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"VERNON - The Department of Health said late Monday there appears to be "a very large area" at the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor contaminated with radioactive tritium, and contamination levels continue to rise." //David: A picocurie is to a curie as a penny is to 10 BILLION DOLLARS, and a curie is not even a very large unit of measure. A curie of tritium weighs just 0.1 milligrams.? //What can this conceivably do to allay concerns of someone who knows nothing of curies as a measure of relative hazard - "not even a very large unit of measure"? William Irwin, radiological health chief, is quoted in the article as saying that there are many potential sources of radioactive water at this particularly high concentration of tritium. High levels. Is he incompetent? Is the nuclear industry acceding to ridiculously low levels of endangerment in the federal standards? The level of contamination recorded on Monday was 2.52 million picocuries per liter of water. The federal standard for drinking water is 20,000 picocuries per liter, according to the article and David doesn't respond to this assertion. Is that a standard that was reached by compromise with the industry as it's reasonable to assume? That's on the face of it an enormous disparity. And saying that the test wells are not used for drinking water doesn't pass the smell test. Everyone in the area has drinking water wells, apparently, likely of varying depth - so far untested, also according to the article, although the few deep water wells tested so far, it doesn't say where or how many, have tested tritium-free. The indications in the article are that very few have so far been tested. He said the area of contamination was roughly from the reactor building to the Connecticut River. //Connecticut River? That's the largest river in New England, flowing through Vermont, New Hampshire, Western Massachusetts, and finally emptying into Long Island Sound - flowing through farm and urban areas for miles before it reaches the ocean. He said another groundwater monitoring well was in the final stages of being put into use and more wells might be drilled to help define the plume of contamination. //Might be? The article states that the leakage was discovered in November in one of three 2007 monitoring wells! "The first indication of the contamination showed up in November in one of three 2007 monitoring wells and the levels quickly rose starting in January. New wells, closer to the reactor and turbine buildings, show contamination in extremely high levels." Irwin said it was too early to say how long the leak or leaks had been active. "It could be months or even a year or two," he said. "We have to uncover pipes and see what's leaking. And get a better image of flow times and flow directions," he said. Water flows west to east on the site, toward the Connecticut River. Some of the monitoring wells are 15 to 20 feet from the river, while others are 100 feet or 200 feet away from the river. //15 or 20 feet from the river! What is known for sure about ground seepage of hazardous materials? Irwin said the Health Department is starting to test wells at private residences along Gov. Hunt Road, where Vermont Yankee is sited. He said all of the private wells the state is testing are within a quarter of a mile of the plant and the point of the highest level of contamination. //"Starting to test wells." Hang by your thumbs, neighbors. Don't panic. Just sit back and let your trusted experts handle things. Irwin said the state was looking to add five or six private residences to the state's weekly testing program, but he said the state had to get landowners' permissions. He said the department wanted to publish those test results, with the names of the individual homes kept confidential. //Five or six at a time out of how many? He said the Department of Health is testing private wells at Vernon Elementary School, which he estimated was just under a quarter of a mile of the contamination. The state is also testing water at two area farms - the Miller farm, which he said was about a quarter of a mile north of the plant, and the Blodgett farm, which, he said, was a mile from the plant "as the crow flies." In addition, the Vernon Green nursing home and residential center is also being tested, he said. He estimated Vernon Green was about a half-mile south of the plant. //Public schools and nursing homes! Why does this statement of David's seem, in view of the above, grossly disingenuous to me: "That means that anti-nuclear activists are seriously advocating shutting down a power plant with a proven history of providing a reliable, affordable, emission free source of 620 Megawatts of electricity into a New England power grid that needs the power just because some samples of water from a well that is not used for drinking water contains 0.0000000000075 grams of tritium in 1000 grams of water. The saddest part is that there are politicians who seem willing to go along and bend to the pressure." Recitation of meaningless measures of unknown hazards without dealing with the statements of allowable standards quoted in the article gives me no reassurance whatsoever. "Reliable." To whom and to what standard? "Affordable." At what real cost? "Activists?" As opposed to what "activism" on behalf of the nuclear industry? I remember vividly Willard Libby, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, in the 50s telling those downwind from testing, in Nevada and in southern Utah, that the level of contamination was no greater than atmospheric quantities. We know well that this reassurance to the unwary was negligently, criminally false and that many deaths, deformities and generational defects resulted to the hapless residents of the area - and continuing. I had a dear friend when I lived in Tucson who was very alarmed when told by employees that a plant close to her home was using tritium in manufacturing I think watches and that there was no one minding the store as far as she knew. Several years later she died of leukemia, with no history of the disease in her family. Anecdotal, yes. But given the execrable history of this technology, its management by corporate hacks, and government flacks in their service, whose primary concern has to be, on pain of their replacement, return on investment, there's a helluva lot of explaining to do and it's not being done to my satisfaction. Is that unfair? The exasperation quotient David displays doesn't help a bit. Although the article raises many more questions in my mind, Les's list of questions may be a fair place to start: David: i know you can do better than this Adams guy... 1. how many sampling wells surround the power plant? what fraction of the perimeter is effectively sampled? 2. why are the levels rising in the last couple weeks? where is the stuff leaking from? 3. what is possibility levels are higher between the sampling wells? this article claims new wells were dug to look for the source of the leak...which implies that measured levels are not necessarily the worst case. thems the issues, not whether these particular levels are dangerous, yet. Ralph ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
