Last week the Advocate published this photo of the cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt. after it partially caved in August 21. The disintegration of the tower was followed August 30 by an automatic shutdown that took plant technicians by surprise. The shutdown occurred during the testing of a valve; the initial blank reaction by the plant’s operators when they were questioned about it alarmed area residents even more than the shutdown itself.
The plant is only five miles from the Massachusetts border. Last year, with permission for a so-called power “uprate” from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it began generating between 110 and 120 percent of the power it was originally designed to generate, a situation some experts warned might cause components of the plant to fail.
The recent incidents, especially the cooling tower collapse, prompted Western Massachusetts state reps Chris Donelan of Orange, Steve Kulik of Worthington and Denis Guyer of Dalton, as well as Sen. Stan Rosenberg of Amherst, to demand an independent safety assessment of the reactor. Some residents of Franklin County, represented by Kulik, Donelan and Guyer, live within the reactor’s 10-mile impact zone. The legislators wrote not only to Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas but to Massachusetts Congressmen Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. John Kerry and Rep. John Olver, and to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, asking for the safety assessment and warning that it might be unsafe to extend the plant’s license so it can operate until 2032 instead of shutting down in 2012 as it has been scheduled to do. Entergy, Inc., the owners of the plant, have applied for the license extension.
The Massachusetts Congressmen wrote NRC chairman Dale Klein, “…we find it very disconcerting that the NRC has not yet committed to undertaking a thorough investigation. …Additionally, in light of past concerns regarding steam dryer cracks and this most recent episode, we strongly urge the NRC to expand the requested investigation to examine whether the approved uprate has resulted in or illuminated any additional plant-wide structural deficiencies that may pose a future safety concern. It is vitally important that a holistic assessment be completed in order to ensure that no future accidents occur that may possibly endanger the public’s safety.”
If a widereaching disaster occurs at Vermont Yankee, it will be because of the kind of buckpassing and bureaucratic divisions of power that Donelan and his colleagues have run into for years when they have written letters about safety concerns at Vermont Yankee, sometimes without receiving any response. In particular, the Vermont state Legislature and the Vermont Public Service Board have let letters go unanswered, Donelan said, while the NRC writes “polite letters saying they have things under control. …It’s very frustrating when you live in communities that could be affected and you have no say in what happens.”
Kulik is hopeful that the tower collapse will give the NRC a jolt. “I don’t see how they can ignore this evidence,” he said Monday, as the state legislators and Congressmen were waiting for the agency’s response to their letters. “These are pretty serious and inexcusable lapses at the plant.”
