I have spoken with friends who are pretty knowledgeable in the field who say that the age of a nuclear power plant is not really a factor so long as it has been properly maintained and new equipment regularly installed to make it a current state of the art facility.

At the same time, others disagree and have said that the pipes are the real culprit, they are old and have a tendency to leak regardless of what you do.

The main reason that our plants have been getting ol has been becuase it was infeasible to build new facilities in this country for over 30 years and this has made it necessary to continue to operate old plants, sometimes beyond their normal life expectancy. Any facility that is 58 years old would seem problematic to me.

During his state of the union address this year, President Obama called for “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” His 2011 budget request to Congress last Monday called for $54 billion in additional loan guarantees for nuclear power. Two plants have already broken ground in Georgia and are expected to be on line by 2015.

Yet, here in Vermont, there has been almost no discussion of building a new plant until last Friday when Representative Patricia O’Donnell who is from the area around Vernon, where Vermont Yankee is located, came out for a new plant.

She has suggested that Vermont Yankee be re-licensed only through 2015 and that a new plant be built along side the old one which would then close down when the new one comes on line.

Ms. O'Donnell told the Brattleboro Reformer that building a new plant now would allow Vermont Yankee workers to stay employed once the present plant closes.

However, most of the talk both in the legislature and around town is limited to criticizing Entergy, the company that operates the Vermont nuclear facility.

The latest blast against the power plant has been the assertion that tritium is infecting the ground water and will end up in the Connecticut River before long unless the plant is closed down.

The rhetoric verges on the hysterical and, I believe, the hysteria was started mostly by people who are adamatly opposed to nuclear power in any form whatsoever.

They have been effective and have gotten even those who originally supported the renewal of the license for Vermont Yankee to change their mind.

It’s all about tritium, so the song goes.

What is tritium anyway and is it dangerous?

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations require nuclear power plants to check for the presence of radioactive materials on site property and in the environment. Licensees routinely check their site and the environment for the presence of radioactive materials. The instruments used to perform these checks can detect extremely small concentrations of radioactive materials.

According to the NRC’s web site, “in all the cases of groundwater contamination evaluated to date, none have exceeded any of the NRC's dose limits or any of the licensee’s Technical Specification Limits. Although no limits have been exceeded, some of the events have exceeded the reporting thresholds which require licensees to notify local, state, and/or federal authorities through an approved reporting system.”

I really don’t know whether tritium releases at Vermont Yankee are a problem or not and I don’t think others know either.

Tritium is a mildly radioactive type of hydrogen that occurs both naturally and during the operation of nuclear power plants.

Water containing tritium and other radioactive substances is normally released from nuclear plants under controlled, monitored conditions the NRC mandates to protect public health and safety.

Tritium is the same substance that is used for rifle sights and on glowing watch dials. It’s naturally occurring in the air and water and though radioactive, has a very short biological half life.

By mixing tritium with a chemical that emits light in the presence of radiation, a phosphor, a continuous light source is made. This can be applied to situations where a dim light is needed but where using batteries or electricity is not possible or practical. Rifle sights and exit signs are two examples of where this phenomenon is commonly used.

The phosphor sights help increase nighttime firing accuracy and the exit signs can be life saver if there is a loss of power.

The radioactive decay product of tritium is a low energy beta that cannot penetrate the outer dead layer of human skin. Therefore, the main hazard associated with tritium is internal exposure from inhalation or ingestion. In addition, due to the relatively long half life, about 12 years, and short biological half life, just hours, an intake of tritium must be in large amounts to pose a significant health risk.

Vermont Yankee is just the latest of dozens of U.S. nuclear plants, many built in the 1960s and '70s, to be found with leaking tritium.

The Braidwood nuclear station in Illinois was found in the 1990s to be leaking millions of gallons of tritiumlaced water, some of which contaminated residential water wells. Plant owner Exelon Corp. ended up paying for a new municipal water system.

After Braidwood, the nuclear industry stepped up voluntary checking for tritium in groundwater at plants around the country which resulted in revealing the problem at Vermont Yankee.

In New Jersey last year, tritium was reported leaking a second time from the Oyster Creek plant in Ocean County, just days after Exelon won NRC approval for a 20-year license extension there.

The Pilgrim plant in Plymouth, Mass., like Vermont Yankee, owned by Entergy, reported low levels of tritium on the ground in 2007.

The Vermont leak has prompted a Plymouth-area citizens group to demand more test wells at the Massachusetts plant.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan says leaks have occurred in at least 27 of the nation's 104 commercial reactors at 65 plant sites. He said the list likely does not include every plant where tritium has leaked.

Why are the plants old? It is because it has been completel y impossible to build new ones for years. It’s just too expensive for a power company to take it on when environmental groups suto stop construction costing companies millions before they can even get started. I recall that the last time a company did try to build one, protestors sat outside the gates of the plant for over a year trying to stop trucks from going inside or workers going to work while the plant was being built.

What are we to do?

The push now is to get electric cars. They have to be charged by plugging them in somewhere. There has to be electric power to charge the batteries and there has to be power to run our homes and factories.

In Vermont, a considerable percentage of our power comes from nuclear. The move to close Vermont Yankee will shut off that outlet.

That will reduce the amount of power available not increase it.

There is also a move afoot in the legislature to ban wind power generation in the state.

So if there is no nuclear and no wind, where do we get the power?

Water is the only thing left in a state where solar panels have limited use because the sun is only hot enough in the summer to do any good. What is left that isn’t from fossil fuels? Water, and even there, the environmental forces are extremely strong. Unless there are fish ladders around the dams that must be built to make hydroelectric power, there will be protests and even then, there may be protests anyway. The reason is that fish may be pulled into the turbines that are used to generate electricity from water.

The facts are that most fish go through the turbines without any problem and exit the other side fully alive and well.

So, with all of this, the only thing that seems to be left is burning wood, tearing down our forests to feed a wood burning power plant or burning coal or oil.

Natural gas is the cleanest power of all the fossil fuels but to date, little of that comes to Vermont.

Somewhere we need to find a compromise between all of the warring forces if we are to have the power we need for the future.

I think that we need to start looking into building a new nuclear power plant as part of a long term energy plan.

Not to do so would be absolute folly.

Let’s think about building a new nuclear power plant and re-license the old one only until the new one comes on line.

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