Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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
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.
Then its time to start making heavier water
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
It's a bit worrying that standards were set, but after they were violated we hear that it's no big deal. You can't argue that is consistent with effective and rational regulation. Either (a) the standards were set irrationally low, or (b) the public's interests are being shortchanged here.
It is quite possible for both to be true. Allowing silly, unenforceable regulations means that you don't have any rationally defensible ones when you need them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
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.
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
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+
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.
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
"Even" alpha emitters?
Alpha particles are over 7,000 times more massive. — they're .50cal bullets to the spitwad of a beta particle.
Canada's limit is ten times the US limit and substantially less than the WHO's limit, and all are intended to prevent dangerous effects if stuff like this is ingested repeatedly and often for years.
If you steadily drink tritiated water like this for years or decades, it'll probably eventually hurt you. So it's worth fixing, which they're doing.
Meanwhile, if you want to do something approximately as dangerous, have a beer.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
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
Because once tritium ends up inside a cell, beta particles have all the subtleness of a bull in a china shop!
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;
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.
That's the problem with nuclear. It's great on paper. Heck, on paper, it's way overbuilt and will undercut every fuel source on price. But it's been a magnet for "unforeseen complications". You've got a core being bombarded with a high neutron flux that weakens its structure, you have daughter products leeching out, you have products being bred from the neutron flux, etc. So your core and primary coolant loop is basically doing its best to damage itself. This then combines with the fact that a leak in the core or primary coolant loop is a Bad Thing(TM). Then you have the fact that you need (in order to be economical) to maintain a very high capacity factor (unlike, say, NG). This means you need to rush maintenance through. Then you have the fact that decommissioning cost estimates keep rising as we keep finding new expenses. The same thing happens with spent fuel. And bugs... in a conventional power plant, if something significant goes wrong, your plant shuts down and you have to fix it. The public never even hears about it In a nuclear power plant, if something significant goes wrong, your plant shuts down, you have to do a much bigger fix, you get a ton of bad press, you have to do an expensive cleanup operation, and if it's really bad, people get sick and/or die.
It's just a really tough situation to deal with. And even the most modern designs, like the CANDUs, keep having their own share of problems. It's the risk that's driving investment away, that's causing Moody's to downgrade nuclear power investments. Not so much direct, immediate health risks -- economic risk and liability risks. And don't underestimate the economic risks; even in the construction phase, nuclear power plant cost overruns have proven to be far too common.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!