In August after revelations that leaking tritium from Vermont Yankee had reached the Connecticut River shoreline Governor Shumlin called for increased monitoring of the situation. However anyone that assumed Vermont State monitoring and coordination would quickly tighten-up might be mistaken.
A Brattleboro Reformer report about a Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel meeting to review VY disaster response (which VY officials were too busy re-fueling to attend) reveals almost as an afterthought that some State officials were aware a month ago on Sept. 15th that dump trucks are relocating soil/silt material from inside Vermont Yankee to a Vernon gravel pit.
He [Vermont Health Department inspector Bill Irwin] said there was concern that the removal of those materials was not approved, but the inspection found Yankee has a permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to trawl the Connecticut River and typically deposits the silt on site.
Plant officials opted to hire a trucking company to remove the soil because of a lack of space within the station’s boundary after Entergy sold a portion of land to the Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) and instead took the materials to a Vernon gravel pit. Miller said the panel was not informed of the hauling.
According to Irwin, inspectors took photographs of the sediment at the pit and analyzed samples of the soil, testing for hundreds of radioactive materials to identify any byproducts of the plant’s operation.
"What in the soil is what see [sic] in all soils and sediment in the Connecticut River," Irwin said.
It is not made clear when exactly Yankee's Army Corp. permitted river dredging took place.
Seems like prompt knowledge and explanation of this silt/soil relocation is just the kind of thing that would fall front and center for the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel.
