From bad to much worse: Highly radioactive water found at Vermont nuke plant

[cali]

A day after contaminated water was found in a test well at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, company officials announced finding wastewater containing high levels of radioactivity, news outlets are reporting.

The water, reportedly about 100 gallons, was contaminated with radioactive tritium at a concentration of about 2 million picocuries per liter, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the Brattleboro Reformer. That's about 100 times the allowable federal level for drinking water and 70 times the standard for groundwater.

The Reformer describes the contamination as "free- standing water in a room in the radioactive waste building," while the the Argus Times quotes the head of the state senate as saying that the water was "discovered in a trench" at the plant and that plant officials "said the trench filled back up with suspected radioactive water after it was pumped out and processed."

No public comment yet from the owner, Entergy Nuclear.

The 38-year-old plant has suffered other malfunctions, and some New Englanders want it shut.

The news comes a day after company announced that tritium has contaminated a second groundwater monitoring well and that " tritium levels in the first contaminated well had risen again and were now above federal safe drinking water standards," the Rutland Herald reports.

The first well is about 30 feet from the Connecticut River and registers 22,300 picocuries per liter, while the second well is roughly 100 feet from the river and registers 9,600 picocuries. The tritium level "has risen steadily in the past 10 days, since Entergy first announced the contamination," the paper writes, noting that the wells are " relatively shallow, about 30 feet deep, the better to track groundwater."

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http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/01/highly-radioactive-water-found-at-vermont-nuke-plant/1

[madokie]

1. The nuclear power industry has been doing the same type bull for years

I've been aware of their obfuscations, distortions and out right lies for 40 some odd years now.
If nuke energy was what the industry lies and tells us it is I'd be all for it but when its one lie after another lie, screw that.

Just think all the nuke plants are getting up there in the years so we'll be seeing more and more of these kinds of discoveries. They lie and then they lie to you again and again.

[Javaman]

2. You should put this in the Energy/Environmental forum....

just to watch the pro-nuke nuts try and justify this.

I know, it's like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's still fun. :)

[ThomWV]

3. Well then, I'd say its a mighty good thing that Tritium's half life is only 12 years

Because that means that unless there are drinking water wells within about 120 feet of the contaminated soil it will be essentially undetectable to the public.

You see that's how it works. After 10 half lifes no radioactive substance poses a threat to man, even the most dreaded of them all - plutinium. Now if the half life is 25,000 years then the point is moot for us, but if you are talking about 12 years, that is a different thing. It means that 120 years from now the stuff, or our purposes, essentially disappears. Ground water, I was told back in college, moves through the soil at an average rate of about 1 foot per year. I know that was a gross estimate, but good enough for our purposes.

What it tells you is that if its tritium (isotope of hydrogen) then 120 years after its creation it is gone and in 120 years it would naturally migrate about 120 feet. So this may not be the end of the world.