Vermont's Radioactive Nightmare

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/wasserman02112010.html


The Fallout at Vermont Yankee


Like a decayed flotilla of rickety steamers, at least 27 of America's 104 aging atomic reactors are known to be leaking radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer if inhaled or ingested through the throat or skin.

The fallout has been fiercest at Vermont Yankee, where a flood of cover-ups has infuriated and terrified near neighbors who say the reactor was never meant to operate more than 30 years, and must now shut.

In 2007 one of Yankee's 22 cooling towers simply collapsed due to rot.

Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has confirmed tritium levels in a monitoring well at Vernon to be 3.5 times the federal safety standard. The leaks apparently came from underground pipes whose very existence was recently denied by VY officials in under-oath testimony at a public hearing. Vermont's pro-nuclear Republican Governor Jim Douglas has termed the event "a breach of trust that cannot be tolerated."

Yankee is owned by Entergy, a Mississippi-based consortium that also owns New York's Indian Point reactor, which suffered an internal gusher of radioactive water in May, 2009. Another leak has just been found at Oconee in South Carolina. Illinois' Braidwood leaked so many millions of gallons of tritium-laced water that its owner, Exelon, was forced to buy a new municipal water system for a nearby town.

-snip-

But VY is just the latest of more than two dozen U.S. nuclear plants---many built in the 1960s and '70s---to be found with leaking tritium.

Last year at New Jersey's Oyster Creek, tritium was reported leaking a second time shortly after Exelon got it a 20-year license extension. Entergy's Pilgrim reactor, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, has recently leaked tritium into the ground.

The NRC's Neil Sheehan has confirmed leaks involving 27 of 104 licensed US reactors, and says that probably doesn't account for all of them. At Yankee, Oyster Creek and elsewhere, rotting pipes are the likeliest culprit, but no one is 100% certain.

The epidemic has escalated public dismay. Vermont state Representative Tony Klein, chair of House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, says that "when you have public officials that the public depends on for their health and welfare making casual statements that a radioactive substance is not harmful to you, I think that's ludicrous."

-snip-

In Vermont, angry debate has also arisen over Entergy's dwindling decommissioning fund, which has been slashed by a declining stock market. Entergy has proposed spinning off plant ownership to a shell corporation whose assets may be even more dubious. But area residents also fear Entergy may be pushing Yankee operations in an attempt to find the source of its leaks.

-snip-

What happens next will be defined by fierce grassroots activism crashing into a flood of corporate money in support of a rickety old reactor being operated with increasing recklessness.

The highly hyped "reactor renaissance"---and much more---may hang in the balance. Stay tuned.
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wishing all those who live near these nuke plants good luck

[Fumesucker]

1. Given the way corporations have been run for the last few decades..

Decomissioning costs are going to end up being paid for by the taxpayers..

Privatize the profits and make public the costs, it's become quite the popular corporate shell game.

[Zoeisright]

2. Nuclear plants have already been paid for by the taxpayers.

The big ticket costs associated with nuclear power have been shifted onto the public. In virtually all cases, ratepayers and taxpayers have been saddled with the capital costs of building nuclear plants, which in some cases exceeded $10 billion apiece. In total, about $300 billion (in 2001 dollars) has been spent on nuclear plants, according to Charles Komanoff, an economist who researches nuclear power.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1069

And that was from 2001.

Imagine if we had spent that much money on clean, renewable energy. The whiners who claim that 'solar power isn't feasible' need to STFU until we've spent as much money on them as we have on nuclear and coal. THEN we'll see a fair comparison.

[Fumesucker]

6. Jimmy Carter looks more prescient every damn day. n/t

[redqueen]

3. Yep... privatize profits, socialize costs.

Sickening that they keep getting away with it.

[Fumesucker]

4. Charlie Brown falls for Lucy holding the football every time..

It would be nice if we had politicians who would at least act little less naive than Charlie Brown.

[jaksavage]

5. Hanford in Washington

one huge dirty cash machine for the clean up industry. Bechtel et al.
75% of alternative energy funds go to Nuclear development!

[ThomWV]

7. Your assessment is not only inaccurate but its also silly.

Hanford has nothing to do with nuclear development, the cleanup is indeed costly, as was original production.

Although its the tanks that pose the greatest immediate problem at the Hanford reservation its the groundwater that is contaminated and the proximity to the river of course. However if you have been to any of the several tank farms you know full well just how far from the river they actually are and of course in high desert regions the rate of movement of groundwater is miniscule. The old reactors as your first enter the site are just that, old news, but if you want something to hang your hat on at Hanford try to figure out what to do about the Canyons.

[cali]

8. thanks for this

you've been posting great stuff on the VY situation. As you seem interested, here's a link to the most comprehensive coverage of the matter at vtdigger.

http://vtdigger.org/2010/02/10/irwin-on-video-we-cannot-rule-out-that-there-is-tritium-in-the-connecticut-river-we-just-cannot-measure-it/

lots of stories on VY on a daily basis posted under Energy/Environment.

[ensho]

9. kicking back to pg. 1

nt