GUILFORD — Mike Hebert writes that continuing the emergency planning zone for Vermont Yankee “is unnecessary because the reactor is now empty and cold.”
He is wrong!
Yes, the reactor has been shut down from actively processing uranium to make electricity, but there are still radioactive spent-fuel rods in water storage cooling down at the site. If disrupted by any number of things, these fuel rods could create great damage, including massive radiation exposure to the local community.
Until they are moved into dry storage casks, they remain a very significant danger.
Even when the fuel in the fuel pool has cooled down enough for workers to put it into the casks, there is still danger of equipment failure, their dropping while they are moved, or other significant hazards.
And Hebert thinks the community is not concerned for any of these potential dangers of massive radiation to the area?
Moreover, when everything is in the casks, there is still a vandalism danger, and as long as the casks are above ground, they can be a target for terrorists or extreme weather conditions if they are to stay so close to the Connecticut River.
The plan is that the dry casks will be at the Vernon site “temporarily,” but we all know that they will be there for a very long time, as there are currently no national repositories for spent nuclear fuel, which will continue to be radioactive for thousands of years.
The storage of the spent fuel on site in Vernon is not to be paid for from the VY Decommissioning Trust Fund, which is only to be spent on radiological cleanup and decommissioning of the site, not on-site storage of the spent fuel. It is the fiscal responsibility of the owner, Entergy, until there is a federally financed location to store high-level nuclear waste.
This is not even considering the residual toxic waste in the ground below the reactor, and very dangerous residual infiltration into the groundwater system of Strontium-90, which needs to be removed as soon as possible and not remain a constant danger to the community for the next half century, as the owner, Entergy, plans.
Yes, Mike Hebert, we do want to know if anything untoward is happening at the plant site, even with the reactor shut down. It is not over until all the rods are physically removed from the site and the land is completely radiologically cleaned up and decommissioned.
Until then, we must continue the EPZ as is, to alert our community of problems at the site.