NRC Decision on Immediate Action of Vermont Yankee

From: "Kim, James"
To: Michael Mulligan
Sent: Tue, January 25, 2011 8:58:14 AM

Subject: VY 2.206 Petition on Shut-Down Vermont Yankee - Decision on Immediate Action

Mr. Mulligan,

With regard to your petition dated January 18, 2011, the Petition review Board (PRB) met on Monday, January 24, 2011, to discuss only the request for immediate action of immediately shutdown Vermont Yankee. The PRB determined that there was no immediate safety concern to the plant or to the public health and safety. The system is non-safety-related and the tritium leak amounted to approximately less than 1 mrem exposure to the public. No drinking water sources were impacted. Therefore, the PRB denied the request to immediately shutdown Vermont Yankee.

Thanks,
James Kim
PRB Manager

Mr. Kim,

The is the problem in a nut shell, I have to have triplicate poor that the plant is unsafe against impossible barriers to the truth, but the NRC and Entergy can use subjective and in the complete absence of any real information that a nuclear plant is safe. There are different standards for insiders and out insiders. It seems the more access to real information that you have at your fingertips, the more subjective and specious your assertions can be. The flip side of it is, the more distant to real information is your privilege, the more triplicate proof and evidence your need to make a case.

Mostly, in the RCA, there is nothing but unproven specious assertions in the characterizations within the RCA.

Again, in a culture of falsifications and a intimidation system to enforce illegal behavior at the employee level, how do we know anything we see with Entergy is true?

I can tell you for a fact, if a plant has a off site radiation event or any core damage in the USA today with NRC language like this, the media and political frenzy would take out the NRC as a credible regulator. That would have serious blow back consequences for the whole nuclear industry and the American public.

Anyways, I really do appreciate the official response...

Added Jan 25, 2011 at 6:51pm

This is what the NRC said on my emergency shutdown of VY: "The system is non-safety-related and the tritium leak amounted to approximately less than 1 mrem exposure to the public."

They could cycle this question to their computer models that estimates dose in a few fractions of a second: "how many curries being pumped into the ground would to take without taking any actions to get a member of the public or employees to exceed the licensing dose limit in the ground below the rad waste building well."

Say there is no well down there, how many curries being pumped into the ground would it take to get a regulated dose to be first exceeded?

I'll bet it would take a mind boggling amount of curies pumped into the ground to get that dose exceeded...that is why the limit is ridiculous.

Jan 26, 2011

It would probably take 10 VY spent fuel pools worth of fuel to get all chopped up in a blender and injected into ground before a member of the public would exceed his NRC regulated dose.