Tritium Leak at Vermont Yankee

It’s been all over the news for the past few days. Water contaminated with tritium, a radioactive substance, has been leaking out of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The discoveries began with water containing 22,000 picocuries per liter (ppl, more on this later) in a test well near the plant, continued with water containing one to two million ppl in an open trench, and keeps accelerating today with a report of 150 gallons at 720,000 ppl in an underground storage room.

Part of the story is that Entergy, the owner of Vermont Yankee, told Vermont regulators there were no underground pipes carrying radioactive materials at the plant. Entergy spokesman Rob Williams claimed that this was a mistake rather than a lie. This merely adds the alternative of gross incompetence to the probability of dishonesty. Entergy is searching for the leak while an underground plume of tritium-laced water heads for the nearby Connecticut River.

Those are the reports so far, but there are a number of basic questions confronting Vermonters, as well as our neighbors downstream. What is tritium? Where does it come from? How dangerous is it? What can be done about it?

Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Ordinary hydrogen is made up of one proton and one electron. It is the lightest and most common element in the universe, and, of course, one of the two elements in water. When exposed to radiation, as in a nuclear plant, some hydrogen becomes tritium, consisting of one proton, two neutrons, and an electron. This arrangement is unstable and will eventually decay into helium, releasing beta radiation. Beta radiation is essentially high-powered electrons. Tritium has a half life of about 12.3 years, meaning that if you put 1000 atoms of tritium in a jar and wait 12.3 years you will have 500 atoms of tritium. 500 will have decayed. Another 12.3 years and you will have 250. The rule of thumb for radioactive materials is that they need to sit around for 10 to 20 half-lives (120-240 years in the case of tritium) before they are safe.

So what is a picocurie, and what is a million picocuries in the scheme of things? A curie is a measurement of a radioactive material in terms of disintegrations per second. If a sample of material has 37,000,000,000 (3.7 x 1010) atoms decaying and emitting radiation every second, then that is one curie. A picocurie is a trillionth of a curie, which amounts to 2.2 disintegrations per minute. Thus, a million picocuries per liter (ppl) means that each liter of water emits 2.2 million beta particles a minute.

What does that mean for human health? How dangerous is this stuff? Federal regulations put the safe limit for drinking water at 20,000 ppl. In Europe the limit is 2,000, and in California the limit is 500. I have read that research indicates no safe threshold for tritium. There are a few unpleasant problems with the stuff. Being an isotope of hydrogen, it is part of water molecules themselves. This means it can’t be filtered out of water by any practical means. If it is ingested in water it clears out of the human body in about 10 days, as long as that human body doesn’t drink more tritium-laced water. However, if it is ingested by humans in food it can integrate itself into our tissues and remain for ten years, quietly bombarding us from the inside. It can lodge in our DNA, damaging the genetic code all around it. Its ability to insinuate itself into our systems has caused researchers at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to assign it an RBE (radiobiological effectiveness) ratio of 1.5 to 5 times that of other radioactive materials. That means that given the same ppl, tritium will cause 2 to 5 times the actual damage of something emitting gamma radiation or x-rays.

Tritium causes all the usual radiological effects: cancer, genetic defects, cell death, birth defects, and loss of fertility.

How much tritium is normal? Tritium is caused not only by nuclear reactions in power plants, but also by cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere. There is a background level of tritium in water of 3 to 24 ppl. That puts the tritium-contaminated water in that trench at somewhere between 42,000 and 660,000 times the usual background level and 50 to 100 times the federal limit.

My conclusion from all this is that the present tritium leak at Vermont Yankee is no small thing. The material is dangerous at low concentrations, persistent in the human body, impossible to filter, and hard to contain. The leak is limited to the area in and around the plant for now, but I can’t imagine the isolation and cleanup is going to be easy.

I’d also conclude that the management at Entergy should start planning for decommissioning Vermont Yankee on schedule in 2012. Even the Douglas administration, long time servant of Entergy, has reacted strongly. I predict that more damning evidence will come out, more tritium will leak, and Entergy will continue its tone-deaf attempts at smoothing things over. Vermont Yankee is a turkey, folks, and it has been in the radioactive oven for a few decades now. Stick a fork in it, it’s done. Let me update that cliché: Stick a really long-handled fork in it and then carefully encase that fork in concrete and let it sit a couple of centuries.

Update on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 10:26AM by Minor Heretic

It gets better, or worse, depending on your enjoyment of shadenfreude. An article in the Times Argus this morning reports that VY officials submitted documents showing over 40 buried pipes at the plant. A year ago they said there were none. The scenario of incompetence or ignorance has now been completely superceded by the reality of blatant, unrepentant lying. I would predict that the Vermont Legislature will now stick a fork in Vermont Yankee, hard, with both hands.

Megatons to Megawatts – For the Moment

Because of the upcoming (possible) legislative debate over the fate of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant (VY), I’d like to discuss the issue of nuclear fuel. I hear a lot of discussion about operational safety and waste disposal, both of which are vital issues. Nevertheless, before we get to either of these issues somebody has to make some fuel rods out of Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) and get the nuclear reaction going. It could be a problem in the near future.

The worldwide nuclear power industry uses roughly 65,000 tonnes (funny spelling = metric tons) of uranium oxide annually. The problem lies in the fact that not all of this uranium is actually dug out of the ground on a year-to-year basis. About 13% of it comes from recycled nuclear weapons.

Back in 1993 the United States and Russia agreed to take the leftover Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) from the downsizing of their nuclear arsenals and blend it down to LEU for use in nuclear power plants. The HEU, between 10% and 90% U-235, is mixed with depleted uranium or minimally enriched uranium to reach a concentration of 4-5%. The U.S. and Russia each contracted a reprocessing company to do the job and the uranium market was soon glutted with the stuff. Uranium prices were held below $20/lb till 2004.  New exploration for uranium came to a near halt.

Just for a sense of scale, the word from the World Nuclear Association is that “the blending down of 500 tonnes of Russian weapons HEU will result in about 15,000 tonnes of LEU over 20 years. This is equivalent to about 152,000 tonnes of natural U, or just over twice annual world demand.”

So, here we are approaching 2013, which happens to be the end date for that treaty. It raises several problems, including a possible interim shortfall due to a lag in resource development, a possible price spike, and issues with country of origin.

The first problem is the interregnum in the development of new mines and some glitches in the operation of existing ones. From 1985 to 2004, there was nearly zero mine development. Since the uranium price spike of 2007, nearly $140/lb., there has been more activity, but not sufficient to make up the loss of HEU-sourced fuel. Meanwhile, a flood in a major Canadian mine and a fire in an Australian mine have cut production and forced a larger drawdown of stockpiles.

The loss of the surplus military contribution to worldwide uranium supplies would undoubtedly cause another price spike. I wouldn’t presume to even ballpark the magnitude right now, what with the jumble of political and economic factors. I should note that fuel cost is only 9% of the cost of nuclear plant operation, but balance that with the fact that the price of uranium shot up by a factor of ten from 2003 to 2007. It has settled back to the $40-$55 range for the past couple of years.

So where does uranium come from? Right now, Canada and Australia each account for about a quarter of world production, with Kazakhstan coming third at about 15%. The U.S. share is about 3%. As stated above, 13% comes from the U.S./Russian weapns recycling. Canada’s production has been declining since 2001 and the U.S. peaked in 1980. Australia has restrictive laws on uranium mine development and may or may not decide to expand its largest mine in 2010. The real player in the longer term looks to be Kazakhstan. Do we really want to be dependent on Kazakhstan for our power prices? Kazakh President-for-life Nazarbayev would like that.

At the moment the U.S. uses just under 19,000 tonnes of uranium a year and produces 2,000 tonnes. We are the world’s biggest consumer of nuclear fuel. Of the next six top consumers (France, Japan, Russia, Germany, South Korea, and the U.K.) only Russia produces more than it consumes. The rest produce no uranium, or almost none in the case of Germany. In the international market, China and India are competing for long term contracts as they plan the expansion of their nuclear power industries. It’s looking to get messy when the military supply dries up. Even the World Nuclear Association, which one would assume to take an optimistic position, predicts a dropoff in world uranium production after 2015. The most optimistic rational scenario I have seen puts peak uranium in the year 2020.

This brings me back to Vermont Yankee. If the legislature approves a relicensing in 2012, how many years of operation would we get out of it before uranium prices make it uneconomical? Two? Three? Eight? Geology is inexorable. It just doesn’t care what we want, and it disappoints us more often than not. All safety considerations aside (and that’s a long distance aside) the fuel supply issue seems like a bad gamble.

Solar Surge

Contrary to appearances, your Minor Heretic has neither fallen down a hole, nor lapsed into a coma. My recent post-vacation-post silence is the result of a full schedule. That schedule includes two concurrent solar installations, finishing the curriculum for a two-day solar workshop for electricians, delivering said curriculum, plus creating and presenting two other renewable energy workshops for homeowners. Plus life in general.

The renewable energy business seems to be the only one holding its own in this recession. Solar and wind power aren’t experiencing the same geometric increase that they were a couple of years ago, but things are still moving along.

The sign-up for the photovoltaic portion of the Act 45 queue here in Vermont filled the same day it opened on October 19th. To refresh, Act 45 will allow providers of renewable energy to contract with utilities at a fixed rate for 20 years, that rate being sufficient to make as good a return as any existing generator. The limit on the entire program is 50 megawatts, and no single technology is allowed more than 25% of that, meaning 12.5 megawatts. There was a subscription of 176 megawatts of PV on the opening day, meaning that there had to be a lottery to see who would get a piece of that 12.5 MW.  Nothing like a 14:1 over-subscription to show the level of interest.

Even outside of Act 45 things are doing well. One of our local utilities, Green Mountain Power (GMP), had a sudden flash of brilliance about spot market power prices. Many states have a net metering program, where a homeowner or business can install a photovoltaic system and feed excess electricity back into the utility grid, racking up credits against future electric bills. GMP has gone one better, offering an extra 6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for solar production.  Are they insane?

Crazy like a fox. During summer peak demand GMP might have to buy power on the New England spot market for as high as a buck a kWh. Of course, it is during the middle of those long, hot, sunny summer days when photovoltaic systems are pumping out the most power. Nineteen cents per kWh looks cheap during those times. GMP did the math and offers a price that encourages solar but still let’s them come out ahead. Why the other utilities aren’t doing the same, I don’t know.

There’s an added benefit for the utilities from solar. I take anything Amory Lovins says with a grain of salt, but he did a very interesting set of calculations about the life span of transformers. You have probably seen a utility substation – a fenced-in array of huge gray objects with cooling fins and ribbed insulators, power lines converging on them. The transformers drop the high voltage of transmission lines down to the medium voltage of your local distribution lines. The key thing to understand about the life span of these transformers is that they do 90% of their aging during 5% of their operating life. That 5% is when they are running at high temperature during peak load times in the summer. That is exactly when solar arrays are pumping out the most power and reducing the amount of power that needs to go through those substation transformers. The more power generated downstream of the transformers, the less they heat up and the longer they last. Lovins calculated that even at the prices of five years ago utilities could save money by installing solar downstream of their substations and delaying the replacement of their transformers. Considering that the price of solar modules has dropped by half since then, I’d say it’s a viable option for a forward thinking utility.

I was talking with my elected representative today and he said that the important factor in shutting down the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in 2012 is replacing the 600 jobs and the tax revenue. I offered that renewable energy was the only business actually expanding in this economy, and that energy efficiency work is labor intensive and pays back better than 5:1 on the initial investment. The renewable energy and efficiency path offers lower risk and higher local job creation per dollar invested than the dinosaur energy sources.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: We are heading towards a geologically inevitable end state. That is a time when the fuels we get out of the ground are so scarce and difficult to extract that they are impractical and too expensive to use. The earth stopped making oil and natural gas millions of years ago and coal hundreds of millions of years ago. It had some amount of uranium when it formed, and that was that. There is less of all these every day, and over time new discoveries get smaller, lower quality, and more difficult to extract. Someday this state, this nation, this planet will run on renewable energy. We can argue about the timing, but geology won’t change to meet our desires.

Given the inevitability of this, and especially given the unpredictability of the timing, we should be gearing up for renewable energy as fast as we can. I have used the analogy of a skydiver free-falling through clouds. If you don’t know how far away the ground is, and you don’t know how far from the ground you will find out, your best bet is to pull the ripcord now. Otherwise you may be rewarded with just enough time to say “Oh sh-“ after the clouds part.

The good news is that we can do it. The New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, just updated a study on local renewable power production. Their research indicates that many states could produce most of their power locally. Some, such as Maine, could produce far more than their local needs, mostly through a combination of wind power and energy efficiency. Maine could produce six times its need with commercially viable onshore wind power. North Dakota tops the wind potential list at 140 times demand.

Let’s look at just their numbers for Vermont. The percentage of demand that could be met by various renewables and efficiency is as follows:

Onshore Wind: 111%

Rooftop PV: 18%

Percentage of land area required for 100% PV: 0.16%

Untapped Combined Heat and Power: 8%

Untapped Small and Micro-Hydro: 15%

Matching California’s Energy Efficiency: 38%

Combined Renewables: 152%

If we pursued California-style energy efficiency it would give us plenty of leeway in rejecting renewable energy projects that were unsuitable for our communities.

One of their startling conclusions is that maximizing renewable energy use in Vermont would cost something on the order of 5.7 cents per kWh at a wholesale level. That beats Vermont Yankee by a mile.

Of course, that’s just electricity. We still have to heat our houses and get to work. We waste a huge amount of energy in those sectors, basically because we can.

It is not impossible to cut the heating load of an average house in half with serious weatherization. A friend of mine in the weatherization business says, “I talk to people about energy efficiency and they say that they have done all they can. Then we work on their house and cut their energy use by another 30%.” Likewise, there is a lot of waste in our transportation system. We still drive huge, inefficient vehicles, alone, a lot. The solution to that problem is a combination of zoning, gas mileage standards, public transportation, and, sadly, really expensive gasoline. Some people won’t do jack until they can’t afford to drive.

Let’s remember the geological imperative – the problem will solve itself, but not in a nice way. The alternative is for us to start the transition away from non-renewable fuels now, before we have an emergency. Is that possible with our political structure and our present mindset? No. Which is why we need to focus on our educational system and the way we elect our local and national representatives . The ground is down there, through the clouds somewhere, and it isn’t getting farther away.
 

Miller Time at Vermont Yankee

Apparently it’s 9:44 AM.

I don’t generally cross-post, but Maggie Gunderson over at Green Mountain Daily (a fine site, by the way) came up with a good story from the files of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

To quote from the piece:

“FITNESS FOR DUTY - SUPERVISOR TESTED POSITIVE FOR ALCOHOL was today's posting on the NRC Website for current event notifications.

    A non-licensed employee supervisor had a confirmed positive for alcohol during a random fitness-for-duty test. The employee's unescorted access to the plant has been revoked. Contact the Headquarters Operations Officer for additional details.

What is a non-licensed employee supervisor?  Well, that means he was not one of the plant operators, but is a supervisor of another group, like engineering, maintenance, purchasing, or even health physics meaning dose measurement.”

Here’s the link to the NRC report. You’ll have to scroll down a bit.

As it turns out, it was a maintenance supervisor. You know, one of the people responsible for keeping the place bolted together so the radioactivity stays on the inside. The guy blew into the Breathalyzer sometime before 9:44 AM on September 1st and copped something over .04% blood alcohol concentration (BAC), which is the legal limit for operating a nuclear plant on the power superhighway.

I should note that we are one up on the Byron nuclear plant in Illinois. Just a minute later on the same morning one of their actual plant operators tooted the booze whistle and got nailed.

Susan Smallheer wrote it up for the Rutland Herald, reporting thus: “The employee must also go through a mandated employee-assistance program and, depending on the results of that program, the employee could be back on the job in two weeks, Smith said.”

This raises a number of concerns for me. First, am I just a worrier, or does a .04% plus BAC in the forenoon indicate an alcohol problem that won’t go away with two weeks of “employee assistance”? Second, given the random nature of testing, how long had this employee been dousing his Wheaties with beer before he got caught?

Third, as Smallheer reports, this is the third banned substance incident at Vermont Yankee in the past two years. This included a stoned control room operator and the actual administrative assistant tasked with giving the Breathalyzer tests getting busted for being north of .04. There is a basic principle of both Human Resources Management and being a bar bouncer. Your success is not measured by how many bozos you throw out. It is measured by how many you prevent from coming in. With the high turnover rate at Vermont Yankee they seem to be coming up short on that.

Fourth, .04 BAC? Really? I could blow a .039 and legally stroll into the plant for a little Homer Simpson wrench twisting?

And how many drinks get someone to .04 BAC? Defining a drink as ½ ounce of ethyl alcohol, or a 12 ounce beer, a 4 ounce glass of wine, or a 1.25 ounce shot of liquor, a 180 pound man would have to consume three drinks in an hour or four drinks over two hours.

Considering that the test occurred at 9:44 AM, I’d assume that the guy in question had been either at work or commuting for at least the past hour. That tells me that he hadn’t just snapped back a quick Irish coffee to beat a hangover. And .04 BAC is the minimum we can assume. The evidence points to a bottle-heavy breakfast for our hero. Yes, a couple of weeks of counseling and a “cross my heart, hope to die” promise and he’ll be ready once again to supervise the maintenance of our aging nuclear plant. With luck he will be able to prevent more incidents like this:

And this:

The State of Vermont needs to crack down on Vermont Yankee and then shut down Vermont Yankee. This is not a situation where I want to be able to say “I told you so.”