Update:  A story in the The Rutland Herald identifies the engineer who gave the misleading responses to the Panel as David McElwee, Entergy’s public liaison officer, and has VY officials admitting that they “should have been more thorough” in responding to the Public Oversight Panel’s questions. The Herald quotes from an August 13 e-mail sent by McElwee to panel member Arnie Gundersen, state nuclear engineer, Uldis Vanags, and Sarah Hofmann, public advocacy director for the Department of Public Service:

As for your outstanding question on underground piping goes, Act 189 requested that an underground piping system carrying radionuclides be part of the inspection…we have none. Since this is not an item active in the review of … recommendations, we consider this issue closed.

In a press release, Gundersen states that

The Panel was informed that there were no systems with underground piping that carry radioactivity at VY

It seems that Entergy just can’t quit stepping all over its own feet in the effort to court approval for a VY license extension. In light of the recent revelation that there has been a tritium contamination of groundwater at Vermont Yankee, it appears that ENVY was less than forthcoming in its representation to the Vermont Yankee Public Oversight Panel in 2008 that there was no radioactivity in VY’s underground pipe system.

The Panel’s findings include this admonishment:

The Panel recommended the following adjustments for the scope identified in Section 3 of Act 189:

1. The Panel was informed that there were no systems with underground  piping that carry radioactivity at VY.  Therefore the Panel recommended that the review of the service water system, Act 189 §3(6) (“a cooling system dependent upon Connecticut River water”), which has buried nonradioactive piping, specifically include a review of ENVY’s Buried Pipe and Tank Inspection Program.

Despite these recommendations, (which represented a legislative mandate) no such review of ENVY’s Buried Pipe and Tank Inspection Program was apparently ever undertaken, and  ENVY’s clean pipe assertions were simply taken at face value!  It is my understanding that Envy insisted to the Panel that both the piping leading to the Condensate Storage Tank and the CST itself could not possibly leak as they were completely embedded in concrete.   ‘Sounds to me like someone might have deliberately mislead the Legislative Panel.  Now that ain’t right.

One can’t help but wonder what other discrepancies in ENVY’s representation to the Panel remain to be discovered.