( – promoted by GMD)

“Entergy Vermont Yankee invites media to an important announcement …”

That’s what the press release said, so I went to the Vernon reactor site for the new media, greenmountaindaily.com.

As I stood in line to sign in, Larry Smith, head flack onsite for the aging reactor, recognized me and asked what I was doing there. I replied that I was there as a member of the media to cover the event for Green Mtn Daily. “No, you’re an activist. You didn’t get an invitation.”

I certainly did get an invitation. That’s how I knew about the event. But Larry insisted I hadn’t gotten a personal invitation. I scanned the list of attendees as I signed in. Of the 15-20 people in attendance, a third or more were Entergy employees. Most of the rest were members of the old media outlets: Herald, Reformer, Sentinel, Freep, Channel 44. A couple were from the Windham Regional Commission. These were the “key stakeholders” for this “special briefing”.

During this time, my Entergy minder had switched from the Media officer to the Security officer. After more discussion about online media and threats of arrest, I took Entergy’s pre-printed press release and left.

So enough about me. What was the “important announcement” Entergy Nuclear had in mind?

Nothing much new. What we’ve been hearing for weeks:

“Entergy today announced it has identified and stopped the source of tritium leakage…”

The press release continues with more big news, “… Entergy’s Ex. VP, Operations, Mark Savoff expressed regret the leak had occurred.”

No mention that Entergy replaced the underground or buried piping at its Palisades, MI reactor, or any plans to do the same at the older Vernon reactor.

A trifling amount of soil, (“about 150 cubic feet”) compared to the total contaminated area (well over one million cubic feet), will be removed as radioactive waste.

Short version of Entergy Nuclear’s “important announcement“: Once Again, Too Little, Too Late.

This leak occurred when two uninspected pipes, providing redundancy for the reactor’s Advanced Off Gas system, both failed. How long ago has not been determined.

When these two pipes failed, the leaking radioactive water should have been taken up by a sump pump. But the pump failed because it was clogged with muck and concrete dust. Then the radioactive water leaked out through joints in the concrete that surrounded the pipe array. The joints were supposed to have been sealed to prevent such leakage.

This is the kind of multiple, cascading series of failures that caused Entergy’s earlier transformer fire and cooling tower collapse. There’s no indication that Entergy Nuclear is taking real steps to prevent something similar from happening again. The next failure will probably be in a different system. It may have already started, but not yet been detected.

Keep your fingers crossed, seat belts fastened, and evacuation bags packed. The next 23 months may be bumpy.