The Public Oversight Panel, a group of nuclear experts that reports to the Vermont Legislature, has determined that Entergy Corporation's misstatements about underground pipes carrying radioactive waste at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant came out of a culture of communication failures that perpetuated inaccuracies.
The panel issued a supplemental report on the reliability of the Vernon plant Tuesday and listed three main “concerns,” including “misleading information,” Entergy officials' unquestioning attitude about the maintenance and conditions at the plant and the Louisiana-based corporation's unwillingness to invest in “non-safety” systems before problems surface.
It views the “misunderstandings and misstatements” that occurred during the original assessment of the plant in 2008-2009 “to have no significant implications for Vermont Yankee reliability.”
However, the panel declined to state “conclusively” that Vermont Yankee can be operated reliably for an additional 20 years. It acknowledged that the plant operated for 531 days without interruption, “which is in itself a significant achievement.”
The four nuclear experts on the panel said Entergy cannot operate the plant reliably for two more decades unless it invests more money in the plant and “re-establishes a corporate culture” in which employees and the organization as a whole embraces “a questioning attitude.”
Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said that since Entergy purchased the plant in 2002, the corporation has spent $190 million on capital improvements on safety and non-safety equipment.
“We continue to spend what is necessary so the plant is safe and reliable,” he said.
To date, Entergy has spent $10 million on the tritium cleanup, which has involved extensive excavation, the repair of leaky pipes and the removal of contaminated soil from the site.
Guy Page, executive director of the Vermont Energy Partnership, a pro-Yankee trade group, said the report “reaffirms the central finding of the original 2009 report: that Vermont Yankee can be operated reliably beyond 2012.”
Page said, “Vermont Yankee has also been exhaustively scrutinized from a safety and reliability standpoint by the independent U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and consistently attained high safety ratings.”
Legislative leaders held a press conference at the Statehouse to announce the panel's findings.
Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, a Democratic candidate for governor, delivered a blunt analysis of the panel's assessment of Entergy's misstatements.
“There is a systemic history within the organization [Entergy] of not telling the truth when the truth must be told,” Shumlin said.
The idea that a few people in the same department might be caught not telling the truth might be understandable, he said.
But that wasn't the case, according to the panel.
“What they identified in this particular instance is 11 different individuals scattered throughout the organization, scattered in different departments, who could not and would not tell the truth,” Shumlin said.
According to the report, 11 Vermont Yankee employees have been disciplined as a result of misleading statements that were made to Vermont public officials, most notably, Jay Thayer, the former site manager for the plant.
Thayer was fired for telling the Vermont Public Service Board last year that underground pipes carrying radionuclides didn't exist on the plant compound.
In January, Entergy officials discovered tritiated water leaking from underground pipes at the plant.
Soon after, the Legislature asked the Panel to re-evaluate its March 2009 report on the reliability of the 38-year-old nuclear power plant located on the banks of the Connecticut River in light of new revelations that the pipes did in fact exist - and that they were also leaking water contaminated with radioactive isotopes of cesium, cobalt and strontium.
'Organization-wide breakdown'
In its report, the panel characterized the misleading public remarks made by Entergy officials as part of an “organization-wide breakdown” that appears to indicate that “the cultural norms that allowed personnel to perpetuate misstatements for 12 months are endemic throughout the Vermont Yankee organization.
“The systemic nature of the failures to communicate accurately in important forums and the sheer number of persons involved amplifies the Panel's earlier concern that there is a lack of a questioning attitude within ENVY's organization and corporate structure,” the four nuclear experts wrote.
That “lack of questioning attitude” has led to five pipe leak events on Advanced Off-Gas system drain lines at the plant, according to the panel's report.
Nuclear Safety Associates, the expert firm contracted to assess Vermont Yankee's reliability on behalf of the panel, concluded that employees at the plan did not have an “effective program or practices in place for early leak detection and monitoring of underground” piping.
The panel said this situation created “missed opportunities” for fixing problems before they occurred a “significant management weakness.”
Shumlin cited the tritium leak as an example.
“When underground pipes are found leaking tritium, cesium and other substances, they go in, they fix the pipe, they fix the hole and they go,” Shumlin said. “They don't ask the question, are other pipes around that pipe leaking. Result? You have another leak in a nearby pipe within weeks of correcting the original problem.”
The panel also cited Entergy's inadequate investment of resources in “non-safety” related systems as contributing factors in the cooling tower collapse in 2007 and leakage in 2008.
The nuclear experts quoted Entergy officials at Indian Point nuclear plant in New York, which is of the same vintage as Vermont Yankee, as saying “the physical condition of the plant in non-safety areas is visibly deficient.”
The panel concluded: “Limited resource allocation for non-safety systems might, therefore, be systemic within Entergy.”
Or, as Shumlin put it: “The panel identifies a culture where Entergy of Louisiana only spends money in areas that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has high safety expectations. They do not spend money, but protect their stockholders instead of Vermonters in all areas of maintenance. What does that mean? That means [with] things like underground pipes, cooling towers, when there's clear evidence there is a maintenance issue that needs to be addressed, they won't address it.”
But Smith pointed to the plant's recent “breaker to breaker runs” as evidence that the plant is fit to continue operation another 20 years.
“We just completed 531 days, and that couldn't happen if this plant wasn't reliable,” he said.