It’s 6 AM. The Weather Alert Radio just had another of their darned tests of the lousy emergency response system for Vermont Yankee, and my mind is triggered to the benefits of the recent fire at Vermont Yankee. By benefits I mean, “ what did we learn?”
To start with, that darned radio going off at 6 am is not supportive. I have heard lots of people who get these free darned radios from the town hall or fire station but they turn the volume all the way down because who wants their sleep disturbed by an emergency notification system that repeatedly darned near fails?
The entire town of Brattleboro (5 miles from VT Yankee nuke) learned of the recent fire after Keene N.H. (16 miles from VT Yankee nuke) .
The town of Brattleboro was notified of the fire via Vermont Emergency Management– 20 minutes after Keene notified surrounding towns.
To make matters worse, by the time Brattleboro received notification of the Unusual Event at VY, it was 7:46 a.m., more than an hour after the transformer appeared to have exploded and burned (just rubber- they say “no worries”), and just 5 minutes before the fire was officially considered “out”.
I have the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration Hysplit model for tracking radioactive plumes on a given day.
That 12 minutes of being late to initially notify the state of the event, and that 20 minutes being late to notify the town of the fire could mean the difference between getting out of Dodge and sitting in the plume, (between evacuation to a reception center and sheltering in place.)
The reason for the delay in the event in June’s fire is said to be “operator error” to quote Albert Lewis, the head of Vermont Emergency Management.
Sounds like no one wants to take responsibility for the screw-up.
The recent darned fire at Entergy Vermont Yankee taught us that the recirculation pumps tripped off during this non-nuclear fire. These pumps usually serve to force one third of the water through the reactor to cool the core.
There was no forced flow through the core during the recent shutdown.
One potential risk to the recirc pumps having tripped is that without the force in the water around the core more pressure is exerted on the containment structure.
Each outage essentially weakens the integrity of the containment of the reactor.
The state’s losing money. Entergy’s losing money. We better let them start up real darned soon to keep that nuclear cash cow flowing.
Let’s keep hoping the next (yes there will be another) event is again on the non nuclear side.