Dapas: "... done a sufficient job"

Jacobs (standing): "...not acceptable to us"

CORTLANDT MANOR – The small crowd attending the latest Nuclear Regulatory Commission input session on Indian Point heard the plant operator, and the regulatory agency say basically the same thing: minute radioactive ground leaks are not a cause for serious concern.  The NRC said Entergy followed proper procedures when the leaks were discovered.

“Clearly the unmonitored pathway that did exist did not result in any public health and safety impact, and that’s the overarching message that we wanted to make sure that members of the public understand”, said NRC Deputy Regional Administrator Marc Dapas.  “But, as I stated in my summary, it is important that we, and more specifically, the utility, understands all of the pathways that exist, so they can in fact monitor those to insure that any public health limit is not exceeded,”

But that’s a very narrow and short-sighted perspective, according to Indian Point critic Mark Jacobs, of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition.

“What that really means is, ‘we’re done, let nature clean up what’s left’.  That’s not acceptable to us.  We believe there needs to be more of a sense of urgency cleaning up the strontium 90, the cesium 137 the tritium that’s at the plant, and letting nature clean it up over the next hundreds of years is not acceptable.”

One NRC presenter used a hand-held compass to make the point that the radiation from the luminous pointer is greater than the amount of radiation from ground leaks that has entered the Hudson River. 

Jacobs argues that is comparing background radiation to what is really getting into the ground.  His other point is that the ‘bounding calculations’ the NRC uses keeps changing as the history of the leaks progresses. 

“As we learn more, we may very find that there is still more radioactive material being leaked through different sources.”

Dapas says that is why the NRC must continue to provide oversight “… to validate that Entergy has done a sufficient job of insuring that there are not any pathways that exist that hence would not be monitored.”  A ‘pathway’ often is a fissure in the earth through which leaked material can eventually make its way to other places.