As President Obama advocates expansion of America’s nuclear power industry, pushing for billions of dollars in federal incentives and announcing plans to build the first nuclear plant in decades, a long-running facility in Vermont is leaking a cancer causing carcinogen.
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is leaking possibly dangerous levels of tritium, a radioactive byproduct of the nuclear process. Thus far, tritium has only be found on the plant grounds, which are nestled amidst farms in rural Vernon, Vermont. Around the clock efforts are underway to find and stop the leak. The timing is bad for the plant’s owner, Entergy corporation, which is seeking to renew the facility’s operating license, set to expire in 2012.
The facility, which began operating in 1972, is just one of dozens across the country that have seen similar leaks in recent years. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees inspection and licensing of nuclear facilities, says roughly 30 of the nation’s 104 reactor units have experienced tritium leaks.
According to the NRC, none of the leaks have impacted public health or safety but, the unmonitored and unexpected releases have raised concerns within the industry and among watchdog groups nationwide.
In 2006, the nuclear industry launched initiatives to better protect groundwater at plant locations- agreeing to do a better job detecting and reporting leaks, even if they are below the threshold required by federal regulators.
The new rules prompted Vermont Yankee to add additional testing wells in 2007, a self-policing effort that helped the plant find the current leak.
Vermont Yankee officials say they are working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to find the source of tritium and fix it.
“Because of the monitoring wells that we have installed and additional wells, we’ve triangulated the area of the plant where we believe that tritium is, outside what we call our advanced off-gas buildings. So that’s the area that we’re excavating down to about 15 feet,” said Larry Smith, spokesman for Vermont Yankee who says the public is not in any danger. “Our tritium does not pose a threat to public health or safety because of the low levels and again- everyday we’re sampling the tritium wells for their concentration. We’re sampling our drinking water wells on cite. We’re sampling drinking water wells here in the community of Vernon, at the Elementary School across the street, our neighbors at a nearby nursing home. There is no elevated levels of tritium in those wells and we test the Connecticut River which is right in back of the plant everyday and we’re seeing no elevated levels of tritium in the Connecticut River.”
The Vermont Department of Health is also actively involved in the investigation.
“Our greatest concern is that today we still have not zeroed in on the source of the leak or leaks and the folks who are working on that are getting closer,” said Commissioner Wendy Davis. “Until we’ve really identified the site or sites and the mechanism we do remain extremely concerned.”
The Department is conducting extensive independent testing in the community, sampling drinking water wells, vegetation, soil, sediment, river water and even collecting milk from local dairy cows to test for contamination. Thus far, the results have been clean.
“All of the drinking water well samples outside of the plant, and even on the plant property itself, have not shown this type of contamination to date,” Davis said.
Though the department fears tritium is reaching the Connecticut River, the levels of river water are too diluted to know for certain and the water current plays a role, making testing more difficult.
Thus far, the contamination has been discovered only within the footprint of the Vermont Yankee plant, stretching in a large plume beneath a number of buildings.
“We’re talking about picocuries of tritium that we’re seeing. The highest about 2.8 million picocuries, that’s a trillionth of a curie.” explained Smith. “To put it in perspective, if you see exit signs in buildings that are illuminated- they typically have 15 curies of tritium. So we’re talking about a very small amount but, nonetheless, this is important for us to find the source of the leak and to stop it.”
That offers little consolation to the anti-nuclear group New England Coalition who believes maintenance at the plant has been lax and says the facility should shut-down while workers search for the leaking tritium.
“It’s the canary in the uranium mine,” says group member Clay Turnbull. “When the tritium starts to leak, it’s indicative of a plant that’s getting old and not maintained.”
The Nuclear Energy Institute represents the interests of the nuclear industry and helps draft policy nationally and on a global scale. Spokesperson, Steve Kerekes, says the age of a plant does not necessarily play a role in a given quality control problem and the public need not fear older facilities. According to the NRC and the NEI there are currently 19 nuclear reactors nationwide that are seeking re-licensing.
“The license renewal process is designed to demonstrate to the NRC that you have in place the programs necessary to effectively monitor and manage aging on your major passive systems such as large reactor vessels. But, you’re regularly changing out the pumps and components, motors, just like you would do maintenance on a car or any other piece of equipment,” Kerekes explained.
Kerekes says only one tritium leak impacted an off-site area when levels were discovered in a well water and in ditches near the Braidwood station in Illinois during the 90’s. The plant paid for clean-up and no member of the public was harmed. In recent years several plants have reported tritium leaks including the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, the Pilgrim plant in Massachusetts and most recently, the Oconee reactor in South Carolina reported a small tritium leak last week.
“Public healthy and safety has been protected even in these situations where we’ve identified and worked to repair these leaks,” said Kerekes.