Because of our concerns about Yankee Atomic’s clean up of its highly contaminated Yankee Rowe reactor site, CAN petitioned the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board of the NRC for a hearing on the way Yankee intended to clean up its site. We said that the License Termination Plan Yankee submitted was premature since it didn’t yet know the extent ofmixed waste plumes of contamination nor had it developed an effective plan to remediate it. Instead Yankee just cited that it would meet NRC clean up standards. CAN said this was not good enough and since this was the only opportunity the public had to question the process, we wanted Yankee to withdraw its plan and resubmit it when it had more information or else be more specific about its clean up plans.

The ASLB judges agreed with CAN; Yankee has appealed to the NRC Commission to overturn the judges decision. The judges said that without more detail, Yankee’s submission is premature. The ASLB validated decommissioning community concerns about how little information nuclear corporations provide to defeat democratic participation and by undermining public participation, essentially, how dirty clean up can get. We were represented ably by Attorney  Jonathan Block of Putney, VT.

The clean up reveals plumes of radioactive and chemical waste that have migrated into the groundwater under the site. The plumes include tritium, a dangerous radioactive envirotoxin, as well as TCE and PSBs; the plumes have migrated hundreds of feet under the site. Yankee has yet to determine the extent of the plumes. There was a leak in the ion exchange pit that led to 7 million picocuries per liter of tritium released into Sherman Pond. EPA drinking water standards limit releases to 20,000 picocuries per liter!

We are concerned that Yankee will not clean up the plumes effectively. Yankee is now talking about excavating the plume. This is a big job. We believe that the site can’t be released for “unrestricted” use—i.e. people can’t use the site until the plume is fully cleaned up and the potency of the waste has decreased substantially. For now two of the three tritium plumes are more than double EPA drinking water standards. We are awaiting a Commission decision before our hearing can go forward.
- Deb Katz, Massachusetts CAN