Tritium Leak At Vermont Nuclear Plant Grows
mdsolar writes "The tritium leak into ground water at Vermont Yankee has now tested at 775,000 picocuries per liter, 37 times higher than the federal drinking water standard. 'Despite the much higher reading, an NRC spokeswoman said Thursday there was nothing to fear. "There's not currently, nor is there likely to be, an impact on public health or safety or the environment," the NRC's Diane Screnci said in an interview. She had maintained previously that the Environmental Protection Agency drinking water safety limit of 20,000 picocuries per liter had an abundance of caution built into it. ... The National Academy of Sciences said in 2005 that any exposure to ionizing radiation from an isotope like tritium elevates the risk of cancer, though it also said with small exposures, the risk would be low. ' At what level should the NRC shut down the troubled plant?"
Way to shoot yourself in the foot. Why aren't those leaks taken care of fast, whether they are or aren't actually dangerous? We've had enough issues with fear of nuclear power, no need to let such stories grow out of proportions. Otherwise, we'll never see the US convert to nuclear power instead of gas and coal.
Oh, wait...
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Surely there's plenty of potential for making heavy water (d2o), right?
Actually, the latest reading was 2.7 million picocuries: http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/87126/
Bradley Holt
The article says the levels in the well from before doubled and are still below the federal level. Levels at another existing well dropped. And a new well was drilled to try to find the leak and it has a much higher concentration of tritium.
Unless you're drinking from the new well (and no one is, it's a test well), this doesn't really affect you at all. It's not like you're getting 37x as much radiation now (at least as far as the data we have says). And it's part of the process of finding the leak and fixing it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
We have a limit, apparently, but of course we do not act in case we go over it.
Is the limit still a limit in that case?
As true Americans who cherish tradition, we should always take our raioactive elements in the traditional way. First mine it with coal, then burn it in a furnace, disperse it through smoke and then ingest it via the lungs. That is the American way. One second before you mod me down as a Luddite, remember I do support modern innovations, like mountain top removal and long wall mining.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So we've got these standards and limits on the amounts of toxic chemicals we allow into our drinking water (and thus bodies), and we build a little bit of extra "caution" in, to make EXTRA sure that we don't accidentally poison ourselves... and then our public officials ignore these limits and standards because they're "cautious"? Really now?
NRC spokeswoman should be given a hands-on lesson in why we include safety padding in these matters.
I was under the impression that the whole purpose of testing groundwater was to find and STOP contamination. If they've repeatedly failed this test, how are they allowed to continue operations?
I suppose when this sort of thing happens you'll be ok with taxpayers paying the clean-up costs ?
I think nuclear is something we're going to have to use, but I am _extremely_ worried it's going to be another privatize the gains and socialize the losses deal.
Absolute statements are never true
"At what level...?" is always an curious legalistic way to go about the question. I'd reply "as low as possible", that is, it becomes an engineering/economic question, not a biochemical one. How low a leakage of tritium (not good for human ingestion at any level) is feasible? and/or: i'll wager they can do much better than where it currently stands.
The water they're testing is, by federal limits, not drinkable. That said, the water they're testing is not drinking water. If this stuff was getting anywhere that humans were going to drink it, that would be a very serious problem...but they're saying that doesn't seem likely. So no, they're not ignoring the limits. They should act quickly, yes, but still.
When something like this happens the plant monitors the flow of the tritium into the aquifer, river, etc. VERY carefully. If those levels rise above set limits then they have to shut down. However, right now they most likely just have to pay a daily fine to operate and that fine is less than the cost of shutdown prior to the fuel reaching the desired burnup. They will most likely continue to operate unless they see a rise above safe levels in the groundwater or the river that is used for cooling.
A light water reactor isn't capable of producing much tritium since hydrogen has to absorb two neutrons to become it. Since it doesn't exist in nature any amount, no matter how small, is detectable. Not really a concern. You would most likely get more radiation exposure from coal.
Wait for the 3 eyed fish to show up before going in and go to sector 7g at the start.
---MR X
Far-Right:
There's nothing to see here, it's just those damn liberals and their whining about nuclear power. It's all perfectly safe, there's absolutely no problems whats-so-ever with this plant or any other plant. A possible indicator of other problems around the country? Pshaw.. more liberal clap-trap. We can fix all our power problems with just building a lot of nuclear plants. Waste schmaste.
Far-Left:
This is just PROOF that the nuclear power industry are all a bunch of bastard weasels. We ought to shut the whole shootin-match down for good. We can get all of our power from wind and solar anyway. 37 times the standard! I bet the standard is set too high anyway! These plants are all rotting from neglect, and there's probably a ton they're not telling us! I recently saw The China Syndrome and Silkwood, and let me tell you that's all just the tip of the iceberg! Chernobyl!
I'm just really sick of the nonsense on both sides. They both insulate themselves from the other and don't want to hear any real truths from "the other side". The whole nuclear power issue is 90% a "side of the room argument" where nobody wants to be associated with an idea from "the other side". This is what needs to stop to make any progress on the whole issue.
AccountKiller
If the reactor doesn't produce much tritium, then wouldn't that imply that tritium would be a small proportion of the radioactive material released when a leak occurs... but it is detected early because it IS so mobile and easy to detect.
That is, the tritium itself is not the direct cause for concern, but rather an indicator that will lead to locating the real problem.
"Yeah, the water is 37% more deadly.... you should be fine"
Uh thanks.
Where's that leak again?
If one person in one hundred thousand starts to glow in the dark and dies, it is considered an acceptable risk for everyone except that person. No one can prove that that cancer that killed that person was caused by the leak so they can get away with it. It is statistically insignificant. I do not like to think that manslaughter is insignificant but these people think that way.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
You said yourself that most of the currently operating plants in the US are ancient (by nuclear power standards). Newer tech and newer plants would be many times safer and less likely to leak. Replacing the old plants with new ones, or simply building new ones nearby and shutting the old ones down as soon as possible would be a good choice, but many people point to the old plants as examples (as you're doing) without regard for the fact that a new, re-engineered plant wouldn't have any of the problems the 30-year-old ones are having. And in 30 years, I'm sure we'll have the capacity to build even more and better plants, or improve the ones we have so that they will last. The problem is getting past the folks who think that an old standard is the only standard.
...because tritium's really expensive to make and they're wasting it.
A few years back I bought a bunch of glow-in-the-dark keyrings as stocking fillers for my family. These are little tubes containing tritium. The tritium produces very low energy beta particles, which excite phosphor on the inside of the tube, which cause them to glow. They have a half-life of 12 years, which in effect means that they glow usefully for about five or six years before they need replacing. (I should probably get them new ones.)
Let me repeat that: it's a little glowing thing that will glow for six years, continuously. They don't need recharging, they don't need their batteries changed, they don't need exposure to sunlight. They're fantastic for safety-critical things like exit signs. My father sails, and he has his tied to the end of the emergency torch on his boat --- it means that if he needs it in a hurry in the dark, he can find it. I know a nurse who uses them to find things in bags of equipment. They're really handy.
Naturally, they're banned in the US, because they're atomic.
(Tritium, being hydrogen and really hard to contain, will slowly diffuse out through the walls of the glass tube and into the environment. However there's a tiny, tiny amount of the stuff, and the radioactivity they emit is so weak it won't penetrate six millimetres of air, let alone anything solid. I suppose it is possible to absorb the stuff into the body --- we are largely made of hydrogen, after all --- but the low energies, short half-life and tiny quantities means that you're probably more likely to get radiation damage from Bikini Atoll than your tritium keyring.)
Incidentally, did you know that after the Chalk River reactor in Canada was shut down in 2009 due to overreaction, there is now a worldwide shortage of medical isotopes? There are only five reactors worldwide, sorry, four now, that produce the stuff. I wonder how many people that shutdown has killed?
We get far more exposure from radon outgassing from the granite countertops in our kitchens.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/garden/24granite.html
Let's pay attention to something we can actually get exposed to.
They are finding water near the condensate storage tanks. This is water that is supposed to be used for emergency cooling, replenishing reactor feedwater, and overflow for a couple systems. It is potentially contaminated. It draws its water from the potable water system (typically in most plants), which means that the water going in is supposed to be clean. They need to check if they have a leak in there causing potentially contaminated water to go into the site's potable water system. I'm sure that was already done, at my plant it would have been done already at least. Anyways, condensate storage tanks arent always located inside the plant. It is very likely thats where the leak is. I'm not completely sure why they are getting tritium of all things as in a BWR plant tritium usually isnt your biggest worry. Nuclear plants have a corrective action process that a plant uses to fix problems. Anyone at the plant can put something in the process, it is federally mandated, and its one of those things that an employee cannot lose his job over. The system is very effective and allows the plants to 'self-police'. Finding and fixing a problem like this when the tritium leak was low would have been a low priority fix because the tritium levels were under limits previously. One of the actions they took was likely to install the new wells to find if the leaks were worse near potentially contaminated systems, which they did and found out it was worse. Now they are likely elevating the issue internally, which is why it was reported again to the NRC. So far, the plant sounds like they legally/procedureally done everything right. They made a huge boo-boo by having a PR guy tell people they have no underground piping that could carry contaminated water, it makes me think that guy never took or paid attention during the BWR systems class. The plant cannot be expected to prevent all accidents, but they are expected to mitigate accidents and issues to a minimal risk of safety to the public and to monitor and fix equipment which has repeat failures (things they know are breaking). Long story short, They are going to get investigated, and if this problem has been here longer than they say it has, they are in a bit of trouble. I Tritium isnt terrible in the water, as long as it doesnt get into drinking water. It's in low amounts that it will be diluted easily if it reaches a main water supply. It's still not good, but there are MANY worse things that could have leaked.
Its a hard job to set safety standards for radiation as there really is not any 100% safe level other than absolute 0.
The standards are probably irrationally low for all practical purposes, but regardless of that, there is no dispute that the standards have already been significantly exceeded.
If they were doing their job properly, they simply need to decide to either immediately fix the leak or shut the site down. They can review the safety standards later if they want. To do that properly would require a detailed study, in other words, more time than they have now. I don't even think the NRC has the legal authority to arbitrarily decide to ignore the current safety standards.
The thing that is most scary is the NRC at the highest level apparently believes that weasel words presumably to cover political expediency and cost saving are more appropriate than peoples safety, and a commitment to quickly and properly fix the actual leak.
We hear your concerns and we are instituting a remediation program immediately! You should shortly be receiving a package via USPS bulk rate. In it you will find a shovel, a radiation detection badge, and a large zippered radiation proof bag.
Directions
Take the shovel and dig a "Safety" hole three feet wide, 4 to 6 feet deep, and about as long as you are tall.
Put on the detection badge. Please wear the detection badge at all times.
You will note the badge has the words "Hell No, We Don't Glow" printed on it.
If those words fad out OR if the badge does in fact begin to glow you should take the bag and climb into the Safety Hole.
Get in the bag and zipper it up from the inside to keep the radiation out. Now lay quietly in the bottom of the Safety Hole until help arrives.
Thanks for your cooperation.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
For the love of god, tritium decays by beta particle emission. Why the boy-who-cried-wolf nuclear panic over a beta emitter?
every _exit() is the same, but every clone() is different.
Don't worry, nature has a way of balancing itself out and adapting to changes. You'll probably grow an extra cock, but you'll have extra fingers to hold it with.
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
One of the 10000 or so jobs I have over the years was working in a refinery for a few months. During that time some of the workers tried to find some pipes for maintenance. No one knew where they were. There were the design diagrams, the "as-builts" and numerous additions and removals by contractors upgrading and doing maintenance. Some new ones were out in, some ripped out, and others abandoned in place.
Metal detectors did not help, there was too much metal buried and scattered around.
The situation was so bad they resorted to dowsing. I'm serious!
Lately I've heard of small robots using GPS to travel a pipe and map it out. But with so many old plants and old pipes, it will be a long time before the situation is unsnarled.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The plant is in extreme southeastern Vermont, near the Connecticut River, which flows south to Long Island Sound. Springfield, MA and Hartford, CT are on the river. Boston does not get water from the Connecticut River.
Odds are they'll just ramp up capacity at a more expensive power plant.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Maybe they're just waiting for the radioactivity to reach a high enough level that it will give them super-powers. Then they can deal with this and many other injustices in the world...
Grandparent though a Giga-Byte wa 1,024 Mega-Bytes. You said, that's a "gibibyte". Actually a "gibibyte" is 1,024 "mebibytes" which is 1,024 "kibibytes" which is 1,024 bytes. Mega-byte is 1,000 Giga-bytes which is 1,000 kilo-bytes, which is 1,000 bytes.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Yeah Babe, my, errrm, "equipment" is 5/100,000ths of a Kilometer! America, Fuck Yeah!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
It wasn't a PR guy. It was one of their chief engineers. And it was also their top executive for the plant. In sworn testimony. On several occassions. To both state regulators and state legislators. In a state where, when Entergy bought the plant, Entergy agreed contractually that the state legislature's approval would be required - unlike in any other state - for Entergy to renew the plant's license.
Also, Entergy plans to spin off this and several other plants into a new corportion that will carry billions in debt, and free Entergy from most future financial responsibility for any cleanup of the plant. There's a decommissioning fund, but since the stock market crashed it's way underfunded, and depends on some decades of extraordinary investment appreciation if it's to recover - which the NRC seems unconcerned about.
I'm pro-nuclear power. But Entergy hires chief engineers who are either incompetent or liars - or who've never reviewed a full schematic of their plant.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
What kind of super powers do I get if I drink that water?
Exactly- It wasn't a PR guy, it was Jay Thayer, VP of operations, among others. Backtracking and in trouble: A detailed timeline on who said what on Vt. Yankees Also, instead of 0 underground pipes, there are 40. And they've found Cobalt-60 and Zinc-65 in a "trench". Nice
Sensational numbers! My heads almost didn't stay unexploded when I read 775,000 picocuries per liter. Somehow .775 microcuries per liter doesn't grab the nuke-fearing soul quite the same way.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
Co-60 is millions of times more dangerous than tritium. I got a feeling there's gonna be some jailing going on.
The cited article said that the sample was taken "just to the east of the plant's condensate water storage tank" That's inside the plant. Then it cited the EPA standard for drinking water.
Those two facts in close conjunction invite everyone to jump to the conclusion that the public gets its drinking water from next to the storage tank inside the plants grounds. In reality the nearest public or privately owned well is probably 5 to 10 miles away.
I remember when I wanted to drill a new well in my yard. The local building code said that it had to be 100 feet from the septic tank drainage field. Wow, only 100 feet!!! Now consider how much five miles of intervening ground will filter.
It is true that 775,000 picocuries per liter is 37 times higher than the limit. It is also true that there is no public health hazard. The devil is in the details, and the critical detail not emphasized in the Washpost article is the separation between the tank and the public.
Isn't tritium ridiculously valuable?
As in worth more per measure than gold or platinum?
Spend your time wading in 775,000 picocuries of tritium, or spend your time downwind of a coal-fired power plant.
Betcha I know which one will kill you first....
];)
Regards;
Can someone find an Ebay link to an auction for an advanced combat optical gunsight with an inscripted reference to a Bible verse that appears lit for several decades when viewed through the scope?
[JN 8:12] Then spake Jesus again unto them saying, "I am the light of the world: he who followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of five keV beta emission incident unto copper-activated zinc and burning sulfur emitting greenish secondary radiation having peak wavelength of one millionth of a cubit."
Advance to 3:40 in this gunsight review to get the idea. For those of you who aren't Christians, well whatever, get over it.
Interestingly it's hard to build a new plant because of the intense public panic caused by hrm....A perfect public safety record for the old plants?!? I don't claim there have been no problems, just that unlike coal plants, no member of the public has ever been harmed by a U.S. nuclear plant.
Then he would not approve of what this chap says he did. Do it yourself Heavy Water Reactor
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
RIGHT NOW
Some safety may be built into the standard, but it's done that way for a reason. They need to take action to fix this, and not ignore it on bogus reasoning like safety is built-in to the number.
I would equate this to having a hard drive in your 30,000 transactions per second, multi-million dollar database system, and deciding not to do anything right now.
Because your RAID10 array has ample safety built into it, and you don't have a catstrophe yet. *Yawn* we can just ignore the problem.
The cool thing is that you can catch the glowing ones at night without having to spotlight.
As a resident of the state across the river (NH), I've been following this carefully. The context of this story is that Entergy (the company that's running Vermont Yankee) is asking a) to extend its current 30 year license (currently scheduled to expire in 2012) for another 20 years. In addition, they're asking to run the reactor at 120% of its rated power during that time This may be a great idea. Getting more years (and maybe even more power) from an existing fixed capital asset might continue to make (relatively inexpensive) power available at no carbon cost. As another poster said, a well-regulated, safe nuclear power plant should be just fine. But... 1) Entergy has been known to minimize the seriousness things in many of their statements. Most recently, they had told regulators several times that there were *no* underground pipes that could leak. Now... Oops. We didn't realize that those pipes existed... 2) They're trying to sell this plant to some other company. I don't understand the reason - it hasn't been stated clearly. 3) It's not at all clear where the money will come from to decommission the plant when it's closed. (Somewhere between $400-600Million...) Given that Entergy is trying to sell it, will they also pass off their decommissioning fund? (Or is there even one?) So I would be quite comfortable with extending the license for, say, 5 years at a time, with regular, rigorous inspections, as long as there is a bond or other reliable means of paying for the decommissioning. Otherwise, we have another example of privatizing the gain while socializing the expense... NH Resident
there are concrete consequences
Did someone invent concrete that runs on electricity?
paintball
Are you joking, that much radiation isn't anything to worry about compared to the fact that heavy water such as tritium or deuterium cant be expelled from the body because of the difference in binding energy in the hydrogen bonds the kidneys cant flush it from your body, it's cumulative,so the more it's consumed, more issues other than water retention develop; such as tissue degradation, affects certain cellular processes, notably mitosis, or cell division. It's effects when consumed are far worse than the level of radiation exposure from it.
A list of some scientific studies on the effects of tritium with references in case there is any doubt regarding Triated water's effect on living beings.
Tritium is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter. This characteristic makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects. From those works;
Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estimated radiation dose based only on ingestion of tritiated water may underestimate the health effects if the person has also consumed food contaminated with tritium. (Komatsu)
Studies indicate that lower doses of tritium can cause more cell death (Dobson, 1976), mutations (Ito) and chromosome damage (Hori) per dose than higher tritium doses. Tritium can impart damage which is two or more times greater per dose than either x-rays or gamma rays.
(Straume) (Dobson, 1976) There is no evidence of a threshold for damage from 3H exposure; even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts. (Dobson, 1974) Organically bound tritium (tritium bound in animal or plant tissue) can stay in the body for 10 years or more.
It's often said "of all the elements in nuclear waste tritium is one of the more harmless ones" and while it's more benign than most other radioactive effluents it's toxicity should not be under-estimated.
Tritium can cause mutations, tumors and cell death. (Rytomaa) Tritiated water is associated with significantly decreased weight of brain and genital tract organs in mice (Torok) and can cause irreversible loss of female germ cells in both mice and monkeys even at low concentrations. (Dobson, 1979) (Laskey) Tritium from tritiated water can become incorporated into DNA, the molecular basis of heredity for living organisms. DNA is especially sensitive to radiation. (Hori) A cell's exposure to tritium bound in DNA can be even more toxic than its exposure to tritium in water. (Straume)(Carr)
First, as an isotope of hydrogen (the cell's most ubiquitous element), tritium can be incorporated into essentially all portions of the living machinery; and it is not innocuous -- deaths have occurred in industry from occupational overexposure. R. Lowry Dobson, MD, PhD. (1979)
References;
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I care that a nuclear reactor just a few miles from my home can't go two weeks without ending up in the news over some screwup. They don't know where the pipes are, or what they do; they don't keep up on maintenence, they choose not to fund their decomissioning fund; they can't cool the water they dump in the Connecticut River; they can't always remember where they put spent fuel rods ...
And they want to up the rates.
Like to brew? Want to talk about it? Brattlebrew: groups.yahoo.com/group/brattlebrew
Reactor grade water is not corrosive at all, in fact it is extremely pure. Now there is radiation in it, but there's nothing that would necessarily cause pipe embrittlement. Pipes naturally have breaks and leaks over time, and pipes at a power plant are designed to leak before break to prevent an accident from happening. As of right now the titrated water hasnt contaminated drinking water supplies. they are test wells that all plants have to check for this kind of thing. Now if they said they found tritium in the nearby lakes and rivers i would be concerned (this coming from someone who lives next to the hanford site). Also, the radioactive waste water at hanford, they are worried it could reach the aquafer underneath it within the next 15-20 years. plenty of time to clean it up. The contamination that would get in the river wouldnt be as bad as the stuff they were spilling in there 40-50 years ago.
From my understanding the criteria for shutting down a Nuclear Power plant is assessed on mainly two parameters.
A "Licencee Event Report" (LER) is submitted for issues above a safety significance threshold. For example at Davis-Besse, the frequency of the replacement water filters was out of spec. It should have signaled that something is going wrong in the reactor. This is the type of event that should be signaled as a LER even if it seems insignificant.
The second stage is an "Accident Sequence Precursor" (ASP) which defines events that characterise the lead up to an accident at a Nuclear Plant. Sticking with the Davis Besse example which (from memory) was caused by a fine jet of borated water spraying onto the the *inside* of the reactor head. Water rusts steel, reactor head is steel, rust goes in water, water goes through filter, filter catches rust, management says it's ok, reactor head gets hole [if allowed to continue - reactor core breach and potential for explosion] - 'Accident Sequence Precursor'.
By examining the trends for LER's and ASP statistically for all nuclear plants the NRC can get an overview of the operational state of all the plants *if* the operators of the plant co-operate and share their operational data (which I also believe to be a legal obligation of the Licensee) with the NRC. At issue is the characterisation of what sort of events should lead to a LER.
At the Davis Besse plant I believe that it led to criminal charges as management allowed the plant to operate outside of it's "Basis Design" which is a known operational characteristic of the plant. Filter replacement intervals had been defined and were known about and thus should have characterised the plant as "not operating safely". I'm not sure if the criminal charges were placed because management should have reported several LERs instead of inspectors finding a hole in the reactor head when it was shutdown.
"Basis Design Issues" (BDI) are also revealed whilst the reactors are operating - they are not all known when the reactor becomes operational due to the complexity of the machine. Industry wide knowledge of LERs contribute to knowing what BDIs lead to ASPs (and a sentence full of acronyms). Further information can be found in the NRC document NUREG 1275 - Volume 14 "Causes and Significance of Design Basis Issues at U.S Nuclear Power Plants"
As often observed in plane crashes it's a combination of insignificant issues that lead to a problem. The question at hand is whether the leak is indicative of a larger problem for example; lets say our leak has led to filling a concrete void under the reactor core with water. Together the two events are insignificant, however when combined with a third event like a SCRAM of the reactor that suddenly heats that water in the concrete void you have the potential for a serious explosion.
I'm not saying thats whats happening, just that the water leak my be an indicator (a LER) of a larger issue which is used as part of the determination if the plant should be shut down. A leak of triated water into the environment is a serious concern. What is yet to be revealed is if the leak reveals a Basis Design Issue that is serious enough to be a part of an Accident Sequence Precursor.
No matter what the outcome the continued operation of the reactor will probably be determined on *if* they can find the leak. Anything that affects the cooling capacity of a Nuclear Reactor is not a situation that can be allowed to persist.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
We know this because the EPA has told us that, while there is no safe level of environmental tobacco smoke, safe levels have been established for radiation exposure. Since I'm not dead, I'd say there's nothing to worry about.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
... I do not have a car!
Most people do not think they are going to kill anyone when they do drive a car but these people accept that they will kill people and work out what is acceptable risk.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
is not the tritium leak you are looking for. Move along... [jedi wave]