(Correction*) AP, NYTimes, etc: Tritium leaks at Vermont Yankee rile neighbors, politicians, regulators
Discovery of worrying levels of tritium in groundwater at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant rightly is hitting the news and evoking reaction from federal regulators and state officials. But don’t rely on the AP story by Dave Gram for a sensible accounting. He has most of the facts, but larded with too much alarmism. And one “fact” at the top jumps out for its departure from reality. “Tritium, found in nature in tiny amounts,” he starts off accurately enough, but the quantity is almost unmeasurably small and a result of cosmic rays, “and a product of nuclear fusion” he adds erroneously, totally mixing up fusion, which consumes tritium, with fission,”has been linked to cancer if ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin in large amounts,” he finishes truly – but askew from the topic as nobody with any authority is saying Vermont Yankee’s leaks subject the public to large amounts of it.
*Correction-Clarification Feb. 5: I apologize to the writer and to AP in suggesting that ignorance lay behind the story’s fusion-fission mix-up. It was, I am persuaded, fixed in stories on line almost immediately, although not in the version I saw. Mr. Gram reports it was a typo – he wrote it but didn’t mean it and fixed it as soon as he saw what he’d mis-written. Fair enough. That’s the sort of thing we all do, and fear. He also told me that such criticisms as this ought not be published, as a simple matter of journalism ethics, before checking with the writer. This site assesses stories as they appear. His reply: If you don’t take time to check it, then don’t take time to publish it. Food for thought. The original post continues below unchanged.
Later, the story conflates the Vermont Yankee tritium foul-ups, which do exceed federal limits even if only on site and not in drinking water, with trace quantities seen now and again at other plants. He refers to one plant in Illinois as having leaked “millions of gallons of tritium-laced water…” Without any indication of concentration, that means nothing, zero. But the adjective “laced” peps up the emotion quotient while carrying just a hint of deliberate contamination. This story should have been throttled back.
Other stories, more judicious and useful:
- NY Times – Matthew L. Wald : Vermont Power Plant Continues to Leak Radiation ;
- Barre Montpelier Times Argus - Daniel Barlow: No luck finding Vt. Yankee leak ;
- Charlie Petit
