TRIHT'-ee-um

These two things I know are true; water flows down hill and Friday afternoon is when the health department and Vermont Yankee release troublesome news. This past Friday afternoon, reports from the Vt. Health Dept. leached slowly into the weekend news flow that two monitoring wells(one near a former drinking water well )showed elevated levels of radioactive tritium.

A Vermont Yankee spokesman saw this as good news because he claimed it showed the tritiated water was moving away from the area of the water well and toward the Connecticut River.

The state Health Department, reporting the test results late Friday afternoon, was less positive, calling them “of particular concern” because it meant tritium was again found in the area of a former drinking well. The detection of tritium in that well in October raised concerns because it was deeper than previous findings, suggesting that the radioactive isotope could be headed into aquifers that reach the public water supply.

In mid-November Vermont Yankee shut down it’s voluntary contaminated water extraction effort after shipping out, by truck to Tennessee 300,000 gallons of water for disposal processing. Monitoring will continue and an NRC report on the ground water extraction is due out sometime in January. The NRC held a non-public exit meeting[?] in November no findings where released

The NRC’s Sheehan said, however, that there were higher concentrations closer to the Connecticut River as the plume has moved, which was expected.

Check for more updates any Friday afternoon.

Never Cry Tritium in a Crowded Theatre

From the Vermont Health Department online

On January 7, the Vermont Department of Health was notified by Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station that samples taken from a ground water monitoring well on site (identified as GZ-3) contained tritium.

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen. It is a by-product of the nuclear fission process in a nuclear reactor, and also occurs naturally in the environment in very low concentrations.
Most tritium in the environment is in the form of tritiated water, which easily moves about in the atmosphere, bodies of water, soil and rock.

The finding of tritium in ground water signals that there has been an unintended underground release of radioactive material, and that other radioisotopes may have contaminated the environment.

Perhaps a Vermont Health Department notification of a house fire might read as follows:
Vermont Health Department Notice of Rapid Oxidation and Chemical Process of Combustion

On February 11, The Vermont Health Department was notified by local private authorities that a previously unknown section of a house was found to be on fire. Samples were taken from a monitoring portion of the site (identified as 1-SOH ,1-Side of House).

Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Most rapid oxidation in the environment is in the form of fire and may easily move about. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not considered to be part of this definition.

The discovery of fire in monitoring area 1-SOH (1-side of house) signals there has been and unintended combustion process occurrence that may need further voluntary monitoring.

Vermont Officials are conducting a thorough investigation to identify the magnitude of the occurrence and the source of the combustion process .Assistance will be provided by a number of private and state agencies, a team of Rapid Oxidation Experts (ROE’S) will be on site to analyze data.
This process if unchecked has the potential to cause physical damage through burning and can occasionally result in a phase transition in the affected mass if the temperature of the flame is hot enough.

Weakly, updates will be scheduled, soon