Entergy: Turn off the faucet now until the tritium leak is fixed at Vermont Yankee

Editor’s note: This oped is by by James Marc Leas, a lawyer who lives in Burlington.

If you have a plumbing leak in your house would you not go down to the basement and turn off the main water valve as a first step?

Or would you let the water continue spraying out in your house for more than a month while you tried to figure out the exact cause?

I can’t think of anyone who would choose not to stop the leak as an immediate emergency first step–except Entergy Corporation.

On Feb. 10, independent nuclear engineer Arne Gundersen testified before the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy: “if the plant were to shut down you would stop adding to the leak.” Gundersen also told the Burlington Free Press that the company does not need to keep operating the plant to find the leak. He said, “They’re within 10 feet of the leak, just keep digging.” [Burlington Free Press, February 11, 2010]

Gundersen then gave a fact that may be relevant to why Entergy chose to keep the plant running despite the leak: “He noted that the company would lose $1 million a day in lost energy sales by shutting the plant down.”

The article also quoted Vermont state radiological health chief William Irwin saying that “numerous precautions had to be taken” while excavating down to the buried piping. This apparently to avoid further damage to pipes that could lead to a more serious incident.

In my view, digging around buried piping carrying radionuclides while the plant operates at 120 percent of design power shows dubious judgment.

Entergy has the ability to stop the leak immediately–and chooses instead to continue to operate at 120 percent of design power which continues maximum tritium leaking.

Vermont Yankee has a scheduled month long shutdown in April for refueling. Entergy could show good corporate citizenship by moving that shutdown forward two months to right now. That would stop the leak. With fissioning stopped, Entergy could more safely excavate to find and fix the broken pipe. It might be able to do all this while also performing the refueling. Just by shutting down two months early Entergy could make itself look a whole lot better.

Entergy is currently under heightened scrutiny by the legislature because of its request for a 20-year extension when the 40-year design life of the plant ends in 2012. Yet in the face of this important legislative decision, Entergy has demonstrated the opposite of good corporate citizenship.

Entergy has the ability to stop the leak immediately–and chooses instead to continue to operate at 120 percent of design power which continues maximum tritium leaking. All while taking the risk of digging around the buried piping while the plant is operating. Even if Entergy had never misled authorities about the buried piping, even if this plant never had any previous leaks or transformer fires, even if Entergy was not trying to unload ownership to a deeply in-debt spinoff, even if Entergy had not failed to come forth with promised money for decommissioning, and even if Entergy had not jacked up its asking price for electricity after 2012, what we are experiencing right now should be enough to tell us that this is not a company we can trust to run the plant for 20 more years.

But if Entergy fails to stop nuclear fissioning until it finds and fixes the leak an aroused public can still force this company to do so. Now is the time for citizens to call on Entergy to do what we would all do in our own homes in like circumstance: turn it off until you find and fix the leak.

With the thought of losing a million dollars of revenue each day while the leak is found and fixed, and with hundreds of millions of dollars of profits at stake over the next 20 years, Entergy certainly has incentive to keep the plant running and to lobby hard for legislative approval for its 20-year extension. But citizens can ensure that Entergy’s corporate lobbyists are not the only voices legislators hear.

Wednesday, Feb. 24 is expected to be the day the Vermont Senate votes on Entergy’s 20 year extension request.

Now is the time for citizens to call and write to our state Senators.

Vermonters should save the morning of Feb. 24 as the time for hundreds of us to come out to the State House in Montpelier to counter Entergy’s lobbyists. We will ask our state Senators to consider that this obsolete, leaking nuclear reactor is neither safe nor reliable. And to consider that Entergy’s management–by word and deed–demonstrates that they cannot be trusted. In view of this record we will ask our Senators to vote “no” on Entergy’s 20-year extension request.