Editor’s note: Video footage of this section of the press conference is at the end of this post.
Gov. Peter Shumlin backpedaled today on his assertion that Vermont Yankee was the source of trace amounts of Strontium-90 found in the flesh of a small mouth bass taken from the Connecticut River last June.
In the wake of the Vermont Department of Health’s announcement yesterday that the radioactive isotope had been measured in the “edible” portion of a fish captured nine miles upstream from the plant, the Department of Health and Vermont Yankee asserted that there was no scientific evidence implicating the Vernon nuclear power plant as the source of the Strontium-90.
“We don’t know exactly where [the Strontium-90] came from,” said the governor at his weekly press conference today in the fifth floor conference room of the Pavilion building.
A statement released yesterday by the governor’s office quoted him as saying, “Today’s troubling news from the Vermont Department of Health is another example of Entergy Louisiana putting their shareholders’ profits above the welfare of Vermonters.”
The Vermont GOP issued a rebuttal today that mirrored Shumlin’s logic. Republican Party Chair Pat McDonald said: “This type of rhetoric is just one more example of how Governor Shumlin has put his political agenda above the interests of Vermont.”
Officials take fish from two locations: One site, Vernon Pond, is where fish are collected to analyze the effect of Vermont Yankee’s discharge into the pond; the other location is about nine miles upstream from the plant where Route 9 crosses the river north of Brattleboro.
According to the Department of Health website, “Fish caught near the Vermont Yankee discharge are most likely to be exposed to Vermont Yankee-related radioactivity, while fish caught upstream of the plant are most likely not to have been exposed to these radioactive materials. However, fish may move around and nine miles upstream may not be enough distance to keep a particular fish from swimming down to the Vermont Yankee discharge area.”
Shawn Good, a fisheries biologist for the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife, said small mouth bass are nomadic, and the species can travel 40 miles to 50 miles over the course of a lifespan. The 9-mile distance between Vermont Yankee and the upstream location where the Strontium-90 contaminated fish was found is “absolutely within plausible range of a small mouth bass,” Good said.
When pressed about the connection in his statement yesterday between Entergy and trace levels of Strontium-90 in the fish, Shumlin said, “The connection is simply this: that we have found fish that have strontium in them within nine miles of the plant. We also know that the plant’s been leaking, so one of the possibilities is that there is a direct correlation between the fish and the leak. We don’t know that, but what we do know is that Entergy Louisiana has not invested the dollars that in my judgment that they should have in removing the contaminated nuclear water that’s sitting under the plant that now leaked almost two years ago, and we don’t know how long it’s been leaking. So I’m asking them to be a little less diligent about protecting their shareholders and be more aggressive in protecting Vermonters.”
Shumlin, a Windham County native, said he fished the Connecticut River in his youth, but he wouldn’t be dropping a line in the river now.
Health Commissioner Harry Chen said the detected levels were low and that he would have no problem eating a fish contaminated with low levels of Strontium-90. “In terms of the levels in the fish,” he said, “I personally would eat the fish, so we differ in that.”
The Department of Health’s announcement states that the sample had 58 picocuries per kilogram (pCi/kg) – a measurement of radioactivity based on disintegrations per minute – 11 pCi/kg over the lower limit of detection of 47 pCi/kg.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation measured background levels of Strontium-90 in a 2007 study of blue crabs and fish in the lower Hudson River. That study found the edible portions of fish and crabs to have about 8 pCi/kg.
