It looks like Entergy has another high-profile state fight coming to a head about now.
'Seems even Massachusetts State Senator Robert Hedlund of Weymouth, a Republican, is joining nuclear opponents in an effort to derail relicensing of another Fukushima era relic like Vermont Yankee; the Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station in Weymouth.
Besides the inherent design flaws of the Mark 1 reactor, and it's advanced age, State officials are concerned about an overcrowded spent fuel pool, which, though designed to hold just 880 of the highly radioactive spent fuel rods, will soon reach 3,859 units with no likelihood of transfer to dry cask storage.
Like VY, the 40-year old plant has experienced troublesome issues due to equipment failure and human error.
"I've heard clearly from my members that they would rather strike than accept Entergy's ongoing efforts to cost shift medical coverage and change their working conditions," UWUA President Daniel Hurley said. "This vote is absolutely critical to the safety of our communities and the well-being of our members."
The good folks who work at Pilgrim have apparently given some thought to the safety of the three million people who live within 50 miles of the plant. That fifty-mile radius represents the evacuation zone that U.S. officials said should have been observed at Fukushima.
Opponents to relicensing recognize that it would be quite impossible to evacuate that population, which includes Boston, should the worst come to pass. My son currently lives in Boston. Trying to navigate in, around, and out of the city on the best of days is challenging.
In the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, relicensing the Mark 1 reactor at Vermont Yankee was an act of irresponsibility on the part of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Considering how much larger is the scale of the affected population, that level of irresponsibility is many times greater when it comes to blithely relicensing Pilgrim.
Now you see it, now you don't. Here's your $6 million; I'll put it under one of these three cups. Now I shuffle them around. Okay, where's the money? If you can guess, it's yours.
Last week, Entergy filed a statement with the Vermont Public Service Board agreeing to comply with the requirements for its recently-expired license while the board considers whether to okay continued operation of Vermont Yankee. VTDigger, April 3:
The filing states: "Entergy VY agrees with the Department that 3 V.S.A. § 814(b) applies and that, pursuant to that provision-which keeps intact Entergy's existing certificates of public good pending the Board's determination of Entergy VY's petition for a certificate of public good authorizing post-March 21, 2012 operations-Entergy VY must comply with the conditions in the existing certificates of public good that the Department lists at pages 7-9 of its cross-motion."
Those conditions include paying into the [Clean Energy Development] Fund, which has received around $6 million each year from Entergy through a generating tax.
Seems simple, no? Entergy agrees to meet the terms of its license, including the $6 million annual payment.
Last week, a spokesman for Entergy told VTDigger.org that a story stating the company's filing meant Entergy would continue to make payments to the fund "got it wrong."
(Late breaking add: Entergy has agreed to continue paying the $6 million. Thus thoroughly destroying whatever was left of the business leaders' complaint.)
Somebody call an amberlamps! Vermont's business leaders got it bad, and that ain't good. A mass outbreak of BKS (Bunched Knicker Syndrome, an inflated sense of discomfort experienced by the high and mighty), as reported by Vermont Digger:
Business groups took a stand Wednesday against a provision in a miscellaneous tax bill that would require Vermont Yankee to pay $6 million in taxes to fund education, the Clean Energy Development Fund and a fund to help Windham County plan for the plant's closure.
...At a press conference on Wednesday, the Vermont Energy Partnership and Associated Industries of Vermont said the tax was "arbitrary."
"Arbitrary", you say? Let's see now... the tax replaces Vermont Yankee's pre-March 21 obligation to pay money into the Clean Energy Development Fund. That obligation was part of its state license, which of course expired on March 21. But the plant keeps humming along (at a reduced rate, thanks to those gummed-up condensers). So the tax bill re-establishes an existing payment. What's the opposite of "arbitrary"?
William Driscoll, vice president of the Associated Industries of Vermont, which represents manufacturing businesses, said the tax is going after a captive industry in Vermont that cannot move its business elsewhere.
Oh, would that it could!
After the jump, more baseless whining and a Tiger tale.
I have added information from the Rutland Herald after the jump in addition to the original diary.BP
Well Entergy's Vermont Yankee continues what could well become a series of 40th anniversary celebratory repair events, including a hopefully festive epoxy removal from the malfunctioning condenser unit. What do you get a nuclear power plant for its 40th anniversary? Perhaps a traditional gift such as a Ruby or Garnett? Maybe something useful, a new condenser or dry casks might be a safe bet.
Susan Smallheer at the Rutland Herald is doing a great job of keeping this story alive but got to kick the rest of Vermont media in the knees. Only six days ago the big demonstration at the plant was big all over Vermont news now the media seems to have moved on.
original diary starts: As of this morning, Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee is operating at only 31% of capacity, while attempts are made to clean up the mess they've made of their condenser.
Susan Smallheer in the Rutland Herald has the details as of Monday, hidden behind a paywall.
Key quote:
The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is again operating at reduced power, and has been ever since its 40th anniversary last week, because of continuing problems with its condenser, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In its continuing effort to defer needed maintenance and postpone spending, ENVY wants to wait till 2016 to replace the condenser. Replacement is projected to cost between $150 million and $200 million.
Last Fall, Entergy coated the condenser tubes with epoxy in an effort to continue operating with worn out equipment. In what seems to have come as a surprise to ENVY, coating the tubes reduced their heat transfer ability to such a degree that the reactor has been forced to cut power repeatedly.
Now ENVY has begun the laborious process of removing the recently applied epoxy.
If I revisit the topic of nuclear energy frequently, it is only because the surrounding issues remain so distressingly unresolved both here in Vermont and in Japan; and because new and concerning information seems to be discovered on far too regular a basis.
Case in point: it appears that the inadequacy of established evacuation zones for nuclear plants in Japan has been known to officials both here and in Japan since quite some time.
The agency, under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (of Japan), argued that expansion of the zones "could cause social unrest and increase popular anxiety," emails released by the commission showed.
It seems likely that this culture of rationalized deniability is as pervasive among U.S. regulators as it was in Japan.
The effectiveness of Vermont Yankee's evacuation plan in light of lessons that could be learned from Fukushima is one of a number of issues that were never considered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in their hurried decision to relicense VY, made less than 72 hours after the accident.
In the latest video from Fairewinds Assoc., Arnie Gundersen reports that five random soil samples he personally collected in Tokyo and brought back to the U.S. for testing, all registered levels of contamination that, were they considered under U.S. regulations, would have required shipment to Texas for disposal by the DOD. As he points out, the reactors at Fukushima were twice as distant from that nation's capitol as are ten different nuclear plants to Washington, DC.
He argues that, in considering any application for reactor licensing, whether for a new or old build, the NRC must include in its cost/benefit analysis, the costs associated with permanent loss, should the homes, farms, industrial sites, forest and natural resources become so contaminated by accident that they are lost from usefulness for the forseeable future.
As the Messenger doesn't share its "Letters" online, suffice it to say this was my response not only to a letter from Mr. January that appeared in the March 19 paper, but also to the full page ad that Entergy ran in the Messenger last week and Emerson Lynn's editorial on the subject that is referenced by Mr. January.
Richard January, who blames the state for its efforts to close Vermont Yankee when the original 40-year operating license expires Thursday, failed to disclose in his Letter to the Editor, that he is the Senior Lead Engineer at the facility.
Unlike Mr. January, I have no professional ties either to the industry or to the legislature; so I am free to visit the "elephant in the room" which the State is not even allowed to acknowledge. I refer, of course, to the fact that continued operation of Vermont Yankee is simply unsafe.
The facility operates precisely the same reactor design as that of Fukushima 1; but rather than reserve judgment about Vermont Yankee's safety until after some of the questions raised by the Fukushima failures could be answered, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission went ahead and rubber-stamped Vermont Yankee's permit to operate within two days after the Japanese disaster. They didn't even bother to inspect Vermont Yankee before issuing a new operating license.
I'm not going to waste a lot of time and space here explaining all the design flaws that figured into the chain of accident at Fukushima. That information is readily available at a growing number of reputable sites on the internet. It is only necessary to say that most of those design flaws were known both to TEPCO and the NRC for over thirty years, which is why GE BWR Mark 1 reactors have been eliminated as a design option for new reactors since then.
Completely apart from the flawed designs, there is the fact of Entergy's lack of transparency and mismanagement of countless condition issues at the geriatric facility, which would not have been tolerated in a properly functioning regulatory environment.
Any debate over nuclear power will have one side insisting that it's a "cheap and environmentally responsible" source of energy, with the other side countering that it isn't cheap unless heavily subsidized in the construction phase, and that its "responsible" credential has recently come very much into doubt.
But proponents have, so far, successfully kept the mainstream media from linking to the elephant in the room: the issue of what to do with the waste.
That question was never even raised in a recent high-profile PBS Frontline story that has been questioned for its apparent industry bias.
The program looked at the prospects of nuclear energy, post-Fukushima, and seemed to be arguing that any country that chooses, as Germany has, to withdraw from the nuclear school is behaving irrationally and will live to regret the decision, since they can not possibly function off the nuclear grid. Of course, even as the program was aired, Japan was demonstrating rather well how to do just that in the face of an economic crisis that was generated by a natural disaster but compounded by the mismanagement of its nuclear industry.
The good people of Japan have another dilemma on their hands, though. As an industrialized island nation that, for forty years, was heavily invested in nuclear energy to supply its power needs, the waste issue now rears its ugly head.
Spent fuel from Japanese power generation is currently finding temporary storage in on-site pools at reactor sites, but TEPCO has plans to move these materials to the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant in Mutsu City, Aomori Prefecture. The facility was still in the construction phase when the disaster occurred at Fukushima, causing the work to be suspended. As planned, reprocessing at the plant could not, in any case, have handled all the waste being produced, and there is currently no alternative in sight.
TEPCO wants to resume construction of the plant, but locals are concerned that, if reprocessing and reuse never actually occurs, (which grows more and more likely as nuclear power falls from favor in Japan), the Rokkasho facility could become the final dumping ground for massive amounts of nuclear waste; a use for which it was never designed.
Entergy might be careful what it wishes for in future. After badgering the Public Service Board for months to take action on the issue of a Certificate of Public Good for Vermont Yankee, they are getting their wish; but it isn't working out for them quite as they had envisioned.
pattern of human errors at the Vernon reactor during the past 15 months.
Miller lists five errors, ranging from failure to remove a plastic cover from a pump before it was installed to inaccurately measuring the dose rate from a shipment of radioactive waste.
Weighing in on the probable outcome of the Public Service Board's decision regarding continued operation of Vermont Yankee, Governor Shumlin says he is optimistic that the Board will refuse to sign-off on the twenty year extension of VY's permit to operate.
"I want to shut the plant down on schedule and I'm disappointed that it's not going to be shut down next week but I'm hoping that we can get a decision from the Public Service Board that will bring that about as quickly as we can. I think it's in Vermonters best interests - look, we're not even buying power from the plant anymore."
If the Public Service Board denies Entergy a Certificate of Public Good and the issue of relicensing is appealed to the US Supreme Court, it is still unclear whether or not Vermont Yankee could continue to operate in defiance of the PSB until a final ruling comes from the Supremes...which would probably mean years more of progressive decrepitude and consequences at the geriatric facility.
The push is on to get a Cerificate of Public Good from the Public Service Board before there is a ruling on the appeal of Vermont Yankee/Entergy vs. the State of Vermont, and, in the interim, to block the PSB from acting to close the plant on schedule. Entergy's pulling out all the stops to court flagging public support for continued operation.
I don't know if other local papers carried it, but last night the Messenger boasted a full-page ad from Vermont Yankee telling us why, on the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, we shouldn't give the safety of VY another thought because they are on the case!
Was this deliberately timed to distract the public from that elephant in the corner, the plant's poor prognosis for reliability, so that the conversation visibly revolves around an issue over which the State has no jurisdiction? Maybe that's giving them more credit than they are due.
In any case, as Stardust alerted us several days ago, that old black magic "reliability" recently reared its ugly head again when a system failure forced a down-scaling of service.
Now that we have a better idea of what was involved, we thought it was time to revisit the incident on GMD's front page. VTdigger yesterday reported on the technical issue, involving a key component, that forced Vermont Yankee to begin operating at reduced capacity. Explaining that the role of the condenser is to act somewhat like a radiator, Digger reports that its functionality was compromised in the following way:
Last November, during a planned refueling outage, plant workers applied a protective coating - an epoxy or plastic - to the tubing in the condenser... At the beginning of February, nuclear engineers at the plant discovered that the the thermal heat exchange efficiency of the condenser was greatly reduced. Last week, the plant had to lower its power production by 50 percent because back pressure was building up in the condenser.
Apparently, the coating applied to extend the life of the condenser, which dates to the plant's start-up 40 years ago, compromised the "efficiency" of the system. In this case "efficiency" refers to its ability to operate without a pressure build-up.
...And in the very competitive category of "I Told You So," the winner is...Arnie Gundersen.
I think this deserves high visibility here on GMD.
It pretty much speaks for itself, but can be supplemented with the many pieces we have featured here over the past years.
It has been my privilege to share with our readers the excellent analysis provided in a series of videos that can be viewed on Fairewinds Associates website.
Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds is featured in the CNN report.
The person who wrote the following Vermont State webpage’s wintertime recreation press release“Fishing is Hot on Lake Champlain… and some memorable fish have been caught in recent weeks” probably didn’t have strontium or cesium in mind. But it certainly blends well with the Vermont chief radiologist’s news that a fish from Northwestern Vermont’s Lake Carmi tested positive for low levels of strontium-90 and cesium-137. The preliminary results are in the same range as found last August in a Connecticut River fish near Vermont Yankee. Bill Irwin, chief of radiological health for the Vermont Department of Health says this provides proof of what he had already decided … err hypothesized:
"We take this as some evidence that all fish in Vermont are likely to have radioactive cesium and strontium at these levels and that, as we’ve hypothesized, it is from nuclear weapons fallout and the releases of Chernobyl. All of us are glad to have proof and not just conjecture."
Good news! Call the tourist board to announce all the Vermont fish contain radioactive strontium 90 and cesium! However, if this shows the Lake Carmi fish was contaminated by nuclear weapons fallout and the Chernobyl disaster I shouldn’t think it takes our leaking Vermont Yankee out of contention as an additional source for contamination of Connecticut River fish.
The Lake Carmi fish had cesium in edible and inedible parts, and strontium only in the sample's bones, head, fins and scales. By comparison, the Vermont Yankee fish had high levels of strontium 90 in the bones and small but measurable levels in the meat.
A fish taken from the Connecticut River in 2010 had the highest levels of strontium-90 in bone that his department has seen in any samples.
"In that same sample we did find very low but measurable amounts of strontium-90 in the meat of the fish," said Irwin, which could have been a sampling or contamination error. "But we don’t know that."
The Lake Carmi fish as "proof" (not all "evidence" is "proof") reminds me of the line from the Nick Danger comedy skit where a supposed time traveler says “I have proof I’ve been to Ancient Greece! See, look at this grape!”The Vermont chief radiologist found a grape.
Just remember, Bill Irwin is a culturally-sensitve guy looking out for you and your radiological health:
"There’s no danger in eating the fish," said Irwin. "Should we ever find that there are reasons to restrict diet from any sampling for any kind of radioactive or toxicological events, we would keep in mind different cultures have different diets."
Just the kind of thing you like to peruse over brunch. From the Saturday Feb. 4 Brattleboro Reformer:
Entergy demands $4.6 million from the state
Yup, they want to be reimbursed for legal costs associated with their lawsuit over Vermont's denial of a license extension. Oh, and in case you were thinking about causing any more trouble?
"(The $4.62 million) amount is likely to increase if the fee petition is extensively litigated and/or Defendants appeal the Judgment," wrote Entergy's attorneys.
Been quite a couple of weeks for our good neighbor and provider of safe, clean, reliable power. They win the suit, they try to limit tritium testing, they demand that the Public Service Board immediately approve the 20-year extension. Can we look forward to 20 more years of corporate intransigence and bullying? Mebbe so:
...because Entergy prevailed against the state, the legal relationship between the two parties was "materially altered and was judicially sanctioned."
There's a marker for you. The Entergy/Vermont relationship has been "materially altered." Which seems to be a lawyerly way of saying, "You tried to f*ck with us, you lost, we own you." So says Pat Parenteau of the Vermont Law School:
"If there was any doubt about Entergy's scorched-earth policy toward the state of Vermont, it's been resolved," he said. "When you couple this motion with the motion to the Public Service Board, which is 'Give us our certificate of public good and give it to us now,' it's an in-your-face kind of move."
I guess we won't be seeing any more touchy-feely "I am Vermont Yankee" ad campaigns. Let's just hope the "scorched earth" stays completely in the rhetorical realm.
The NRC is feeling good about itself.Sounding pumped, like a lean mean nuclear regulatin’ machine on their "blog" where they declare:
“When the NRC says we consider new and significant information, we mean it.”
The story is, errors in recently submitted information were found during a review process for equipment replacement at an existing plant in the Southern US. Based on this new significant information the NRC found that designs for a new Economic Simplified Boiling-Water Reactor (ESBWR) plant might have similar errors. What’s the upshot of these NRC discoveries? It could mean the NRC must revise reports and/or have the applicants make changes to design control documents which will delay their final decision on design certification. New information comes to light, consideration given to the new facts, followed by regulatory action. Has a watchdog stirred?
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.
Well, it looks like the way is clear for 20 more years of "safe, clean, reliable power" with absolutely "no threat to public health or safety." Yesterday's ruling by federal judge Garvan Murtha was pretty much a slam-dunk victory for Entergy and Vermont Yankee. Sure, Vermont could appeal, but it'd be a costly process with an uncertain outcome. Today on WDEV's Mark Johnson Show, Vermont Law School Professor Cheryl Hanna said that the state would have little to no chance at overturning Murtha's decision. And there seems to be nothing the Legislature can do to change things.
(Addendum, Saturday 1/21. A differing opinion, reported in the Comments to this post by Doug Hoffer:
I heard one of her colleagues from the VLS say something quite different on VPR this morning. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals could very well look askance at Judge Murtha's attempt to read the minds of legislators. Prof. Parenteau (sp?) said he put the state's chances at 50 - 50.
That is more encouraging than Hanna's outlook. I'm almost certain we'll get the chance to find out; appealing the decision is pretty much a political no-brainer for Shumlin, whether a reversal is likely or not.)
I have a few thoughts about this, and welcome yours in the comments below.
-- Was the agreement giving the state a say in license extension just a big scam all along? No other state had any such deal with a nuclear power plant; regulation is otherwise the province of the feds. So was Vermont's agreement doomed from the start? Was Entergy willing to sign it because, deep down, it knew it could go to court and get the deal tossed out? Did the Legislature accept the deal knowing it might be nothing more than a fig leaf? Were they misled by leadership, or too clueless to realize the fact? I can't say; I didn't live in Vermont at the time. I'd be glad for some historical perspective.
-- Will our plucky Ethan Allen Institute conservatives be all up in arms over this trampling of states' rights? Mmmm, probably not. Hypocrites. Moving on...
-- Is it time to start a "Dump Bill Sorrell" movement? He got his ass kicked but good on this one. Maybe he was playing a weak hand, but hey, when a football team loses, the coach and the quarterback get the blame. (His losing streak also includes the state's campaign finance law.) And let us not forget his issuance of a free pass allowing the Hartford Police Department to commit mayhem in the name of keeping the peace, topped off by his opinion that "there is no right to resist an arrest, even an illegal one."
(And maaan, did he sound stupid and clueless on the radio this morning, when Mark Johnson was questioning him about Murtha's ruling. If you didn't catch it live, Mark podcasts his shows on his website. (Google "Mark Johnson Show.") He usually posts fresh audio within a day or two. Sorrell was on right at the beginning of the first hour today.)
I'd call for a Sorrell version of the GMD Oddsmaker if not for The Salmon Theorem: The voters of Vermont will blindly re-elect incumbents unless/until they (a) commit felonies or (b) die.
And I'm not sure about (b).
-- In a moment of pure political cynicism, I find myself thinking that the decision is a big fat win-win for Governor Shumlin. He gets credit for vocally opposing Vermont Yankee, but he doesn't have to deal with the consequences of an actual closure.
But I'm sure that evaluating a politician on the basis of cynicism is completely unfair.
I am Seamus, and I am grateful to be riding on the roof.
"Gift" is the German word for poison. That bit of trivia sprang to mind when I came across a piece in the, "oh by the way" section of today's Free Press (corner pocket, 3c) informing us that, just in time for Christmas, "a small amount" of tritium has been found in the Connecticut river.
The nuclear plant says it learned Tuesday that a small amount of tritium was found in a sample taken near the plant on Nov. 3. The amount was significantly below the federal drinking water limit, and samples taken Nov. 7 and 10 showed no signs of tritium.
Absent from this statement is whether or not those benign samples taken November 7 and 10 were the only other samples taken since that date.
As the mandated closing approaches in March, there is a sense of desperation to VY's PR efforts. Like an aging spinster she wraps her boney frame in economic illusion and insists you'll miss her when she's gone.
Hold the presses! There's been another incident report from Vermont Yankee. Only this one took two months for the NRC report to appear, and it clearly illustrates that there were significant safety and reliability concerns at the time:
LOSS OF VITAL AC POWER WHILE SHUTDOWN
"This 60-day telephone notification is being made pursuant to 10CFR50.73(a)(2)(iv)(A) and 10CFR50.73(a)(1) to describe an invalid actuation of a containment heat removal system.
"On October 11, 2011, with the reactor shutdown for refueling, a partial loss of vital AC power was experienced which resulted in a loss of shutdown cooling as well as PCIS group 2, 3, 4, and 5 half isolations. The actuation was determined to be invalid as it occurred because a breaker supplying power to the 'A' vital AC was manually opened, resulting in actuation of the associated PCIS logic circuitry. The Group 4 actuation resulted in a complete isolation of the single train Residual Heat Removal shutdown cooling suction path. The shutdown cooling path was isolated for approximately 12 minutes resulting in a coolant temperature increase of approximately 2 degrees F. At the time of the event, the reactor cavity was flooded with the spent fuel pool gates removed and the normal fuel pool cooling system in operation to provide reactor cavity cooling. Based on this, there was no impact on public health and safety."
The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.
That's one hell of a temperature climb in just twelve minutes!
Vermont Yankee missed the golden opportunity to use their "Friday Flash" model to share their latest misadventure with the public in a more timely manner.
Apparently, this event actually occurred last Friday, December 2; so it will be interesting to see how long it takes for it to grind its way into the Free Press.
"While hanging tags on the 'B' Diesel Generator, which was tagged out for maintenance, the operator mistakenly entered the 'A' Diesel Generator Room and tripped the 'A' Diesel Generator fuel rack, making it inoperable. At this time both diesels were inoperable placing the plant in a 24 Hour LCO.
"When the fuel rack was tripped alarms were received in the control room, the operator was immediately contacted and the problem was identified and corrected. Total LCO time was approximately 2 minutes."
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.
A recent report to the State of Vermont on Entergy’s Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust fund shows the value continues to fall short, failing to meet projected requirements. The trust fund six month ago, at the end of April was $498,546,853. It was up slightly in May and then declined steadily. The fund as of the end of September 2011 was $472,346,906. This is a six month loss in value of almost $27 million.
The Vermont Yankee decommissioning fund was at $304 million in 2002 when Entergy of Louisiana purchased the plant. Entergy has not contributed to the fund which is intended to cover clean-up, fuel management and site restoration when Yankee closes. According topast projections the decommissioning fund was supposed to have been $464 million by 2008 but has languished in recent years. It continues to be way below Entergy’s 2007 estimated plant decommissioning costs of $656 million to $991 million.
concluded that the current requirement for the State to review the adequacy of the trust fund to meet all cleanup obligations every five years is not frequent enough.
The new policy apparently is for the State to watch Entergy's decommissioning trust fund’s value fall in real time, rather than slow motion.
The NRC is feeling good about itself.Sounding pumped, like a lean mean nuclear regulatin’ machine 
