Dear Readers,
Water from test wells around the Vermont Yankee reactor has over 2 million picoCuries of tritium per liter -- more than 100 times the legal limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for tritium in drinking water, which is 20,000 picoCuries of tritium per liter (20,000 picoCuries equals about 740 radioactive decays per second (740 Becquerel ("Bq")).
Two million picoCuries per liter is nearly as poisonous as the 2.7 million picoCuries per liter that occurs in the chemical brew of a nuclear reactor's primary coolant loop.
Nuclear reactor operators are allowed to release a small fraction of a teaspoon of tritium offsite per year. But even that tiny amount must be diluted in billions of gallons of water to meet the legal standards for drinking water. If the water in your body was polluted with tritium at the legal limit, it would contain about 400 times the average concentration of tritium in the human body.
By definition all hydrogen has one proton, but the tritium isotope also has two neutrons in its core and is unstable -- radioactive. The most common isotope of hydrogen is stable and has no neutrons. Hydrogen with one neutron in its core, called deuterium, is also stable.
The body cannot detect the difference between radioactive tritium and stable isotopes of hydrogen (nor can it distinguish radioactive isotopes of any other elements from stable isotopes of the same (or chemically similar) elements).
When a tritium atom decays, it releases a beta particle. Beta particles are normal electrons, except they are traveling at very high speed (within a few percent of the speed of light). The beta particle immediately starts to slow down as it passes things with electrical charges -- other negatively-charged electrons and positively-charged protons.
Beta particles only exist for a fraction of a second. Tritium's beta particle typically travels less than a millimeter through human tissue before it is slowed to normal electron speeds and is captured by something needing an extra electron.
Since radiation damage is often measured in total energy dumped into a given quantity of tissue, by that measure, low-energy beta particles are actually proportionately MORE damaging! Just the opposite of what the industry claims!
Tritium is called an "activation product." Vermont Yankee is not only leaking tritium: Within the millions of gallons of chemically-treated and highly irradiated primary coolant loop water that has been spewing out of Vermont Yankee -- probably for years, maybe even for decades -- are undoubtedly a whole rainbow of radioactive elements, including long-lived isotopes of elements such as iodine and technetium and many others.
Fuel assemblies in nuclear reactors commonly fail by cracking slightly. The zirconium shielding deteriorates and the radioactive uranium gets out, and so does anything else inside. What's inside, besides the unfissioned uranium, are "fission products." Fission is what they are trying to do inside the reactor, enough to boil water but not enough to melt down the reactor. For every uranium atom that is fissioned, there are usually two fission products that result, each of which is radioactive and each of which weighs, on average, about half as much as the original uranium atom. All fission products are radioactive because they invariably have too many neutrons to be stable.
When setting standards, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) generally does not aggregate radioactive components in your drinking water. Just because you have one contaminant in your water doesn't mean you don't have many others there as well. In the case of Vermont Yankee, the pollutants presumably include strontium, cesium, and many other radioactive elements. But as long as each one has been diluted to Below Regulatory Concern (BRC), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) doesn't care, and EPA doesn't care, and the nuclear industry certainly doesn't care. Just dilute it, and, as far as they're concerned, it disappears. Such thinking is self-serving, insulting, dangerous, and archaic. It flies in the face of the standard, accepted scientific theory that radiation damage follows an "LNT" ("Linear, No Threshold") pattern. (In fact, some experts believe low levels of radiation cause proportionately more damage. And admittedly, there will probably always be a few "experts" (usually well-paid by the nuclear industry) who "honestly" believe that low doses of radiation are actually beneficial, regardless of how randomly those doses are administered.)
The only way to clean up the radiation at Vermont Yankee is to close the plant, build a big pit somewhere where it doesn't rain much, line it with a lining that will last practically forever (good luck finding these things) and move all of the waste (including the dirt and concrete) there. But instead, right now, Vermont Yankee's tritium, strontium, iodine, technetium, and everything else WILL get into the drinking water in Vermont and into the Connecticut River. It WILL kill children and other living things in the communities downwind and downstream of the reactor, which potentially includes anywhere on Earth. Radiation from Vermont Yankee has undoubtedly been killing people for years, and it will continue to kill for many years to come even if the reactor is shut down permanently, as it should be.
In addition to the leaks, Vermont Yankee also is piling up enormous quantities of used reactor cores at the site. One third of the reactor core assemblies are removed every eighteen months to two years. These irradiated "hot" fuel assemblies are extremely hazardous -- ten million times more hazardous than when they were placed inside the reactor (approximately).
By now there is about a thousand tons of "spent fuel" (what an innocuous-sounding name!) located at Vermont Yankee. A fraction of a milligram is a lethal dose, if inhaled or ingested. You could not stand near the fuel for 2 seconds if it were unshielded. If it catches fire, the local fire department will not be able to extinguish the flames, and cancer clusters will appear later, as much as 500 miles (or more) downwind. A single gram of "spent fuel" would have a significant impact on Vermont and its neighboring states, were it to be released by accident or by terrorism or acts of God.
Vermont Yankee is a relatively small reactor, about half the size of more modern reactors in terms of electrical output, and it could easily be replaced by renewable options. Nuclear reactors are terrible "baseline" power sources anyway, since they are prone to sudden and prolonged shutdowns. They create, and then leak, horrifically dangerous poisons which deform our babies, give our children cancer, and can cause heart attacks, dementia, and a thousand other illnesses -- and they make other illnesses worse. Their owners lie and obfuscate, and their nuclear waste is a growing nightmare.
It's time to shut Vermont Yankee down -- and the rest of our reactors, too.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA (images added 2025)
The author, born and raised in Connecticut (now living in California), is a computer programmer. He has interviewed hundreds of nuclear experts, and has based this article on the information gleaned from his research. Any errors are his own. For more information on tritium, please see:
The Code Killers (book) / free download (2008): www.acehoffman.org
It's All About the DNA (2007): http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environment/tritium/2007/ItsAllAboutTheDNA.htm
Tritium Explained (why "Low Level Radiation" can be disproportionately harmful) (2006): http://animatedsoftware.com/environment/tritium/2006/EPATritiumStandard.htm
Tritium -- A response to a San Onofre employee's comments (also included) published in the North County Times (2004) http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/2004/TritiumComments%2020041223.htm
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company
