Palisades Nuclear Plant, Lake Michegan

In A Return To ‘Safety First’ For Michigan Nuclear Plant, NPR correspondent Lindsey Smith reports,

The Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan had five unplanned shutdowns last year. It’s one of the area’s biggest employers, and its safety record is one of the worst in the country. Now it’s trying to prove to federal regulators that it can meet their standards.

On the shores of Lake Michigan, the Palisades Power Plant is tucked in between tall sand dunes in Covert Township, Mich., at the southern edge of Van Buren State Park. Kathy Wagaman, who heads the chamber of commerce in South Haven, 7 miles north of Palisades … said  “They’ve been a very good neighbor” … “and I just feel confident that they’re taking good care of this.”

The title, however, says it all. “A RETURN to ‘Safety-First.’ Clearly, based on their record, safety has not been Entergy’s number one priority at Palisades.  Marcy, at Empty Wheel, presents a first hand report on the tritium leak of Sept, 2011, here.

And as the title suggests, others are not as sanguine as the head of the Chamber of Commerce.  On March 25, Smith reported “Some living near Palisades Nuclear Plant worry about safety violations.” Maynard Kauffman & Barbara Geisler own a farm 11 miles east of the plant. Their farm is powered by two small scale wind turbines and a solar array. The 1,800 square foot home is heated with a ceramic stove.

Back in September, 2011, Jim Hayden, at the Holland Sentinel, on 9/25/2011, wrote “Allegan County’s Emergency Management prepares for the worst.” For example, the Emergency Management agency stockpiles non-radioactive iodine for distribution, altho, it might be wiser to distribute iodine BEFORE an emergency, so it wouldn’t have to be distributed DURING an emergency. Beyond that, which might be considered a “minor” detail, emergency management agencies prepare for “emergencies.”  They don’t prepare for business as usual. And as the image below (courtesy of Nuclear Power Danger . com shows, the radioactive plumes from Palisades and the DC Cook plants  are extensive and overlapping. However, given that radioisotopes are invisible and undetectable without specialized equipment, the dangers are not obvious.

Radioactive Plumes from Cook and Palisades, Courtesy of NuclearPowerDanger.com

Basic financial information on Entergy is on Google Finance and Entergy’s Investor Relations page. I have no plans to do a thorough financial analysis of Entergy. At best, it’s like Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO, before the Fukushima disaster.It sells electricity generated by attempting to harness nuclear fission. Most of the time things are more or less predictable and the cash flows are good, because many costs are externalized to the taxpayers. However, nuclear plants vent tritium and heavy water and produce radioactive wastes, and are vulnerable to acts of earthquakes, floods, terrorism, and other acts of man and “Acts of God.”

Information from Entergy about it’s fleet of nuclear power plant can be found here, with links to each plant in the list below.

• Arkansas Nuclear One, Russellville, Arkensas, online, offline, generating electricity and radioactive waste since 1974
• Cooper, Missouri River, north of Omeha, Nebraska, since 1974
• Fitzpatrick, New York, Oswego County, on Lake Ontario, since 1975
• Grand Gulf, Port Gibson, Mississippi, since 1985
• Indian Point, Buchanon, NY, since 1969
• Palisades, SE shores of Lake Michigan, since 1971
• Pilgrim, Salem, Massachusetts, since 1972
• River Bend, St. Francisville, Louisiana, since 1986
• Vermont Yankee, Vernon, Vermont, since 1972
• Waterford 3, Killona, Louisiana, since 1985.

This post, on another blog is critical of Palisades.

See also these earlier posts:

•  Chairman of NRC Panel indifferent to whether Indian Point hearings audible to audience
• Fukushima: Worse than Chernobyl?
• Fukushima: One Year Later
• Fukushima: Accidents Anywhere are Accidents Everywhere

Vermont Yankee, on the Connecticut River

The Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 to close Vermont Yankee.  While proponents of nuclear power claim that the plants can be run safely and economically, Entergy, the Louisiana company that operates the plant, is now known to be running Vermont Yankee AT A LOSS!

Economics is not the issue. The Vermont Senate isn’t interested in the profitability of an enterprise. What is at issue is whether Vermont Yankee can be operated safely and whether Entergy can be trusted to operate Vermont Yankee safely. By a vote of 26 to 4, the Vermont Senate answered those questions with a resounding “NO!”

An Entergy Executive responsible for Vermont Yankee testified under oath to two state panels that there were no buried pipes at Vermont Yankee that could leak tritium.  This testimony is now known to be false. The Entergy executive has been relieved of his responsibilities. (Click  here.)  According to NPR (here) “Entergy Nuclear chief executive J. Wayne Leonard did not identify the official by name. But he described the executive relieved of his duties in a way that could only apply to Vice President Jay Thayer.

State Senator Peter Shumlin, Democrat, Wyndham, asked “What’s worse, a company that won’t tell you the truth or a company’s that’s operating your aging nuclear power plant on the banks of the Connecticut River and doesn’t know that they have pipes with radioactive water running through them that are leaking? And they don’t know because they didn’t know the pipes existed. Neither is very comforting.”

Vermont State Senator Randolph Brock, Republican, St. Albans, who in the past has supported Vermont Yankee, said “If the board of directors and management of Entergy were thoroughly infiltrated by antinuclear activists, I do not think they could have done a better job of destroying their own case.”

Entergy claims that no tritium has turned up in drinking water, but that claim must be verified. The Connecticut River, which flows past Vermont Yankee, probably should be checked for Tritium.

Officials at Entergy, the Louisiana company that owns Vermont Yankee, are trying to sell Vermont Yankee, Indian Point, and three other nuclear power stations in the north-east.

It is a similar design to the Oyster Creek nuclear power station, in New Jersey, operated by Exelon, which is also known to be leaking tritium.

Michael Wald covered the story for The New York Times.  Guy Raz covered the story at NPR.

Vermont Yankee, Courtesy of US NRC

There’s no question that nuclear power will be part of our energy supply mix for the foreseeable future.  The United States has 104 nuclear power plants in operation at present, according to Matthew Wald on the Green Inc. blog of The New York Times, relying on NRC data. Incidents like this – in which a corporate official makes a false statement with serious health and safety implications – give us pause.

Which is worse – that the official was mistaken, and not aware that Vermont Yankee had water pipes which could leak – or that he knew and lied?

Incompetence or dishonesty, it would seem.  Nuclear power can’t be a safe part of our energy future on those terms. Entergy is responsible for knowing everything there is to know about the plants it operates. A material and incorrect statement – under oath, no less – seems explainable only by three hypotheses: (1) the official lied; (2) the official failed to make himself aware of the plant, in which case the question shouldn’t have been answered; (3) the official was misinformed by subordinates.

If the first explanation is correct, perjury charges are, of course, in order. If the second or the third – Entergy hasn’t met its obligations to mind the store.

From the Associated Press via NPR: Top Vermont Yankee Official ‘Relieved Of Duties’:

A top official at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant was permanently relieved of his duties and placed on leave, the plant owner’s CEO said Tuesday, less than a week after Gov. Jim Douglas demanded management changes over misstatements made to state officials.

Entergy Nuclear chief executive J. Wayne Leonard did not identify the official by name. But he described the executive relieved of his duties in a way that could only apply to Vice President Jay Thayer.

Douglas’ urging for management shake-up followed revelations that plant officials misled state regulators and lawmakers by saying last year the plant did not have the sort of underground pipes that could carry radioactive tritium.

“In May 2009, an Entergy executive testified in a hearing on the state’s report that he didn’t think we had any such pipes, but he would get back to them,” Leonard said. “He did not get back to them. He has issued a public apology and made clear that he failed to provide full and complete information, either on the witness stand or by failing to get back to them.

“He has been permanently relieved of his duties in Vermont, and placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the full investigation,” Leonard added.

Calls to Thayer’s home were not immediately returned Tuesday.

On Jan. 7, it was announced that tritium, an isotope said to cause cancer if ingested in high amounts, had been found in elevated levels in a groundwater monitoring well at Vermont Yankee. Plant and federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials have maintained tritium has not appeared in groundwater at concentrations that pose any threat to public health or safety.

On Tuesday, plant spokesman Robert Williams said the highest reading yet of tritium had been reported in a monitoring well at the Vernon reactor. The latest reading is four times the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit for tritium in drinking water.

Leonard, speaking Tuesday about the company’s fourth-quarter 2009 results to shareholders and analysts in a conference call, gave an update on Entergy Nuclear’s plan to spin off a new company to own Vermont Yankee and four other northern nuclear stations.

Leonard raised the possibility that the plan could go ahead without including Vermont Yankee if the state fails soon to approve the spinoff; he said a lack of approval in Vermont might merely move completion of the deal from this spring to later in the year.

Vermont Yankee is not profitable for Entergy under the terms under its current deal to sell power to Vermont’s electric utilities, Leonard said. The company is hoping to operate the plant for 20 years past the expiration of its current license in 2012 and says it will seek higher prices from the utilities then.

See alsoMatthew L. Wald, Vermont Power Plant Continues to Leak Radiation.

Technicians seeking the source of a leak of radioactive tritium at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant have found concentrations in groundwater there that were three times higher than what was discovered last week, a plant spokesman said Monday.

Tritium was measured at 70,500 picocuries per liter, which the spokesman, Rob Williams, characterized as a low level. The highest level discovered so far “does not present a risk to public health or safety whatsoever,” he said in a statement.

But it does put Vermont Yankee over the threshold at which it is obligated to make a report to federal regulators within 30 days, and say what it will do about the problem. The limit, 30,000 picocuries, was crossed on Sunday.

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