2nd Vermont Yankee well tests positive for radioactive tritium

First well where isotope was found shows higher concentration

By Dave Gram, The Associated Press

Elevated levels of radioactive material have 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 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 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," Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien said Tuesday. "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 40-year license 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 a response to these instances would be e-mailed, but no statement was immediately available.

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

Tuesday, Williams issued a news release about the latest tritium findings, revealing the first well's reading to be 22,300 picocuries - up from the 19,800 picocuries that showed up in a test Thursday. Williams said the first and second wells were adjacent, then added later 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.