No answer on waste issue
Toolbox
Published: June 29, 2009
In his 6/25 editorial , Entergy's Mr. Thayer appears to have given up on finding a state that will accept a burial ground for Vermont Yankee's spent fuel now stored on the banks of the Connecticut River. Now Mr. Thayer thinks he is giving us hope that our children and grandchildren can learn to reprocess the deadly stuff. He refers to the success of the Areva nuclear fuel processing plant — La Hague in France where spent nuclear fuel rods are refined for weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium. La Hague acknowledges that it is intentionally dumping thousands of gallons of radioactive waste into the ocean while the incidence of childhood cancer is rampant in the area surrounding that plant.
Before George Bush left office, the U.S. EPA had radically increased permissible public exposure to radiation in drinking water, including a nearly 1,000-fold increase in permissible concentrations of strontium-90, 3,000- to 100,000-fold for iodine-131, and a nearly 25,000 increase for nickel-63. The relaxation of these radiation protection regulations had been sought for years by the nuclear industry and its allies in the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission .
In the most extreme case, the new standards permit radionuclide concentrations seven million times more lax than permitted under the Safe Drinking Water Act and would permit public exposure to radiation levels vastly higher than EPA had previously deemed unacceptably dangerous. The public did not get to comment on these changes. What exactly is the radioactive waste that is now being discharged into the Connecticut River. When will our Vermont Department of Public Health start reporting on the trends of cancer incidence rising in Vermont? And Entergy and the NRC thinks its OK to continue to build up the stockpile of the radioactive waste here in Vermont because no one else will accept it. Mr. Thayer should live in Vernon as Entergy spokesman.
KATHLEEN KREVETSKI
Rutland
39