Apr 20 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Bob Audette Brattleboro Reformer, Vt.



Representatives from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission got an earful from a number of irate people during a meeting at Brattleboro Union High School, Monday night.

What they heard the most was that many people just don't trust the NRC or Entergy, which owns and operates Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.

"The role and duty of Entergy ... is to push the regulations and make as much money for its shareholders and (executives) and get rewarded for that," said Paul Blanch, an electrical engineer and nuclear safety expert with 45 years experience in the nuclear industry, and the NRC's regulations are "non-existent" or never enforced.

"I have no faith in the NRC and its regulatory authority," said Blanch.

 "There is an issue of trust here," which has gotten worse in the last year, agreed John Ward, a member of the Gill, Mass., Selectboard. "I am concerned that the NRC is whitewashing the issue of tritium."

He also accused the NRC of being reactive and not proactive because the industry has been beset with "multiple failures" that took the NRC and the industry "by surprise."

"This is a mature industry that has had a lot of time to fine-tune the regulations," said Ward, but instead regulations always seem to be made "after the fact."

And then the NRC wonders why people don't trust the agency, he said.

The NRC was in Brattleboro to discuss its response to a leak of tritiated water

at Yankee that was discovered in January and stopped in February. When the leak was discovered, state officials learned they might not have received all the necessary information about underground and buried pipes at the power plant during hearings before the Vermont Public Service Board.

One member of the audience accused the NRC of sitting back and not informing the state of the extent of those pipes.

"They did not step forward and tell us Entergy was lying to us," said Kathleen Krevetski, a registered nurse from Rutland. "What do you take us for?"

If the state had asked the NRC whether there were underground and buried pipes carrying radionuclides at Yankee, it would have answered yes, said Sam Collins, administrator for NRC Region I.

But the NRC wasn't involved in the state's hearings because it is responsible for safety and the environmental impact of the plant, he said. The state has been investigating the reliability of the plant.

"The NRC is not involved in that issue," said Collins. "The NRC doesn't enter into that at all. That's the state's role."

Sen. Mark MacDonald, D-Orange, said the NRC has not supplied the state with the information it needs to make a decision on whether the power plant should be allowed to continue operation past 2012.

As a result, the state has made decisions, such as allowing the sale of Yankee to Entergy and allowing Entergy to increase Yankee's output by 20 percent, without the adequate information, such as the nature of the decommissioning fund and nuclear waste storage at the plant.

"On all those actions we were stupid," he said. "We believed what we were told."

He also accused Entergy of misleading both the state and the NRC in regards to the extent of underground and buried pipes at the plant.

"We were duped," said MacDonald.

One anti-nuclear activist said she has had a "relationship" with NRC representatives going back 15 years and over those 15 years, the NRC has raised issues of systemic mismanagement and deferred maintenance at the power plant.

"You swore that they were improving themselves," said Deb Katz, of Citizen Awareness Network. "Either you guys don't get it or you don't want to get it. We have no confidence you would come up with a reasoned response. You just cite to us rules and regulations that are irrelevant to the truth."

One Brattleboro resident, Fric Spruyt, said Yankee employees were washing and flushing radiation down drains.

"Radioactive material has been getting out through the workers from their waste," he said. "Yankee is far from a zero-emissions plant."

Ray Shadis, technical consultant for the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, listed the problems that have occurred at the plant since Entergy purchased it in 2002.

Those issues included a lost spent fuel rod, a transformer fire in the turbine room, condenser leaks, stocking turbine stop valves, microbe-induced corrosion in the service water system, a cooling tower collapse, cracks in the steam dryer and cracks in some of the reactor nozzles.

The leak of tritium, he said, "is just another indicator of deeper, more systemic problems."

Each of the incidents, said Shadis, were preceded by similar incidents at other power plants in the country and many were determined to have the same or similar causes.

He accused Entergy of failing to incorporate lessons learned from other nuclear power plants and the NRC of failing to enforce those lessons learned.

"The NRC ... has failed to pick up on these trends," said Shadis.

The NRC reviews a power plant's corrective action program for adequate implementation of industry guidance, said Collins, who admitted, "There have been low levels so far," adding the commissioner of the NRC is "interested in the predictability of our performance indicators."

"We're not here to tell you everything is OK," said Collins. "It's clearly an emotional issue."

The NRC has put together a task force to review the way it looks at the dangers of tritium, said Charles Casto, deputy regional administrator for Region IV, and how effective the agency's regulations are.

Communications and trust are two of the issues the task force will be looking into, said Casto, and comments made at the meeting would be included in its review, he said.

Krevetski also insisted that tritium poisoning can result in "mutant offspring."

"The probability of those happening are minute," responded Roger Pedersen, senior health physicist for the NRC's Nuclear Reactor Regulation Division.

Just because the presence of radioactive materials can be detected, said Pedersen, "Doesn't mean there are serious health effects."

"Drink it in front of us," shouted Gary Sachs.

Pedersen plowed ahead, ignoring Sachs' comment.

He said the estimated dose resulting from the tritium leak is .01 millirems a year, well below the NRC's limit of 100 millirems and the Environmental Protection Agency's limit of 25 millirems.

ALARA, or as low as reasonably achievable, calls for a limit of 3 millirems. Pedersen said that goes for all materials produced in a nuclear reactor, and not just tritium.

Bruce Mallett, the NRC's deputy executive director, said his agency has its work cut out for it.

"We do have to earn (your) trust," said Mallett. "Our job is to make sure we provide accurate information and look into it when you feel we haven't."

At the time the Reformer left the meeting to meet its deadline, about two and a-half hours into the three-hour meeting, none of the attendees had spoken kindly of the NRC or Entergy.

Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com, or at 802-254-2311, ext. 273.

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