Vermont Yankee still leaking contaminated water
BRATTLEBORO – Vermont Yankee administrators have hauled away nearly 700,000 gallons of contaminated groundwater as they continue to deal with leaks into the plant’s turbine building.
The problem is persistent. Joe Lynch, a senior government affairs manager for Entergy, the owners of the Vernon plant, said Thursday that the water-intrusion rate now is 600 to 800 gallons daily.
But it is a significant decrease from the thousands of gallons of water that were leaking into the building daily when the flow was at its worst a few years ago. Lynch credited ongoing efforts to identify where water is entering the structure.
“Overall, it’s been a success,” he said.
After Vermont’s only nuclear power plant was shut down in December 2014, administrators noticed increasing amounts of water appeared to be leaching into the lower level of the turbine building. The problem, officials say, had been exacerbated by the plant shutdown. The heat from power production had evaporated some of the water.
Read more: https://vtdigger.org/2018/03/25/vermont-yankee-still-leaking-contaminated-water/