Indian Point Unit 1 Waste Wrongly Being Co-Mingled, and Other Issues of Concern

First, it has been suggested by others, and even printed that Neil Sheehan has the social graces of a rock tumbling through an out house cellar, and is for all intents a putz...after my/our conversation with him today, we can verify this fact. He takes my call, then when he realizes who it is on line one knows it will be a long call, wants to call me back tomorrow as he has to get back to members of the mainstream media...to which I ask, are you saying bloggers are NOT mainstream media? He, (flustered) says to give him a break, he meant WORKING media...need a bigger shovel there Neil? Needless to say, our discussion went downhill from there...we'll see if he bothers calling back tomorrow as promised.

Think sometimes, that we are so busy with reactors 2 and 3 over at Indian Point, that it is easy to forget that Entergy is also legally responsible for failed miserably reactor one as well. There seem to be some very disturbing things going on at Indian Point that directly/indirectly involve reactor licenses 1 and 2, and the potential wrongful co-mingling of waste streams from these two separately licensed reactors and their twin leaking like a sieve spent fuel pools.

Lets back up for a few minutes and unravel some of this wondrous fabric we call life so that we can fully appreciate the warp and weave of coincedence.

About two weeks past, Remy C. and I had traveled into the city to make some face time at three important Green events. Heading back home on the 1:00 AM Metronorth we met a young man whose father worked at Indian Point...talk about a small world at times. This man had a wealth of information on Indian Point, real INSIDE dirt. Wasted dives into both the reactors, and spent fuel pools, leaks being hidden from us, and most interesting of all, a story that tens of thousands of gallons of irradiated water was being spirited away from the sight on a regular basis...ranked right up there with a story he was telling us about a hose left in the wrong place that acted as a siphon, but the train pulled into Peekskill before I could get that full story from him.

This week I had occassion to speak wih Barbara Youngberg who is with the New York DEC about Indian Point, and her remarks at Clearwater's Roundtable on Indian Point Leaks...pity no one at that meeting coerced her into openning up about reactor one. As I spoke with her, the eerie truth began to gel as her words bore witness to the young man's truth and vice versa. Being one handed is a real bitch, so going to simply make a list of some of what I now believe to be true:

1. The leaking reactor one spent fuel pool leaks have grown far worse than we know about, and one can assume the leak has gone not only from bad to worse, but could be severe, even critical in nature.

2. The spent fuel leakage rate is known, as staff is having to continually top the tank off to protect the spent fuel rods in said pool one. Further, said leakage is being captured through various deployed systems for said purpose and mitigation. Problem...volume is so great that said gathered leakage is having to be pumped into trucks (remember our young man) and spirited off site. CURIOUS....WHERE IS THIS IRRADIATED WATER GOING, IN WHAT VOLUMES, AND WHAT KIND OF TRUCKS ARE BEING USED TO TRANSPORT?

3. Lets assume my assumptions are right. What are Entergy and the NRC hiding, and why?

A) A severely worsening leak in spent fuel pool for reactor one, coupled with a known leak of less severity (currently) in spent fuel pool two would deliver a devastating blow to Entergy's relicensing plans, and both the NRC and Entergy are very aware of this.

B) As spent fuel pool one goes, so too goes spent fuel pool number two, and again Entergy and Indian Point know this.

C) News of a severe leak scenario of a spent fuel pool would be National, if not International FRONT PAGE news, and would deliver a crippling if not death blow to the Nuclear Renaissance, and the whole GNEP iniative...in short, no Nuclear 2010 plan of action, no new reactors here in America, a halt to the NRC's rubberstamping of 104 applications for license renewal, as is now wrongly occurring. Congress would have no choice but to step in and order and ISA of every nuclear facility in America...Goodbye Nuclear Renaissance.

We all know that the DOD, DOE, NRC, NEI and the whole nuclear industry have far too much at stake here to let that happen...so, they are hiding the truth from us, the intent being to NURSE things along by breaking rules (co-mingling licensee waste streams by moving pool one fuel rods into already over crowded pool two) and keeping everything nursing along until the rods can be transferred into dry cask storage and pool one is buried on sie for 14 millionh years.

WHAT A DEVIOUS AND BRILLIANT PLAN! ONE PROBLEM! WHAT IF THE NOW CRITICAL LEAKS IN POOL ONE GET EVEN WORSE, AND WE HAVE A FULL FLEDGED TANK RUPTURE, OR GOD FORBID, COLLAPSE?

In their quest for a global One World Nuclear Order with America at the helm, have the DOD, DOE, NRC, NEI, NuStart, Entergy, CASEnergy and the entire nuclear industry decided they are willing to place the ultimate bet in their gamble for a nuclear renaissance? Are they hiding a sinister secret, and praying to the devil that they can keep New York City safe from an Indian Point on the brink of the long feared nuclear holocaust, the ultimate nuclear accident, a spent fuel rod fire?

Without a full complete investigation by outside experts that had unfettered access to all parts of all that is the Indian Point facility, these are but the suspicions of one man who happens to be good with puzzles. Do you trust Entergy? Do you trust the NRC? Do you trust George Bush and his Nuclear 2010 iniative?

Can stakeholders afford to write this article off as the rantings of an anti nuclear heretic? Make your own decisions, but this writer think the time has come to have outside investigators crawling all over the Indian Point site, and that all efforts at relicensing be halted until we have the full and complete truth about the leaks, the strontium, and the tritium...if Entergy and the NRC are not lying to us, then they should welcome this investigation.