Cesium-137, additional radionuclides, discovered in Vermont Yankee soil

Vermont's Times Argus reports that Ce-137, a radioisotope with a hazardous persistence of 300 to 600 years and that lodges in human muscle tissue (and has been blamed by Belarussian scientist Bandashevsky for the condition in children known as "Chernobyl Heart," the focus of a short documentary by the same name, which won an Oscar in 2003), has been discovered in the soil beneath Vermont Yankee atomic reactor during the course of Entergy Nuclear's search for the origin of underground tritium leaks. While Entergy was quick to blame atmospheric bomb tests and the Chernobyl cloud's fallout itself as the origin of the Ce-137, nuclear engineers such as Arnie Gundersen of the Vermont Legislature's Public Oversight Panel, and radiological health chief for the Vermont Department of Health William Irwin, said it's too soon to tell where the Ce-137 has come from, but it could very well be from the same leak releasing tritium into groundwater at the site. The Vermont Digger has reported that, in addition to Ce-137, radioactive isotopes of manganese and zinc have also been discovered in Vermont Yankee's soil. The Digger also reports that a visible crack in the "advanced off gas" (AOG) system pipe may account for some -- although perhaps not all -- of the tritium and other radioactivity leaks into site groundwater. Such a growing list of radionuclides in the soil and groundwater is reminiscent of the Big Rock Point reactor -- even post-decommissioning, two dozen hazardous radionuclides, including those now being found at Vermont Yankee, were still present in the Michigan nuclear power plant site. Despite this, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has declared it a "green field," available for "unrestricted re-use."