Well, our good neighbors at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant are at it again. Report from the Associated Press, which came to my computer by way of the Huffington Post:

Energy Corp.’s Vermont Yankee nuclear plant once again is refusing the state’s request that it conduct more tests for radioactive tritium ikn a former drinking water well on the plant grounds.

Christopher Wamser, site vice president for plant owner Entergy, says in a Jan. 20 letter to Public Service Commissioner Elizabeth Miller that such testing would be inappropriate because it could contaminate the bedrock aquifer at the bottom of the well and might not produce reliable results.

Well, all righty then. The fine folks at Entergy are simply trying to protect the environment. (Not that they haven’t argued all along that tritium poses no danger to public health and safety, so a bit o’tritium in the groundwater shouldn’t be a problem, should it?)

Read further in the story, and you discover that the problem isn’t necessarily with testing the well water — it’s with the type of testing VY wants to do. Its preferred method involves purging the well, which could force tritium-tainted water into the aquifer.

The state’s preferred method is to take a “grab sample” from the well. No purging, no pumping, no danger of spreading contaminated water. Wamser argues that this sampling technique might produce inaccurate results: “vertical flow within the well and insertion of the sampling equipment could cause mixing within the well column…”

But state geologist Lawrence Becker says he checked with the EPA, who assured him that the “grab sample” method is perfectly fine, and should produce a representative result.

Oh, and one more thing.

Wamser’s Jan. 20 letter came one day after a federal judge in Brattleboro issued a ruling saying Vermont may not force its lone nuclear plant to shut down when its initial 40-year license expires March 21.

Pure coincidence, I’m sure.