Entergy takes another step in its campaign to win the trust of Vermonters.
Here's the sequence of events, as reported in today's Brattleboro Reformer.
Step 1: April, 2010–find leaks in three of the actuators for Vermont Yankee's four safety relief valves. Fix the leaks during refueling.
Step 2:
Step 3: Report the event to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on December 22.
Step 4: keep running those sappy “I am Vermont Yankee” ads on TV. Ignore the fact that nobody much cares how nice the employees of Vermont Yankee are, but we care very much about whether they are competent enough to run the plant and honest enough to be trusted with the public health and safety. I keep waiting for them to identify one of their employes as a fork and spoon operator from Sector 7g, but so far no luck.)
Good work for Reformer reporter Bob Audette to come up with this. The source for some of his analysis was an e-mail from Vermont Yankee. Apparently no explanation was available for why the information about the leaks, which VY had in April, or its analysis of the leaks, which they had in October, wasn't disclosed to the NRC until just before Christmas.
Oh, and if you're wondering, the collection of press releases and news updates on the Vermont Yankee web page doesn't say anything about this latest set of leaks. Not even in the section they call “We're all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts”.
Maybe, in Entergy lexicon, “facts” means “stuff we couldn't keep covered up any longer”.
Those commercials are so creepy. Every one that appears on camera acts like zombies.
I get the distinct impression that they don’t believe a word they are saying and it shows on their faces that they are doing irreparable harm to their very souls to read the script.
And, in order to recite those falsehoods on camera, they all have been dosed with massive amounts of some anti-anxiety drugs which makes them all look like they’ve had a lobotomy.
And what is it with the school that they allowed Entergy’s production company to shoot in there? Especially since it’s all lies recited by brain-dead zombies.
after dragging a&ses for many mos, here comes yet another weekend press release. Who knew?
Since Entergy has displayed their propensity of timing the releases of the incidences in this continuing debacle, only releasing one incident shortly before another ‘mishap’ or ‘event’, they routinely come on the heels of another. One would now wonder when the next shoe will drop.
Great catch. Though Mr. Audette pretty much filled in the blanks, many thanks for recognizing the import & bringing this to the forefront.
Although I have been having an eery suspicion something was afoot as my crystal ball has been showing a steady emergence of cloudy images, my cat could have seen this coming.
Not too difficult to recognize that any structure which has continued to fall apart for many years, obviously is not going fix itself. Most definately not a nuclear power plant which needs a $100 million condenser for starters.
In one of the recent reports, VY POP or Fairewinds, said that pipes were corroding from the inside out & that it is also microbial. Metal fatigue & embrittlement cannot be stopped.
Given these facts, VY may not make it to 2012 much less 2032. How these knowledgable engineers can be claiming it can run for 20 more years after that is far beyond the pale.
*crosspost
– Issue Brief –
UCS: No Relief for Vermont Yankee, PDF including diagram
No Relief for Vermont Yankee
On December 22, 2010, Vermont Yankee’s owner informed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that workers had determined during the recent refueling outage that two of the four main steam safety relief valves had problems likely rendering them inoperable during the prior operating cycle.
http://www.evacuationplans.org…
– crosspost
like wikileaks, without the sex and international intrigue, and on every friday night!