Safety is a Joke

Dear God,

Sorry I didn't pray about this at the end of last week but I thought that if I just pulled my covers over my head for the weekend the whole problem might go away.

But here it is Monday, and the cooling towers at Vermont Yankee are still reminding me of that old Will Rogers line, "It takes a lot of money just to get beaten."

To quote the Rutland Herald of November 14:

The discovery of more degraded wooden support beams in Vermont Yankee's cooling towers — this time in the reactor's only safety dedicated cell — raised questions Thursday about how thorough a special Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection was this summer.

Workers at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant had to immediately replace five deteriorated major support columns in the one safety-related cell of the reactor's two cooling towers during the plant's recent refueling outage, according to the NRC.

This is a milestone, God, and the kind that makes even Democrats swear! It's the first safety-related problem to which we might be held accountable since I don't know when. Even the Department of Public Service seems to have expressed "surprise," though its spokesman Stephen Wark has presciently held back from expressing its more dreaded measure of disapproval, "disappointment."

Cooling systems are expensive, God, and ours seems to be about as worthless as unsugared Jello. For example, overhauling the cooling system at Indian Point may cost around $1 billion. The two sites aren't particularly similar. Indian Point has two reactors. Vermont Yankee has one. Etc., etc., so I don't even know where to begin ballparking Vermont Yankee's potential expenses. But in this economy, raising an enormous amount of money won't be easy.

But finances regarding the cooling tower aren't actually our biggest problem this week. Our biggest problem is a public relations one that may become a legislative one in just a few short hours. The November 14 Rutland Herald article inspired a few letters to the editor about Vermont Yankee's inability to respond to problems with "fixes" that stick. One from this morning is particularly chilling.

In 1992 the owners of Vermont Yankee acknowledged a high probability of its Mark I containment rupturing when needed to protect the public in a severe accident. The remedy: Vermont Yankee accepted a recommendation from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and installed an automatically operated hardened vent system to prevent high pressure during an accident from destroying the containment.

But the automatic vent could itself be the path for the release of radioactive fission products. In 1998 the owners of Vermont Yankee recognized deficiencies and wrote a letter to the NRC announcing that they had closed off access to the automatic vent.

The owners implemented no other fix. The flaws in the Mark I containment Vermont Yankee acknowledged by implementing the automatic vent remain to this day. No inspection program can address this known problem. The defective containment is inherent in the obsolete design of Vermont Yankee, one of the oldest nuclear plants operating today.

As you can imagine, Lord, this is shaping up to be a particularly bad week for the PR department here, what with the legislature convening its new session at noon today and with Vermont Yankee's application for relicensing as one of the top items on its agenda.

Normally, Lord, and especially during dark times like this week, I try to include a little humor in my prayers—all in an attempt to cheer both you and me up. I've searched all but the barest corners of my brain for a blonde joke that would fit the bill here, and I haven't been able to find one. So an NRC joke will have to do. (They're becoming increasingly easy to find.)

A: How many special NRC safety inspectors can you place on the point of a needle?

A: Ten, if you make them stand on their heads.

.

Now I feel better. You?

Amen,

Fake-Rob