Monitoring? We don’t need no stinkin’ monitoring. (UPDATED)

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((bumped, with new info) – promoted by JulieWaters)

Uhm…  right:

The additional monitoring of the nuclear plant’s spent fuel storage was supposed to begin in the spring of 2008 and was required as part of a state license that allows Yankee to store spent fuel in steel and concrete casks. But a spokesman said that officials recently discovered they had failed to set up the monitoring protocol.

But I guess that’s okay as long as we get cheaper power.

UPDATE: the Reformer Herald [sorry!] has more:

Smith said that the state nuclear engineer asked for the results of the high-level waste casks in January, and was told by Entergy that he could review the results at the Vernon plant.

But in June, Entergy Nuclear informed the state that the results didn’t exist because it hadn’t started the monitoring process.

Okay… so it was an “oversight” that was supposedly discovered in June, but we find out about it in August and it came up in January.

Well, I feel much better.

4 thoughts on “Monitoring? We don’t need no stinkin’ monitoring. (UPDATED)”

  1. The extra-dirty secret about the dry cask issue is that the casks themselves may be faulty. A whistleblower at Exelon got fired after he kept pointing out that Holtec, the dry cask manufacturer, was producing defective casks. They were using unqualified people to perform welding, resulting in embrittlement around welds. Apparently the QA on materials wasn’t there either. There were holes in the neutron shielding. And so on. Here’s the link:

    http://www.alternet.org/story/…

    Are any of the dry casks in Vernon manufactured by Holtec? According to the article they were in consideration for VY back in 2003.

  2. The Rutland Herald (not the Reformer) carried the story by Susan Smallheer, who tracked down some comments from the state’s “watchdog agencies”.

    Here are a couple of my favorites:

    Hudson, and regulators at the Department of Public Service, which acts as the ratepayer advocate, said they both relied on the state’s utilities and power companies to comply with state orders and the state didn’t have the manpower to inspect for compliance with rulings.

    and

    Exactly how much radiation is coming from the casks, and adding to the total radiation coming out of the plant is still unknown, because the Department of Health still hasn’t released its 2008 annual report on radiation releases at Yankee. William Irwin, the radiological health chief, didn’t return a call for comment.

    Recap: The state’s “ratepayer advocate”, the Public Service Department, and the state Health Department, negotiated a deal with Entergy Nuclear to monitor temperature and radiation from the Connecticut River Waste Dump.

    The Public Service Board ordered that it be done.

    Then they all forgot about it, because Douglas cut the budgets and there weren’t enough people left to do the work.

  3. A wink ,a blink and a nod and you have your permits .

    Would that someone official point out that this monitoring was required as part of a state license(law).

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