David R. Baker,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Greg Karras has heard the talk about Chevron Corp. possibly pulling out of Richmond.

He isn’t buying it.

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Karras is a senior scientist of an environmental group fighting Chevron’s plan to upgrade its Richmond refinery, which has occupied a spot on the city’s western edge for more than a century.

To him, recent hints from Chevron executives that they might leave Richmond unless they get their way ring hollow. Although they’re low right now, refinery profit margins tend to be higher in California than they are elsewhere in the country, he said. Chevron isn’t likely to sell or close the third-largest producer of gasoline in the state.

“It’s not going to happen – not to this refinery,” said Karras, with Communities for a Better Environment. “Here you’ve got the California market, a gold mine for any refinery, and a new refinery is very unlikely to be built. If it’s profitable to sell gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in California, Chevron’s not going to close the Richmond refinery.”

Negotiating tactic

Many of the people sparring with Chevron in Richmond – over the refinery expansion as well as a $20.5 million tax dispute – don’t believe the company will leave. Some consider the executives’ hints of departure a negotiating tactic. Chevron’s announcement this month that it needs to cut jobs throughout its worldwide refining operations and possibly sell some facilities didn’t change their minds.

“It seems like they’ve got something that’s working and making money,” said Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, a frequent Chevron critic.

The City Council, she said, will discuss the possibility that the refinery could change hands or close. But she doubts either will happen.

“We’re basically going to look at all the potentialities,” McLaughlin said. “But I do think that because it is a profitable refinery, this probably won’t result in a closure.”

Chevron, based 35 miles away in San Ramon, won’t say which of its refineries around the globe will close or be sold. Those details will be revealed in March.

Chevron spokesman Sean Comey said the company wants better relations with Richmond, but the city’s business environment leaves something to be desired.

“The refinery was there before the town was incorporated, and historically it had been a good place to do business,” he said. “Right now, there’s some opportunity for improvement.”

Oil companies rarely disclose profits for specific refineries, lest they give competitors too much information. But in a New York Times article last fall, the head of Chevron’s global refining operations said Richmond ranked in the “lowest tier of earnings” among the company’s refineries. “Refineries that don’t make money don’t stay open,” he warned.

And yet, California refineries typically enjoy some of the nation’s highest profit margins. The state uses unique gasoline blends designed to fight air pollution, and only a small number of refineries make those blends. Limited competition has, for most of the past decade, made California the place to be for refiners.

Refining industry profits can be tracked, roughly, by looking at the difference between the price of the oil that refineries use as raw material and the price of the products that they make, a measure known as the “crack spread.” Last year, the crack spread for West Coast refineries averaged $14.83 per barrel of oil. For refineries on the Gulf Coast, it averaged $8.18.

Demand down

These days, all refineries are hurting, in California and throughout the country. The recession has driven down the demand for gasoline, as Americans try to save money by driving less. Even with high gas prices, averaging more than $3 per gallon in California, refineries are losing money. In such a bleak environment, Chevron might contemplate closing or selling its Richmond site, said Brian Youngberg, senior energy analyst with investment company Edward Jones.

“I doubt that they would close it, but I don’t think it’s necessarily out of the realm of possibility,” he said. “I really think they’re re-looking at their entire portfolio. If they feel they need to make significant improvements in Richmond, and they’re getting pushback, they might consider it.”

Chevron is Richmond’s largest employer, with 1,250 people at the refinery and 1,350 at a research and technology center. The company’s relationship with the community has been turbulent.

In 2008, Richmond voters approved a new tax on the refinery, based on the value of the crude oil it refines. A judge ruled the tax unconstitutional in December, saving Chevron $20.5 million.

Another courtroom fight has gone badly for the company. Last summer several organizations, including Communities for a Better Environment, persuaded a judge to block the refinery’s upgrade and expansion. The company had not answered key questions about the project in its environmental impact report, the judge ruled. Settlement talks between Chevron and the plaintiffs have, so far, produced no results.

Chevron executives have not explicitly said that the company would leave Richmond. Instead, in comments to the New York Times and National Public Radio, they have suggested that if they can’t upgrade the refinery, their relationship with the city might end in “divorce.”

To Karras, those comments sound familiar.

Nearly 10 years ago, owners of another Bay Area refinery embroiled in an environmental dispute threatened to close their facility. The Tosco refinery (now owned by Tesoro Corp.) had been ordered by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board to cut the amount of dioxin it released into the environment. Company executives said the changes would cost too much, and they threatened to shutter the facility, located near Martinez.

The board backed down. Two weeks later, Tosco announced that another company, Ultramar, had agreed to buy the refinery. The sale had to be in the works before the showdown with the water board, Karras said.

“Lo and behold, the water board granted their request,” Karras said. “It was clearly and obviously an empty threat. It clearly and obviously put pressure on the environmental agencies.”

And yet, California refineries face significant uncertainties about the future.

State rules

As part of the fight against global warming, California is developing a cap-and-trade system that would put a price on carbon dioxide emissions. The state also has adopted a “low-carbon fuel standard” that will force refiners to reduce the carbon intensity of the fuels they sell. Both will probably prove expensive for refiners.

If the entire country adopts those measures, refineries throughout the country would face similar costs. But if the federal stalemate over climate-change legislation continues and California goes it alone, refineries in the state would be at a disadvantage, said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, an oil industry lobbying group.

“We’ve got companies that are looking at every investment dollar, every investment and where they’re going to make it,” she said. “And I can tell you, California is not at the top of the list.”

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/29/BUS51BNU1H.DTL#ixzz0gKZzyqwX

Up to 18 ABC staffers who worked at a Brisbane, Australia, studio have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

ANOTHER woman who worked at the ABC’s Queensland headquarters has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

The ABC abandoned its studios at Toowong, in Brisbane’s inner west, in late 2006 because of a breast cancer cluster.

Up to 18 women who worked at the site between 1994 and 2006 have developed the disease.

The cause of the cluster has not been identified.

It is understood the woman, who has not been identified, worked in the television newsroom for about seven years in the 1990s.

The ABC said in a statement the national broadcaster was saddened by the news of the latest case.

“It will offer full support to the former employee as it has with all those who worked at the Toowong site and were diagnosed with breast cancer,” a spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman said the ABC’s response to the issue continued to be guided by an independent panel of experts.

Related Coverage
Another ABC breast cancer case
The Australian, 14 hours ago

Cancer clues in ABC cluster
Courier Mail, 8 Oct 2009

ABC cancer rate OK
Courier Mail, 25 Aug 2009

read full article

Carcinogens found in marine life in island of Vieques in Puerto Rico

Published on Saturday, February 21, 2009

By María Miranda Sierra
Caribbean Net News Puerto Rico Correspondent
Email: miranda@caribbeannetnews.com

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico: After gathering samples from an underwater nuclear bomb target – the USS Killen — since 1999 in the small island of Vieques in Puerto Rico, University of Georgia Ecologist James Porter thought he would find evidence of radioactive material but instead discovered that unexploded munitions in the waters around the island are leaking cancer causing matter.

These carcinogenic materials are absorbed by marine life and could very well be transferred to humans when they eat seafood, fished in the area.

In addition, data revealed that the closer corals and marine life were to unexploded bombs from the World War II vessel and the surrounding target range, the higher the rates of carcinogenic materials.

“Unexploded bombs are in the ocean for a variety of reasons – some were duds that did not explode, others were dumped in the ocean as a means of disposal,” Porter said in a written statement. “And we now know that these munitions are leaking cancer-causing materials and endangering sea life.”

Porter’s findings will be presented at the Second International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions on February 25-27 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has been gathering data since 1999 on the eastern end of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico – a land and sea area that was used as a naval gunnery and bombing range from 1943-2003.

In 2001, the residents of the island of Vieques which was used as a bombing range claimed over a $100 million in damages from the US Navy over claims that ammunition including depleted uranium (DU) shells caused cancer epidemic.

More than a third of the 9,000 inhabitants of Vieques have been found to be suffering from a range of serious illnesses and cancers, which doctors have linked to decades of bombing by the US and the military of other countries including the British Royal Navy.

According to official Puerto Rican figures, cancer rates on the island are soaring, with the numbers of people suffering from cancer of the breast, cervix and uterus up by 300 percent over the past 20 years.

Still, the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry made a study of their own after the Navy’s exit from Vieques which concluded that there was no evidence of any harm to the island’s residents from the Navy’s bombings there.

However, a study made by the Commonwealth’s Health Department concluded that it was highly likely that the toxic chemicals released by the Navy’s military exercises into the environment could be the main cause for the increase in illnesses such as cancer, lupus and heart conditions.

An additional study made in the bombing area by leading Puerto Rican environmental scientists Dr. Neftalí García and Jorge Fernández, showed dangerously high levels of heavy metals and other toxic chemical components related to military activities in the soil and water.

Robert L. Rabin Siegal, a member of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques Scientific said that additional studies carried out identified high concentrations of arsenic, barium, cadmium, zinc, cobalt, copper, tin, mercury, silver and lead.

“Aluminum, chromium, iron, manganese, nickel, and vanadium concentrations were found in some areas. High concentrations of nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, hydrocarbons typical of diesel fuel, and phosphates, that are formed from bomb explosions or are present in other war artifacts, were also found. The metals found in high concentrations are present in explosives, propellants, paints, conventional and uranium bullets, napalm, chaff, flares and other paraphernalia used by the Navy in Vieques,” Siegal said.

According to Siegel, metals have been found in plants, violinist crabs, fish, mussels, Thalassia and sea grass beds, and humans in Vieques, which confirm the expected processes of biomagnifications. High concentrations of mercury and lead have been found in hair samples of civilians in Vieques subcontracted by US companies like Raytheon and General Electric to work in the impact areas.

High concentrations of aluminum, antimony, arsenic, bismuth and lead have been found in hair samples of a large number of civilians in Vieques that do not work in impact areas, Siegal said. Other metals found in above normal levels are boron, cadmium, tin, manganese, mercury, silver and vanadium. Uranium in above normal concentrations has also been found in stool samples of civilians, he added.

While the Navy was still in Vieques local fishermen struggled for decades to get the Navy to stop bombing and leave the island.

“Giant military ships destroyed fish traps and bombing and other maneuvers impose severe restrictions on fishermen’s entry into some of the best fishing areas around the island. On numerous occasions fishing boats have been damaged by naval gunfire and fishermen have been severely hurt by bombs exploding close to their fishing activities,” Siegal said.

Meanwhile, Porter’s research revealed that marine life including reef-building corals, feather duster worms and sea urchins closest to the bomb and bomb fragments had the highest levels of toxicity.

“In fact, carcinogenic materials were found in concentrations up to 100,000 times over established safe limits. This danger zone covered a span of up to two meters from the bomb and its fragments,” reads the reports findings.

According to research conducted in Vieques, residents here have a 23 percent higher cancer rate than do Puerto Rican mainlanders. Porter said a future step will be “to determine the link from unexploded munitions to marine life to the dinner plate.”

While Porter believes every nation with a coastline has problems with unexploded munitions, there is a solution.

“With the creation of the Ordinance Recovery System, we now have a way to safely remove unexploded munitions,” he said.

The machine, Porter said, picks up unexploded bombs off the sea floor and delivers them safely to a lift basket for surface disposal or deep sea burial. It is operated remotely with proportional toggle switches that allow much more fine control of the delicate undersea operation than an on/off button. The system relies on an underwater hydraulic system designed by James Barton, president of Underwater Ordinance Recovery, Inc., with the technical expertise of machinists at the UGA instrument shop.

“When you remove the bomb, you remove the problem – but you’ve got to pick it up,” Porter added.

American Public Health Association (APHA)
Nation’s Health Publication
February, 2010

The Environmental Public Health Tracking Network now contains at least
some cancer data for 42 states and Washington, D.C., after federal
officials added new data and additional mapping features to the network
late last year.

Along with the new state data, the network also added data from five
cancer types: acute myeloid leukemia, breast cancer, chronic lymphocytic
leukemia, acute lymphocytic leukemia in children and acute myeloid
leukemia in children. The network’s new mapping feature allows users to
view a layer of maps showing interstate highways, rivers, lakes,
hospitals and other landscape features and overlap the geography with
disease trends.

The Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, which is coordinated
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, merges health,
exposure and hazard information from national, state and city sources to
help link environmental causes of illness. Topics cover both
environmental hazards and health conditions, including asthma and the
flu, birth defects, well water and pesticides.
–

Canada exports majority of dangerous mineral to developing countries

Martin Mittelstaedt

The Globe and Mail

The death toll from mesothelioma, a rare cancer almost always caused by asbestos exposure, is rising rapidly in Mexico, a major market for Canada’s exports of the mineral, and could be as high as 500 a year.

The figure – an estimate by doctors at the Mexican Institute of Social Security, a government health agency – is likely to spur further controversy over Canada’s aggressive promotion of the cancer-causing material in the developing world. Concerns over asbestos were a focus of attention during Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s recent trade mission to India. He defended the mineral, which is mined in his province and supports about 700 jobs.

Guadalupe Aguilar, an occupational health expert who led the team that conducted the research, said the full impact of asbestos may be even greater because medical surveys have found that for every mesothelioma death, there are likely an additional 2.3 fatal cases of lung cancer due to inhalation of the mineral. The total number of asbestos-caused deaths in Mexico is probably around 1,500 annually, Dr. Aguilar said.

read full article

MITRA MALEK
The Miami Herald
Palm Beach Post

The Acreage has a cluster of childhood cancer cases, the head of Palm
Beach County’s Health Department said Monday, confirming some of the
worst fears of parents who called for a state investigation last year.

Eight months of uncertainty ended Monday when state health officials
confirmed that rates of brain tumors and brain cancer among children
in the semirural community are higher than normal, especially among
girls.

But based on early results of interviews with the families, it’s
unlikely that health officials will be able to pinpoint what has
caused the spike, said Dr. Alina Alonso, director of the county’s
Health Department, a division of the state health department.

“We really don’t have one thing,” Alonso said during a monthly
conference call updating legislators on the investigation, which
started in June. “From what we’re seeing now, there is nothing that
is going to say, `Aha this is the cause of the cancer.’ ”

Health officials recently completed interviews with 12 of 13 families
with children who have been diagnosed with either brain tumors or
brain cancer from 1993 through 2008, in search of commonalities. One
of the 13 families couldn’t be located because they moved.

Until the department finishes analyzing those interviews in the next
two months, the state wouldn’t conduct any environmental tests, if at
all, to look for a potential cause, said county health department
spokesman Tim O’Connor.

Even so, O’Connor added, Alonso has said that the data available so
far are enough to label the cancer cases a cluster.

Officials plan to discuss the investigation at a public meeting from
6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 9 at Seminole Ridge High School.

Residents said they were somewhat relieved to hear there is a
cluster. But they said environmental tests are imperative.

For full article:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1458593.html

–

Layton family: ‘We are heartbroken’

By Bob Mims, Erin Alberty and Jason Bergreen

The Salt Lake Tribune

A Layton family has lost its second daughter since toxic pesticide fumes apparently wafted into their home last weekend.

Rachel Toone, 15 months, died Tuesday at Primary Children’s Medical Center. Three days earlier her 4-year-old sister, Rebecca, died at Davis Hospital after she had begun struggling to breathe in the family’s home.

“We are heartbroken,” the Toone family wrote in a press statement announcing Rachel’s death. Rachel’s health deteriorated after heart failure early Monday, the family wrote.

Authorities suspect the toxic gas phosphine sickened the family. Investigators say the gas may have entered into the family’s home after an exterminator dropped Fumitoxin aluminum phosphide pellets in burrow holes in the lawn Friday to kill small rodents known as voles.

Rebecca Toone died Saturday after she grew sick in the family’s home. Her parents and siblings also were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms the same day. They were all discharged Sunday, but Rachel fell ill again later that day.

Meanwhile, a Sandy woman, Alice Pittman, said Wednesday that she now wonders if a September 2008 Fumitoxin application by the same exterminators – Bountiful-based Bugman Pest and Lawn – may be connected to the deaths of her two Basset hound puppies. She said the poison was applied in a rodent-infested pasture abutting her fence line.

full article here

d R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Environmental groups suing Chevron Corp. over the renovation of the company’s aging Richmond refinery threw their support on Tuesday behind a settlement proposal from California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

“It’s not the best of all solutions, but we feel it’s a solution that gets people back to work and protects the health of the community,” said Nile Malloy, Northern California program director for Communities for a Better Environment.

Last year, Malloy’s group and several others persuaded a judge to halt the upgrade project on the grounds that its environmental impact report didn’t answer key questions. The settlement proposal, issued by Brown last month, would allow the upgrade to resume, with restrictions.

The refinery would not be allowed to refine heavy grades of crude oil, although Malloy said the refinery would have more flexibility to use different grades than his group initially wanted. In addition, Chevron would have to replace the refinery’s boilers, install equipment to prevent flaring, improve its energy efficiency by 20 percent in the next 10 years and install solar panels capable of generating 15 megawatts of electricity.

A Chevron spokesman said Tuesday that any settlement should be handled through the courts, not in a public discussion.

“We appreciate the interest Attorney General Brown and others have expressed in the Renewal Project,” spokesman Brent Tippen said in an e-mailed statement. “We ask that they respect the ongoing confidential Court of Appeal mediation process.”

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/03/BUO61BRHIF.DTL#ixzz0gKZHxSuT

The Wall Street Journal

Why is a child born in northwest Los Angeles four times as likely to be diagnosed with autism as a child born elsewhere in California?

Medical experts have pondered for years why autism rates have soared nationwide, and why the disorder appears to be much more prevalent in certain communities than in others. Now, some recent studies that zero in on California may shed some light on these baffling questions.

Researchers from Columbia University, in a study published in the current Journal of Health & Place, identified an area including West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and some less posh neighborhoods that accounted for 3% of the state’s new cases of autism every year from 1993 to 2001, even though it had only 1% of the population.

Another recent study, from the University of California, Davis, published in Autism Research, also found high rates of autism in children born around Los Angeles, as well as nine other California locations. Autism, usually diagnosed before a child is 3 years old, is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication and repetitive behavior.

Both of the California-based studies suggest that local environmental or social factors are driving the high autism-diagnosis rates. And they conclude that childhood vaccinations—which some people fear is a factor behind rising autism—are not to blame. Otherwise, diagnoses of the disorder would be more evenly dispersed, they say.

The studies also disagree on some points. According to the UC Davis study, greater concentrations of autism occur in communities where parents are highly educated, which could mean they have more awareness of autism and access to treatment. By contrast, the Columbia researchers discount the role of educational levels. They believe that social influences, such as shared information about diagnoses, doctors and services, are largely responsible for the high rates they found in parts of Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles itself, residents have a variety of explanations for the high autism rates, ranging from a family’s affluence and the activity of autism-advocacy groups to past air and water pollution.

James McCracken, a child psychiatrist at the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment, says families often have to fight with state bureaucracies to be deemed eligible for services, and some spend thousands of dollars for private evaluations. “You can see the possibility for inequity according to social advantage or cultural background,” he says.

But Moira Giammatteo, a San Fernando Valley mother with a 12-year-old autistic son, doesn’t believe that affluent, educated parents are gaming the system. “It’s not like people think, ‘get this label and you can get services.’ Nobody wants this diagnosis; most parents are in denial,” she says.

Some of the increase in autism rates in past decades is due to changing definitions. Until the early 1990s, diagnoses of autism were rare and included only children with low I.Q.s, who were deeply withdrawn and had very minimal language skills. In 1994, diagnosticians adopted the term autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which also includes children with impaired social skills but not necessarily severe intellectual disabilities or language delays.

On average, one in 110 American 8-year-olds had an autism spectrum disorder in 2006, an increase of 57% since 2002, according to a December report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some parts of the U.S. are seeing much higher rates than others: Metropolitan Phoenix, for example, has twice the prevalence as northern Alabama.

Whether those differences reflect actual higher risk in different regions, differences in awareness among local residents, or simply variations in record keeping is something the CDC is trying to untangle.

“We still don’t know what causes autism, and we don’t know a lot of the underlying factors, so we can’t rule out the possibility that there are differences in the distribution of risk factors.” says Jon Bai, a CDC epidemiologist.

Theories abound to explain the steep increase that has occurred in recent years. Some experts attribute it to genetic changes within families. But others say genetic changes wouldn’t occur so quickly and instead they blame environmental toxins or childhood vaccinations.

Another possible explanation: Greater awareness of the disorder, and programs in some parts of the country that can help children regain skills, may make parents more willing to have their children diagnosed.

“But awareness can only go so far” to explain the rising levels of autism, says Dr. Baio. “We are still identifying more children with autism, in all levels of severity, than ever before, which is why this continues to be a perplexing and urgent concern.”

Around the U.S.

Nine out of every 1,000 8-year-olds were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as of 2006. But rates vary widely in the survey areas, located in 11 states, that the CDC monitors. (Prevalence per 1,000):

Alabama 6.0
Arizona 12.1
Colorado 7.5
Florida 4.2
Georgia 10.2
Maryland 9.2
Missouri 12.1
North Carolina 10.4
Pennsylvania 8.4
South Carolina 8.6
Wisconsin 7.6
Source: CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network

In California, children with autism or ASD must be “substantially developmentally disabled” to qualify for services from the state’s Department of Developmental Services (DDS). The two recent studies used data from the DDS in their research. The studies looked at where the children with autism were born, not where they were diagnosed, so that their findings wouldn’t be skewed by families moving into the areas.

As part of their work, the Columbia researchers constructed a “SimCity map of California,” referring to the city-building simulation game, says Peter Bearman, the lead investigator. They assembled data pinpointing not just where children with autism were born and diagnosed but also all the parks, day-care centers, doctors’ offices, autism-advocacy groups and other gathering places.

The result: significantly higher occurrences of autism in a large area of Los Angeles stretching from Santa Monica in the west to beyond Burbank in the east, and from El Segundo in the south to the San Fernando Valley in the north. The epicenter of the autism cluster: areas around Hollywood.

read article online

Vermont Yankee among troubled

By Beth Daley
Boston Globe Staff / January 31, 2010

VERNON, Vt. – The nuclear industry, once an environmental pariah, is recasting itself as green as it attempts to extend the life of many power plants and build new ones. But a leak of radioactive water at Vermont Yankee, along with similar incidents at more than 20 other US nuclear plants in recent years, has kindled doubts about the reliability, durability, and maintenance of the nation’s aging nuclear installations.

Vermont health officials say the leak, while deeply worrisome, is not a threat to drinking water supplies or the Connecticut River, which flows beside the 38-year-old plant, nor is it endangering public health. But the controversy is threatening to derail the nuclear plant’s bid, now at a critical juncture, for state approvals to extend its operating life by 20 years when its license expires in two years. Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors, Vermont Yankee’s owners, and state officials are tracing the source of the radioactivity and searching for other leaks in the labyrinth of below-surface pipes on the plants’ property about 10 miles from the Massachusetts border.

The timing couldn’t be worse for the nuclear industry, coming as it attempts a broad rebirth as a green energy source in the battle against global warming; the reactors do not emit greenhouse gases that cause the atmosphere to warm.

Memories of the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are receding and many in the public are taking a second look at nuclear. President Obama last week endorsed a new generation of nuclear power in his State of the Union address, and for the first time in decades, more than 20 new plants have been proposed.

But the leaks have the potential to slow, if not stop, the bandwagon. Crucial voices are calling for caution. “I am appalled by the safety procedures not only at Vermont Yankee, but at other nuclear facilities across the country who have failed to inspect thousands of miles of buried pipes at their facilities,’’ US Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, said last week. Earlier this month, Markey asked the US Government Accountability Office to investigate the integrity, safety, inspections, and maintenance of buried pipes at nuclear plants.

Critics say the problems with buried pipes are evidence the plants are too old and poorly maintained to continue to safely operate as many – including plants in Seabrook, N.H., and Plymouth – seek extensions of their original 40-year operating licenses. Nuclear advocates, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, say that while the leaks of a radioactive form of water containing tritium are serious, those that have contaminated groundwater have not exceeded regulatory limits or harmed the structural integrity, operation, or safety of the plants.