BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — There were two mea culpas last week about the ongoing water infiltration problem at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, one from Entergy Nuclear’s site vice president and the other from Vermont’s state nuclear engineer.
The Entergy official, Christopher Wamser, told members of the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizen Advisory Panel that his company could have handled the water infiltration problem better, including notifying the public and the state more promptly about its controversial storage method — portable swimming pools.
“We probably were not as clear as we could have and should have been,” Wamser said. “We should have been doing a better job communicating.”
At the same time, Anthony Leshinskie, the state nuclear engineer with the Department of Public Service, said he had known about the water leaking into the Yankee turbine building for quite awhile, but never thought to ask how much water was leaking into the building.
Leshinskie said he never went into the turbine building’s basement, which is where the controversial “kiddie pools” were being used to store the radioactive, contaminated water.
The state is now meeting weekly with Entergy officials to get updates about the water problem and other decommissioning issues at Yankee, said Bill Irwin, a panel member and the radiological health chief for the Department of Health.
The water infiltration problem has had an unintended benefit of creating a strong dialogue between state regulators and Entergy on other issues, Irwin said.
The water problem at Yankee drew sharp public attention last month when a whistleblower sent photographs of portable swimming pools that Entergy was using to store the water.
Entergy officials said the photographs were not taken by staff or a contractor, but someone who had to be “badged” for access.
Entergy has since taken the water out of the plastic pools, which both Gov. Peter Shumlin and House Speaker Shap Smith have called “kiddie pools.”
Entergy had disclosed the water problem to the NRC and state in January.
Lynch said that while Entergy had expected some water in the building, it was surprised at the volume.
While the company believes the water is surface or groundwater, it is doing additional tests. He said that none of the already existing monitoring wells around the turbine building show contamination.
According to the latest figures from Entergy, about 80,000 gallons of water have been collected in the sumps located in the basement of the turbine building.
Entergy spokesman Joseph Lynch told the panel Thursday night that so far, four shipments of 5,000 gallons of slightly radioactive water had been shipped to Tennessee for disposal. He said the cost was about $22,000 per tank load.
More water is being stored on site, awaiting shipment to Tennessee. The water becomes contaminated because it comes into contact with the concrete foundation of the building, Lynch said.
He said that this was not a case of water leaking from the Yankee buildings, but water leaking into the building through cracks in the foundation.
He said the problem was first discovered shortly after Vermont Yankee shut down permanently in December 2014.
He said the rate of water leaking into the building varied, but on average it was a little more than 200 gallons a day.
The rate of water seeping into the building closely follows precipitation, according to Entergy spokesman Martin Cohn.
The cost for dealing with the water problem will come out of Yankee’s decommissioning trust fund.