2nd Vermont Yankee groundwater well tests positive for radioactive isotope; 1st well increases

2nd Vt. Yankee well tests positive for isotope

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Elevated levels of radioactive material has been found in a second monitoring well at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, and the first well where an isotope was originally found is showing a higher concentration, the company said Tuesday.

Plant spokesman Robert Williams said new tests of water from the first well showed tritium concentrations had grown from 17,000 to 22,300 picocuries per liter since the original discovery was announced nearly two weeks ago. The second well showed a concentration of 9,540 picocuries per liter. The Environmental Protection Agency safety standard for tritium in drinking water is 20,000 picocuries per liter.

The news came as criticism continued over Vermont Yankee’s admission last week that it had misled state regulators and legislators by saying repeatedly last year that the plant, which is owned by Entergy Corp., did not have underground piping that could carry radioactive tritium.

Plant officials had said in legislative and Public Service Board hearings, as well as in e-mails to state officials, that the Vermont Yankee did not have underground piping of the type that had leaked tritium at several other reactors around the country. Last week, Williams said underground pipes were being considered a possible source of the tritium plume.

“I don’t think we’re even in trust-but-verify mode any more,” David O’Brien, commissioner of the state Department of Public Service, said in an interview Tuesday regarding Vermont Yankee. “I think we’re just in verify mode now.”

The state’s lone reactor has been in the political spotlight as lawmakers prepare to decide whether Vermont Yankee should get a 20-year extension on a current, 40-year license that is set to expire in 2012. Vermont is the only state with a law giving its Legislature such power; others rely on their utility regulators and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Plant critics said Tuesday that the acknowledgment of “miscommunications” with state officials was part of a pattern.

Among earlier instances:

— In 2001 and 2002, as it was preparing to buy Vermont Yankee from a group of New England utilities, Entergy issued three news releases saying it would fill any shortfall in the plant’s decommissioning fund when it came time to dismantle the plant. As the fund shrunk amid the stock market turmoil of 2008 and the amount by which it was projected to be short of the needed amount grew, a company official told a legislative committee decommissioning would not be backed by the corporate parent, but only by the subsidiary whose sole asset was the Vermont Yankee reactor and some real estate in Brattleboro.

— In 2008, Vermont Yankee ran advertisements saying that as a nuclear plant it had “zero emissions,” contrasting nuclear power with the big carbon footprints of power plants burning fossil fuels. After a complaint by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, Attorney General William Sorrell called the ad misleading, saying nuclear power creates carbon emissions when uranium-based fuel is mined, processed and shipped to the plants. Williams called the ads’ wording “unfortunate,” and Vermont Yankee withdrew them.

— In 2008 and 2009, Vermont Yankee executive Jay Thayer repeatedly told lawmakers that the plant would provide information within days or weeks on what it expected to charge the state’s utilities for electricity if allowed to operate past 2012. It finally produced an offer in December.

Williams said Tuesday on the change in stance regarding decommissioning funding that “there is a process set up for providing full funding for decommissioning.”

On the ads, he said the plant’s carbon emissions are “extremely low” compared to fossil-fuel-burning plants. On the rate agreement for the relicensing period, Williams said “it appeared that we were close to an agreement early on and it didn’t work out.”

Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, a Democrat whose Windham County district includes Vermont Yankee said, “What these guys specialize in is not providing the facts, getting caught, apologizing and moving on to the next misinformation campaign.”

On Tuesday, Williams issued a news release about the latest tritium findings. He called the first well’s new reading of 22,300 picocuries per liter a “slight” increase — even though it was up 31 percent from the earlier reading of 17,000 picocuries per liter. He also said in the second paragraph of the release that the first and second wells were adjacent, adding in the fifth paragraph that they are about 500 feet apart.

“They might look adjacent if you were looking at them from space,” said the state’s radiological health chief, William Irwin, who noted one of the wells was south of the reactor and the other north.

Williams said he used the word adjacent to mean there were no other monitoring wells between the two that showed tritium.