A wee bit of the old glow in the dark?

VPR reports Vermont Yankee has another leak in addition to the latest tritium issue. A high pressure emergency coolant system is leaking small puffs of steam, mild levels of radioactive steam. If it’s not exactly the same as many other times, it’s at least a very familiar chain of events.  

"We're talking about relatively mild levels of radioactivity coming out of here. This is a system connected to the reactor obviously but any radioactive liquid flowing out of here would be at low levels."

   

There was a notable delay in reporting the news to the public as often is the case. Probably unimportant but remember PSD Commissioner David O’Brien recently wondered publicly “How many days until the election?

The leak (called minor by the NRC) was discovered almost a month ago, September 24th and reported to the NRC.    

"Our maintenance department put a maintenance patch on this drain line to make temporary repairs and we have permanent repairs that will be made sometime in the future. But the high pressure injection coolant system is operable. We have no issues whatsoever with the operation of the system and we're considering this routine maintenance that our maintenance department would perform at a nuclear plant on a day to day basis."

 

Tuesday VPR reported poll results showing that statewide 44 percent of those surveyed said they want the plant to close, 39 percent supported re-licensing and 17 percent undecided with an error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.  

29 thoughts on “A wee bit of the old glow in the dark?

  1. To judge by the panoply of VY press releases, no matter what goes wrong, there’s little if any radioactivity, and absolutely no danger to public health. I can only conclude that VY is a spectacular fraud. There’s no actual nukes there, and the core is made of cheese.  

  2. I’d talked to the NRC about relicensing and they told me that Entergy could alter their application during the review process and reduce the proposed extension from 20 years to some smaller, perhaps more politically tenable length.  

    I was thinking that if we could work to mitigate any short term safety issues, they could offer to keep the plant open just a few more years while Vermont implements a comprehensive energy policy, develops a plan to transition the VY workers, etc.  Best economically, with what could have been manageable downsides.  I guess that’s a nonstarter at this point…

  3. I read a story in Reuters that claims VY can continue to run (indefinately ?) if application has not been decided on.

    Could this be why NRC dragging a*s?

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