Vermont Yankee announces new radioactive leak

 Just two months after fixing their most recent leak of radioactive material, Vermont Yankee is at it again. Hours after the plant powered up after its recent refueling outage workers found a previously undiscovered leak in the piping excavated during the investigation into the just-fixed tritium leak. Entergy Vermont Yankee officials claim the hole, which is leaking a dozen differnent radioactive isotopes, is new. Nuclear engineer and official consultant to the legislature on Vermont Yankee Arnie Gundersen disagreed.
“The water they collected is new, but the hole is old,” Gundersen said in an interview with vtdigger.com. “There’s no way you can get an eighth-of-an-inch hole in a two-inch pipe overnight. It just doesn’t happen.”
“I have two concerns,” Gundersen continued. “The area into which it leaked is the most studied piece of real estate at the plant, and they didn’t see it. The idea that the plant would run for four hours and spring a leak — these holes don’t pop up like mushrooms overnight. That tells me the inspection wasn’t as adequate as it could have been.”
With immense public scrutiny on them, if there were ever a time when Entergy officials would like to avoid this kind of safety (and public relations) problem, this is is. The fact that they can’t just further goes to show that Vermont Yankee is simply too old to operate safely or reliably.
Click here to read more at vtdigger.com >>

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