David O’Brien, commissioner of Vermont’s Public Service Department, may have gotten his wish. Or at least partially.
In the wake of last month’s discovery of radioative tritium contamination at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, and revelations Entergy, its owner, had evaded acknowledgement of the source of the leak, O’Brien told lawmakers Wednesday he wanted the company to bring in its own problem-solving team.
That team, he told the House Natural Resources Committee, should have a direct line of communication with the corporation’s top brass, so the company can “recognize where it’s gone wrong and (see) that those things are going to be corrected.”
Less than 24 hours later, Yankee spokesman Rob Williams announced Entergy had formed such a team.
The management team is to be comprised of eight company officials, including Curt Hebert, an executive vice president for the corporation and past chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Brian Cosgrove, a longtime spokesman for Yankee (and former chairman of Vermont’s Republican Party); and Larry Smith, a longtime communications manager for the plant.
The Louisiana-based corporation has also hired an independent law firm to investigate Thayer’s alleged misstatements under oath; installed new monitoring wells at the Yankee site; and sent 20 “highly skilled” inspectors to Vernon to determine the source of the leak.
Whether Entergy’s changes will be enough to mollify administration officials and lawmakers remains to be seen.
Earlier this week, O’Brien described Entergy’s reassignment of Thayer as “tokenism,” arguing the public relations manager had failed to provide information about the existence of underground pipes at the plant to the Public Service Board last May.
“They’d have to do something miraculous to regain our trust,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien was unavailable for comment Thursday, but Gov. James Douglas, at his weekly press conference, repeatedly said “I don’t know” and “we’ll know it when we see it” in response to questions about whether Entergy’s new Yankee leadership team and other moves would satisfy the state’s demand for corrective action. The governor did not explain what specific changes he was looking for, explaining, “We don’t have the answers we need at this point.”
He said he wants to see Entergy wrap up its investigation of the misstatements and the tritium leak probe and receive a decommissioning plan from the company
“There are a lot of balls that are still in the air that may come down before we all feel comfortable,” Douglas said.
Later yesterday afternoon, Williams sent out another e-mail, this time alerting the public (to what he termed) “good news”: A new well sample had revealed a concentration of tritium 37 times the legal concentration limit for tritiated water — 774,825 picocuries per liter. Williams said the sharp increase in concentration was an indication that inspectors are closer to finding the source of the leak.
The well is located near the plant’s condensate water storage tank, and “some underground piping appears to be closer to the source,” Williams wrote. The monitoring well, he said, is located about 200 feet from the Connecticut River.
Much of the testimony O’Brien gave the House Natural Resources Committee this week centered on the tritium question. He said the department’s “highest priority is the tritium situation.” O’Brien also described his disappointment with Entergy, and his continued support for relicensing the plant.
Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, said industry officials from around the country tend to trivialize tritium leaks. They say, “this isn’t that bad,” Klein said.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to have a sentence from me that tritium is not bad,” O’Brien said.
After repeatedly asking Entergy whether Vermont Yankee has underground pipes, O’Brien said his department only received confirmation that they existed when the tritium leak was discovered.
“We learned because of the tritium investigation, in a normal sort of call discussing what’s being done,” O’Brien said. “Our state nuclear engineer heard someone say, well we need to look at x, y, z piping
system as a possible candidate. The light went on at that very moment. And from that moment on … we were quite upset and disappointed to find out.
“I can tell you unequivocally, there’s no question in my mind that there wasn’t a communication problem,” O’Brien said.
He said the department’s main problem with Entergy has to do with lack of respect from corporate officials.
“It’s too late now, but someone at very high level should have on the very first day, and stood up here in front of the public, and said this is our responsibility, this is unacceptable, it’s not going to happen again, and here’s what we’re doing,” O’Brien said. “That hasn’t happened yet.”
O’Brien said even though he’s sure that dozens of people who work at the facility knew the pipes existed, the department, despite its inquiries, was repeatedly told Yankee was that rare nuclear plant, the only facility in the country, in fact, (according to Uldis Vanags, the state engineer) that was built without an underground piping system carrying radioactive wastes.
“It’s a bizarre circumstance, and it leads you to all sorts of headscratchers of why?” O’Brien testified. “How could that be? I can tell you one thing that occurs to me is that when we conducted this audit a
couple of years ago, one possibility is just that perhaps our role wasn’t given the respect it should have been afforded.”
“They disrespect your department that much?” Klein asked.
“That’s how I see it,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said the industry’s primary focus is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and that state oversight of plants is typically limited and the Vermont Department of Public Service’s level of involvement at the
facility is rare.
He described an insular corporate culture in which industry officials operate on a “different plane” and that Entergy’s attitude toward state officials is a part of that culture.
“I think you can say it’s not just this plant,” O’Brien said. “I think what’s tragic for them as the operator is that sort of, if you want to call it disrespect or lack of care has obviously created far greater problems. Two years ago, if they’d given it the consideration they should have, we would have gotten the right answer, we would have conducted the review and perhaps would have ascertained what we’re
considering now.”
O’Brien went on to say Thayer’s removal didn’t rectify the situation. Other Entergy officials, he said, had also misled his department by making incorrect statements or mishandling the inspection process. In addition, he viewed Entergy’s refusal to negotiate a power deal and to offer some resolution on decommissioning as an affront to his department.
“We find ourselves in a situation now where we’ve been poorly served by the owners of the plant,” O’Brien said. “In any sort of business relationship between a private company and the state of Vermont and its utilities, you’ve gotta have a degree of trust and confidence in your business partner; that’s the only way it works productively and effectively.”
Rep. Kurt Wright, D-Burlington, asked how Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and member of the Public Oversight Panel, knew about the pipes last summer and the Department of Public Service wasn’t aware of their existence until two or three weeks ago.
“I’ll just say this: I am absolutely confident of what the department has done in this instance and how we handled the situation and tried to follow through,” O’Brien said. “I’m aware of all the interactions Arnie had with the department and how those questions were forwarded on to Entergy. You know, if at the end of the day people won’t give you the right answer … there’s limits as to what our ability is to ascertain. I don’t have an excavator I can send down there to the site, to put it bluntly.”
“The fact that he was always sort of curious about how it is that these pipes didn’t exist, um, you know, kudos to him that he was curious about this,” O’Brien said. “It’s not as though the question wasn’t asked
multiple times.”
In response, Klein seemed incredulous. He said with Entergy’s track record of mechanical mishaps and its “exposed culture of mistruths, lying, deceit, whatever you want to call it,” and the creation of a
subsidiary spinoff, Enexus, for six plants including Yankee, “My big question to the administration or to the (department) is: What would it take? Where is the line in the sand? What would it take to happen for you guys to say enough?”
O’Brien replied: “There’s no way to answer that question. Or predict a circumstance where that would exist. From our perspective, the reliability audit was a lynchpin in looking at the reliability of the plant, and the reliability audit found that the plant can operate for an additional 20 years reliably.”
