Tracking radiation near Vt. Yankee
Monitoring team begins checks
VERNON, Vt. -- The ground is squishy underfoot as Bill Irwin and Dave Truesdell make their way along the edge of a cornfield, just outside Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
Every 50 yards or so, they stop at a mesh cylinder attached to a post, pull out two black squares from it and replace them with new ones. The replacements are dosimeters, which measure gamma radiation emitted by the plant.
It's all in a day's work, in the name of nuclear safety -- a continuing effort by Vermont Yankee and the state Health Department to measure radiation emitted by the plant.
Irwin is radiological health chief for the Vermont Department of Health. Truesdell is a chemistry technician with Vermont Yankee. Four times a year, they take a two-day tour of Windham County, collecting the dosimeters, which will be sent to a lab for testing and replacing them with fresh ones.
Just how much radiation is being emitted by Vermont Yankee has been a bone of contention recently. The Health Department reported that the plant had exceeded the state limit of 20 milirems per year in 2004. Vermont Yankee disagreed, and the two agreed to bring in a consultant to study the issue.
Last month, Oak Ridge Associated Universities reported that the state limit most likely had not been exceeded. It urged Vermont to take a broader sample, especially of background radiation in outlying areas of Windham County, to provide a better comparison to measurements taken just outside the plant's fence. Irwin said the state has been expanding its sampling.
The monitoring effort around Vermont Yankee is looking for ionizing radiation, a cancer-causing byproduct of splitting atoms.
Irwin joined the state Health Department in 2005, after stints working in radiation safety at the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire and in laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute and Harvard. He tries to minimize his exposure, since no radiation exposure is completely safe.
Irwin and Truesdell start their tour in outlying areas of Windham County, checking stations to get background readings against which measurements nearer to the nuclear plant can be compared.
Irwin said he, his wife and two children don't worry much about his radiation exposure. He said government and industry have made significant progress in reducing radiation emissions.
He said residents around Vermont Yankee should share his level of confidence.
"This is a hazard that among all other hazards people can be exposed to -- chemical, biological -- that is perhaps the best researched and analyzed and is also the best measured and monitored in the environment," he said. 