Greenwire: Technicians and scientists may have found the source of a tritium leak at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Their recent efforts to find the source of the radioactive leak, which has sparked a national conversation on the safety of nuclear energy, did not wrap up in time to head off the Vermont Senate vote last Wednesday that may have sealed the fate of the plant after 2012. The state voted 26-4 to close the 38-year-old plant in 2012, but finding and fixing the leak could be the first step Louisiana-based Entergy could take to persuade lawmakers to reverse their decision and allow the plant to seek another permit to continue to operate past 2012.
Based on tritium levels logged at several monitoring wells, workers think they may have triangulated the source of the leak around a 2-inch steel pipe encased in a plastic pipe that is itself surrounded by concrete. The dig is slow going, even though workers are digging around the clock — complicated by snow; nearby pipes carrying essential materials, including fuel for the reactor’s emergency diesel generators; and the fact that the workers have to be wary of a cave-in (Matthew L. Wald, New York Times, Feb. 26). – DFM