee, saying: "Vermont Yankee, as a unit, which you won't read about anymore, is one of the best-performing nuclear units in the country," he said, adding that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has told him it has no problem with the plant.

He also pointed out that two factors have given Vermont Yankee bad press: missteps and miscommunications by the plant management, and a poisonous atmosphere promoted by Senator Shumlin among others. Specifically, O'Brien noted that the tritium leak had been blown completely out of proportion, that over twenty nuclear plants had such leaks, and Vermont Yankee had taken the correct steps to address it. At that remark, I could hardly stop myself from standing up and shouting "Yes, Yes, YOU TELL THEM!" (Actually, I'm kind of a quiet person, and this was a Republican breakfast meeting, so I didn't say anything.)

Aside: In a recent post, I noted that VY found the leak very quickly, and leak was less than 0.5 curie of tritium (Rod Adam's calculation). Adams also noted that a well-run CanDu reactor releases 5400 curies of tritium per year. The NRC notes that American reactors also release tritium in liquid effluent. From the NRC website: In 2003, the average PWR released about 700 curies of tritium in liquid effluents and the average BWR released about 30 curies of tritium in liquid effluents. (Vermont Yankee is a BWR).

In contrast, Vermont Yankee is a zero-liquid-discharge reactor which had a minor spill. Half a curie of tritium. This amount of tritium would look pretty good to most of the reactors in this country. End Aside.

O'Brien refused to panic over this incident, despite the endless chorus of "tritium will get into the Connecticut River and incredibly bad things will surely happen!" Well, no they won't. It was good to see that O'Brien paid attention to the facts and not the hype.

But enough about tritium for a while. Have a banana, sit back, and relax. I realize that I have posted videos featuring Gundersen and Shumlin. So let's have some air time for the good guys for a change. Here's a video of the president of Areva North America, Jacques Besnainou, talking about America and nuclear.

Note: I received an email that someone could not see the video. If you cannot see it, you can link to it here.

Vermont Health Department on Tritium

WCAX interviewed Bill Irwin, head of the Radiological Health area of the Vermont Department of Health. The heading for this interview was: Expert: Vermont Yankee May Have Other Vulnerable Areas.

The content was:

• We found the source of the leak
• It has stopped leaking.

But the tone was quite negative. More could go wrong! Yes. More could always go wrong.

It reminds me of getting a test result from a yearly mammo. I get a letter that says something like: your mammogram is clear. However, there could be cancer somewhere else in your body, and some cancers are not detected by mammos, etc etc etc. In other words, a long warning that translates:

Your test is okay. But something else could go wrong. We're not making any promises.

Life is always uncertain. Still, these warnings generally mean: We are doing some serious CYA here. (CYA is shorthand for "Cover Your Donkey")

Let's take the main result instead, okay guys?

VY found this tritium leak. They fixed it. Cause for celebration!

Also, Rod Adams has an excellent post on the total amount of tritium that leaked, top to bottom, all the tritium in the famous plume of tritiated water under the plant. Spoiling the suspense of reading his post: less than half a curie of tritium leaked, total, at Vermont Yankee. In contrast, a well-operated CanDu reactor in Ontario releases 5,000 curies of tritium a year into the environment, or 14 curies per day. These releases are well within the legal limits in Canada, limits designed to expose the public to far less radiation from tritium than they receive from background.

Old Tritium, New Problems

Good news. Closing in on the leak!

The good news is they are very close to finding the tritium leak. They think they have it, and they are testing their hypothesis this weekend. VPR has the news, the New York Times has a detailed description of the excavation, and the Vermont Department of Health, doing daily updates, feels they are close to the leak. Some quotes from Health Department updates:

At about 5:00 a.m. on Feb. 26, Vermont Yankee unearthed the concrete AOG pipe tunnel that carries the 2-inch drain line (labeled OGE-100-G1 Drain Line on the AOG Building schematic) at the point where the drain line connects to the AOG pipe tunnel. This revealed a substantial crack in the concrete and the PVC pipe that surrounds and carries the drain line into the tunnel...... "Leak testing" with pure demineralized water is scheduled for this weekend, Feb. 27 and Feb. 28, to help identify the actual mechanism and pathway more definitively.

This is very good news. VY is very close to finding the leak.

Bad News: Closing in on VY

The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) has been against Vermont Yankee for quite a while, and has pressured the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) to take action to shut it down. As recently as the end of January, the PSB turned them down flat. In a Public Service Board Order dated January 29, the Public Service Board, the Board
- expressed concern with inaccurate information received from Vermont Yankee,
- but said it would wait for a Vermont-Yankee sponsored Root Cause Analysis to be completed before taking any action.
In that order, it stated that it would not treat the entire docket (about renewing the license) as tainted due to the inaccurate statements.

CLF asked that the Board require ENVY to show cause why all evidence and argument in this docket that is "affected by the false information" should not be stricken from the record. ENVY committed to evaluate and correct any information in the record related to the recent disclosure of the underground piping systems.
We decline, without prejudice, to issue the show-cause order requested by CLF at this time... given that ENVY will be reviewing the record to determine what, in its view, needs correction, it appears premature to issue at this time the show-cause order that CLF requests.

Okay, that seems clear enough considering that we are talking about the law here and only lawyers can really understand this stuff. The PSB will await the results of the ENVY (Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee) review before taking action.

On Thursday, the day after the vote, the PSB reversed itself. The PSB issued a new Order, beginning an investigation into whether or not Vermont Yankee should be shut down earlier than 2012. This one is harder for me to figure out, and I don't just mean the PSB's reasoning. I was not able to find the Order on the PSB website (apparently it hasn't been posted yet) but I found it on the CLF website. The PSB apparently started a new docket to do this, docket 7600 instead of 7440. I had to hunt around to find this stuff.

At any rate, the PSB is now looking into shutting the plant down early. Quoting from the new Order, the PSB states that:

With respect to federal preemption, it is clearly established that the Board would be preempted from attempting to regulate Vermont Yankee based on radiological safety. However, it is also well established that the Board retains significant authority in other areas of traditional state regulation. ...Accordingly, we conclude that we are not preempted from taking action in response to the leaks at Vermont Yankee, to the extent that the leaks may have economic and other non-radiological-health-and-safety consequences....

Dave Gram of the Associated Press covered this story, and my local paper headlined his article "Vt. Yankee's License Could Be In Jeopardy Sooner Than 2012." If you read to the end of this Order, you will see that the PSB plans to hold the first hearing on this docket on March 10. By that time, the leak will be history.

The Opinion

My opinion, that is. I believe the Public Service Board is jumping on the bash-Yankee bandwagon, and despite their use of the words colorable claim , they don't have much of a leg to stand on.

Tritium has few radiological health effects, a fact which I certainly have beaten to death in earlier posts. And if the PSB can't regulate based on radiological effects, what on earth CAN they regulate about tritium? I mean, tritiated water is slightly radioactive, but otherwise...it's just water.

The PSB Order mention of extra costs for decommissioning, but I doubt the NRC would let them shut down a power plant because of their perceptions of decommissioning costs. I actually don't understand why the PSB has done this, except to waste my tax money with hearings that will be quickly overthrown.

More about tritium.

Okay. Instead of personally explaining, once again, why tritium isn't much of a hazard, I am going to just put in some links.

John Wheeler, on putting Picos in Perspective.

Fox News points out that all those picocuries add up to a trillionth of a curie, while exit signs routinely contain thirty curies worth of tritium.

Tritium Summary

I have done several posts on tritium in the past few days. Some are quite long. So here's an executive summary

In Tritium Is Three, I pointed out the three important questions about the tritium leak at Vermont Yankee
1) Is the tritium a danger to public health?
2) Does the existence of a tritium leak prove that the plant is badly managed?
3) Did Entergy lie about its underground piping?

The next two posts, Tritium and Health and Tritium, Oil and Kale answer the first question about health. Tritium is not dangerous at the levels found in the test wells. These posts compare the radiation levels to bananas and kale, and compare the spill levels to recent oil spills.

The next post, Tritium and Plant Management, answers the second question. The existence of a tritiium leak proves nothing about plant management. Tritium leaks have been found at many plants, and Vermont Yankee has taken all appropriate steps (test well, inspections, informing regulators and NRC) to handle the leak.

The next two posts answer the third question: Did Entergy lie about its underground piping? These are long posts containing many quotes.

In Miscommunication? I point out that the different groups have different definitions of underground and buried, the terms were used interchangeably in many cases, and there was plenty of room for honest misunderstandings.

In the final post, Piping and Misinformation, I ask a simple question: in all this testimony, why did nobody refer to a piping diagram? The regulators may have had such diagrams, but not looked at them. Or the regulators didn't request such diagrams. In either case, the regulators, as well as Entergy, has serious egg on its face. Referral to such diagrams could have put a complete end to any misunderstanding or miscommunication.

Tritium and Plant Management

As I noted in an earlier post, there are three questions about tritium. I repeat the questions here.
1) Are the amounts that are leaking dangerous to health?
2) Does the leak show that Vermont Yankee is being managed badly or is perhaps too old to be run properly?
3) Did Vermont Yankee staff lie about pipes and tanks that could contain tritium?

To dispose of the first question rather quickly. Two of my blog posts answered this question. I repeat the answer here. The tritium levels in the test wells are not dangerous. When I compared the levels of beta exposure from tritium to levels of beta exposure from various types of food, I determined that it was more dangerous to eat a banana than to drink the well-water. The Keene Sentinel, alone among newspapers, has also figured this out. I tried to document this lack of danger well enough to convince a person who has an open mind on the subject. A person who hates nuclear will never be convinced.

For links to many opinions of tritium, I recommend this recent post at Pro-Nuclear Democrats.

The second question. What does the tritium leak show? Does it mean that Vermont Yankee is too old, or perhaps it has terrible management, and that is why it has a tritium leak?

This question is answered in a newspaper article, but one that is not at all friendly to the nuclear industry. Dave Gram of AP notes that Vermont Yankee is one of almost thirty plants that have developed tritium leaks. Most plants, including VY, have test wells to monitor for tritium release.

You can read this article one of two ways. The anti-nuke way is, of course, "OMG, they all have leaks, we have to shut them all down!" (But they would have said this anyway, with or without the tritium.)

A more reasonable approach is that tritium leakage is a problem that arose in the 90s, and monitoring has been stepped up since around 2005. Test wells have been installed at many power plants to detect any discharge of tritium. Like twenty-six other plants, Vermont Yankee's test well detected a tritiated water release. Almost all the plants that have leaks have found the problems and corrected them. (In some cases, plants have had difficulties finding the source.)

Meanwhile, Vermont Yankee is doing all the right things. VY has been drilling more test wells, inspecting buildings and trenches, keeping in touch with the NRC and state regulators. There is nothing about this situation that shows bad management or that the plant is in terrible shape. There is nothing about these leaks that makes them particularly dangerous. This problem has occurred at other plants, been solved at other plants, and will be solved at Vermont Yankee as well.

But finally, we come to the big question. Question Three. Did Vermont Yankee staff lie to regulators about pipes and tanks that could release tritium? I will address that question in another blog post.