More radioactive pipes found at Yankee
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By SUSAN SMALLHEER Rutland Herald Staff - Published: January 26, 2010
BRATTLEBORO — There are more than 40 buried pipes containing radionuclides at the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor, according to a document Entergy Nuclear submitted Monday to the Vermont Public Service Board.
A year ago, the company's vice president of operations and the site vice president in charge of the Vernon reactor said there were none.
The disclosure comes as the state and Entergy Nuclear, as well as the attorney general's office, are investigating whether Entergy Nuclear executives lied under oath to the Public Service Board last year when they testified during Yankee's relicensing hearings that they knew of no buried pipes containing
radionuclides.
The issue was key during the hearings, because such pipes have led to groundwater contamination at about two dozen other nuclear reactors across the country, and have added greatly to the cost of cleanup of many nuclear sites.
One of the executives, Jay Thayer, has since publicly corrected his statement.
The company, preparing for a meeting with the board Wednesday in Montpelier, said there was a difference between underground piping and underground vaults, which often contain multiple pipes, according to company spokesman Robert Williams.
"No one is saying the company didn't know" there were buried pipes containing radionuclides, Williams said, attributing the problem to lack of communication within the company and "conflicting assumptions."
"We're looking into what they assumed," he said.
The company filed a matrix with the Public Service Board and an affidavit from Norm Rademacher, director of engineering, who said the list describes the underground piping systems as defined under Act 189, which called for the comprehensive inspection of several key systems at the plant, including buried piping containing radionuclides.
While the company spokesman said the matrix was given to a state consultant in 2008, the company couldn't produce the same document last week.
Rademacher included a matrix of the different pipes and said they met the definition of "underground piping system that carries radionuclides" as described in Act 189.
Rademacher said he defined underground piping and tanks as those that "are in direct contact with soil or concrete." This excludes some buried structures at Yankee that have contained the highest level of tritium since the radioactive leak became public two weeks ago.
Such a trench or vault, which is underground and contains pipes, registered tritium levels in excess of 2 million picocuries per liter in one case.
Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and a member of the Public Oversight Panel, as well as a consultant to the Vermont Legislature, said Entergy was using semantics.
"ENVY is saying that if you die and you are put directly in the ground with dirt on top of you, you are buried. But if you die and are put in a casket, you are not buried, but you are 'underground,'" Gundersen said.
Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the coalition, said by his count there were more than 50 buried or subsurface pipes or systems "which Entergy executives and plant staff had previously said do not exist."
Shadis said the coalition's attorney, Jared Margolis, had "pointedly and repeatedly" questioned Thayer and site vice president Michael Columb while on the stand before the Public Service Board.
Shadis said only 300 feet separated the highest level of radioactive contamination, which was found in a concrete vault above the reactor's radwaste system, and the test well, which measures about 28,600 picocuries per liter.
According to the Department of Health's Web site on the radioactive contamination, the first of several new test wells is being drilled next closer to the source.
Shadis said he was glad the issue of the leaking underground pipes was finally bringing an important issue to light.
"It has cracked open the coconut," he said. "We're going to find out what's inside."
susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com
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