However, my point about very small doses implying very small risk is quite true, especially since there is no such thing as a zero dose. The normal background radiation dose in the US is about 350 mrem per year, but there are wide variations in that dose, with some people getting just a couple of hundred mrem and others getting as many as a few thousand millirem depending on where they live, where they work – granite is a common source of exposure – and what they do for recreation – flying also increases doses.

When it comes to competitive energy sources like coal, oil and natural gas, there are radiation impacts on the human environment that exceed, often by several orders of magnitude, the radiation that is allowed to leave a nuclear plant.

That tritium that has been so widely discussed never left the Vermont Yankee plant boundaries. It is very easy to detect at exceedingly low levels; if it had been found outside the boundaries I am sure that Arnie Gundersen would have let everyone know. After all, he is getting paid about $300 per hour for supplying as much negative information about VY as he can find. That is pretty good compensation for a guy who was once a nuclear engineer but then entered into the teaching profession.

Yes – there is money involved in this discussion. CLF may not have a “profit motive” but I am certain that their employees like getting paid on a regular basis. “Non-profit” does not equate to “no money”.

The observation about the potential issues raised by “fracking” and shale formations is a good point that our allies in New York and Pennsylvania are wrestling with.

However, I would just observe that neither CLF or CLF Ventures has had any relationship with AES for nearly a decade. The Londonderry plant was a good project in terms of putting lower carbon generation in place but it was undertaken at a very different time and our efforts are now focused on ZERO carbon solutions. But most fundamentally, I would just note that Mr. Adams has a time sequence backwards – CLF and its affiliates are willing to work with wind developers because of our principles and positions shaped by the absolute need to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we don’t take positions because of that engagement.

Old and crumbling nuclear power plants like Vemont Yankee simply don’t cut it as a sustainable and long-term climate solution.

Of course, it is entirely possible that these competitive ventures have nothing at all to do with efforts to remove 620 MWe of reliable, emission free electricity from the New England power grid. I am sure that CLF has completely divorced itself from the knowledge of the impact of the balance between supply and demand and the impact of that balance on the profitability of client projects.

The tritium that has been measured at Vermont Yankee is an exceedingly small quantity. A person could drink water at 80,000 picocuries per liter for an entire year and only accumulate a radiation dose of 16 mrem, which is quite a bit lower than the normal background radiation dose in the US of 350 mrem. No tritium has been measured in the CT River, which means it is not there. (Radioactive material is very easy to detect at levels that approach single atoms.)

Natural gas drilling in the Marcellus has the potential for releasing FAR more radioactive material to the environment than the small leaks found at VY.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights.