New report criticizes Entergy’s monitoring of drinking water well
Gov.-elect Peter Shumlin will get a private tour of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant Friday, and it won’t be just a routine visit to the facility.
Shumlin is meeting with Michael Colomb, site vice president for Vermont Yankee, to determine whether Shumlin’s request made in writing last week – that the plant continue to extract radioactive water from the soil – will be honored.
Last week, the governor-elect sent a letter to Colomb and the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, asking that Entergy Corp. continue to remove tritiated water from the soil through extraction pumps to prevent tritium from further contaminating an abandoned drinking
water well on the Yankee compound that penetrates the bedrock.
Shumlin hasn’t decided whether he will force the issue after he is installed as governor, according to Alex MacLean, his communications director.
“We would hope that they would tell us that they are turning the pumps back on,” MacLean said. “We’ve urged them multiple times to turn the extraction pump back on. We would hope Vermonters’ health and safety would be their first and foremost priority.”
A report submitted to the Vermont Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee last week also recommended that extraction of tritiated water continue at the Vermont Yankee site.
On Oct. 8, a small, but detectable level of tritium was found in the former drinking water well at about 200 feet. Shumlin, who was a candidate for governor at the time, called a press conference demanding that Entergy install additional extraction wells on the compound. He said that unless the extraction efforts continued through the winter, there was a chance that tritiated water could drop down further (the well’s total depth is 360 feet) and contaminate the fractured rock aquifer at the base of the well.
Shumlin also expressed concern about the movement of other radioactive elements – cesium, strontium and cobalt – through the soil.
Entergy officials have said they would re-evaluate whether further extraction was necessary.
Last spring, Entergy agreed to a request from the Vermont Department of Health to remove 300,000 gallons of tritiated water from the site.
Despite Shumlin’s request, the plant shut down the extraction well on Nov. 18, when it reached that agreed-upon amount. Larry Smith, communications manager at Vermont Yankee, said the cold weather would make it difficult for the plant to continue the extraction process.
Plant officials and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have said that the levels of tritium found in soils and in the well are not high enough to warrant further extraction because it is traveling in an easterly direction toward the Connecticut River. Once tritiated water reaches the river, it is diluted so much that it is no longer detectable, according to Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC.
Shortly after the extraction well was shut down in November, Smith said Yankee officials were evaluating the risks and considering whether to turn the pumps back on again. The day after Vermont Yankee shut down the pump, Entergy reported high levels of tritium present at a concentration of
500,000 picocuries per liter at 60 feet, or just above the bedrock, near the Construction Office Building where the drinking water well is located.
Sheehan said elevated levels of tritium in this location isn’t surprising because it is near the center of the tritium plume moving toward the river.
As of Monday, there was no word as to whether Entergy had made a decision about further extraction, and it’s not clear what testing has been conducted. Entergy has not released new test results for the well since October. Smith said in an interview that the well is tested once a month.
Sheehan said the NRC has asked Entergy for additional information regarding what testing and analysis Entergy is conducting “to ensure tritium is not getting into the bedrock.”
Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer for Fairewinds Associates, Inc., which is advising Shumlin and the Joint Fiscal Committee on Vermont Yankee, calls the 300,000-gallon mark an artificial target.
He said in an e-mail that the latest tritium concentrations found right on top of bedrock are “25 times higher than EPA allows in drinking wells.”
“This means that tritium is entering the bedrock and will eventually get into the aquifer,” Gundersen said. “The solution is to keep the extraction wells operating, to pull as much tritium up so it does not go down into the bedrock. Tritium will not escape from the bedrock once it gets in. It will be pulled by gravity down into the aquifer.”
Gundersen added: “Now (because the single extraction pump has been shut down) it is almost guaranteed that some tritium will reach the aquifer, but I cannot predict if the aquifer will exceed EPA allowable. Keeping the extraction wells operating is our best chance to avoid the contamination of the aquifer. Why Entergy chose to turn the extraction pumps off is a mystery to me.”
At one point, the highest tritium concentration identified at the site was 2,450,000 picocuries per liter of tritium, which was seen in well GZ-10, near the source of the leak in the Advanced Offgas System.
In October, William Irwin, radiological health chief for the Vermont Department of Health, said the 300,000-gallon mark shouldn’t be an end point for the extraction process. He said cold weather is an impediment, but Entergy should continue to pump and store tritiated water through the winter. Irwin described the “extraction” wells as “critical.”
“(Entergy) should make an effort to continue the extraction as long as tritium is in the water,” Irwin said.
On Nov. 29, Irwin said the extraction agreement with Entergy was voluntary, and there were no federal or Vermont regulations that required groundwater extraction.
“Their ultimate goal was to extract 300,000 gallons of groundwater,” Irwin said. “While we’d like to see continued extraction, there’s no regulation or requirement from us or NRC that they do so. … We would like to see extraction continue, but what Entergy has told us is that the stated goal was met.”
When he was running for governor, Shumlin said the state of Vermont should emulate the states of New Jersey and Illinois, which have required nuclear power plants leaking tritium to take significant steps to mitigate the flow of contaminated water into local aquifers.
“There is a difference between our leak and those in New Jersey and Illinois,” Shumlin said. “In New Jersey and Illinois, there was only tritium leaking from the plants. In Vermont, it includes the radioactive isotopes of cesium and strontium, highly radioactive substances that cause leukemia and cancer.”
Report to the Fiscal Committee
In a report to the Joint Fiscal Committee, Gundersen and his wife, Maggie, of Fairewinds Associates, Inc., cite inadequate monitoring of the drinking well, a premature shut down of the extraction pumps and continued problems with several systems as evidence that Vermont Yankee needs closer supervision by state authorities.
They recommend that the Legislature ensure continued monitoring of the Construction Office Building well.
The report alleges that the tritium plume is widening “at the same time it is being drawn deeper toward the aquifer.” Testing frequency is inadequate “to assess the plume migration and possible environmental damage,” the Gundersens wrote.
The report says the drinking water well should be tested twice a month for the presence of tritium, Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 for the life of the plant. In addition, the Gundersens call for the testing of Connecticut River fish and on-site vegetation for the three radioactive isotopes.
More than a third of the report is dedicated to the issue of extraction: The Gundersens emphasize that extraction must be restarted immediately and more extraction pumps must be installed.
The cost of continued extraction through the winter months would require a “nominal investment,” the report states.
At the time the well was taken out of service at the end of February, the Gundersens wrote, Vermont Yankee issued a statement that it was a precautionary move to eliminate the “small possibility” of “cross-contamination.”
A new report cites inadequate monitoring of the drinking well, a premature shut down of the extraction pumps and continued problems with several systems as evidence that Vermont Yankee needs closer supervision by state authorities.
“ENVY (Vermont Yankee) made the decision to shut off the extraction wells based upon how much water had been removed, rather than how much tritium remained in the soil,” the report states.
That cross-contamination, the report alleges, occurred after the well was turned off and was found in October when tests showed a tritium concentration of 1,040 piC/l 200 feet down in the 360-foot well. (The allowable level under EPA standards is 20,000 piC/l.)
“This new and unanticipated discovery of tritium in a deep well indicates that the tritium is moving downward toward the aquifer where its possible removal and dissipation will be a much slower, expensive and involved process,” according to the report.
The Gundersens’ report also analyzes the leak in the high-pressure coolant injection system and the feedwater system leak that caused the plant to shut down temporarily in November.
Fairewinds asserts that the reliability of the plant has degraded. The report cites three outages since May 2010.
The report notes that staffing levels dropped by 22 employees between January and September at a time when the plant “has been facing reliability issues and leaks that require more personnel, not less.”
Meanwhile, the report says that the Vermont Department of Public Service has not been cooperative and neglected to provide Fairewinds Associates, Inc., with information that should be available under Act 189 monitoring requirements.
Most plants replace their condensers between 20 and 30 years of operation, the report states. Vermont Yankee’s has been in place for 39 years.
Entergy plans to replace the condenser in 2016, according to the report. The cost would be $200 million. The Gundersens warn that the condensers “have been known to fail catastrophically.” They speculate that “if the price of electricity does not rebound, it would be difficult to recoup such a large investment during the final years of the plant’s life.”
Smith, Entergy’s communications manager, said officials at the corporation’s headquarters are currently reviewing the report and plan to issue a response.
