We’ll begin with the Herald, which has a fairly interesting story about one whistleblower contacting another.  It includes this bit:

The whistleblower told Gundersen that about two years ago the company experienced another tritium leak in the same general location that involved a drain pit in the advanced off-gas system, the same place Entergy Nuclear is now excavating in hopes of finding the problem.

“‘[the] Employee said that in addition to the current tritium leak, there have been other leaks in the advanced off-gas systems in previous years,'” Gundersen wrote to the state Department of Public Service.

[…]

…the employee told him the old leak could not be isolated and a shutdown would have been required to repair the leak, something the company didn’t do.

Instead, the company applied a leak sealant to plug the hole until the complete repair could be done during a refueling outage.

Read the whole piece.  It’s worth reading.

Let’s move on to The Reformer…

An excavation being conducted at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon to help determine the source of a leak of tritiated water was halted Wednesday because “the original plan … is not working, and a new approach is set to begin as soon as materials and safety preparations are in order,” stated the Vermont Department of Health in its daily update on the leak investigation.

A new plan to dig up piping related to the power plant’s advanced off-gas system may be put into action today, stated the DOH.

Shall I summarize?

We have one report that indicates that this has happened before (we, apparently just didn’t know about it) and another report that indicates that it’s not until now that we’re finding out that, yet again, their approach is not working.

I will say again: a lot of what I say about VY is political and I have no problem admitting that.  But in this particular case, it goes so far beyond politics and simply into the realm of human decency.  Shut the plant down until the source of the leak is found.  And then, when the license is up, just shut it down for good.