Vt. nuke fights for future but chances are dimming

[kristopher]

Vt. nuke fights for future but chances are dimming

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — ...The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's initial 40-year license expires March 21, 2012, less than 15 months from now. And despite a safety and performance record no worse than many of the other 61 reactors that have won 20-year license extensions from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Vernon power plant's future looks short.

...The Vermont Senate voted 26-4 last February against letting the Public Service Board issue the new state license. That vote came a month after it was revealed that Vermont Yankee was leaking tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, into soil and groundwater surrounding the reactor on the banks of the Connecticut River. It also followed revelations that senior plant personnel had misled state officials about whether Vermont Yankee had the sort of underground pipes that carried radioactive tritium.

...In 2007, a cooling tower at the reactor in Vernon, in Vermont's southeast corner, collapsed, producing a spectacular photo of thousands of gallons of water spewing from a 6-foot-wide pipe onto a pile of rubble on the ground below.

Robert Stannard said seeing the photo prompted him to leave his job as head of a Bennington development group and go to work lobbying for an anti-nuclear group, Vermont Citizens' Action Network. "If this company allowed degradation in maintenance to a degree that the plant was falling down, I felt I had to do something about it," Stannard said...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i5fIEAiFASdxhsSB7CVd_-7Upvuw?docId=c5c2826dcb2142f88416037121af8f54

[madokie]

1. 3-21-12 can't come soon enough

Metals fatigue with prolonged exposure to both heat and pressure of which is both at play here.