Vt. Yankee’s emergency plan is tested

By SUSAN SMALLHEER Southern Vermont Bureau

WATERBURY — In the first test of Vermont Yankee’s emergency plan since the events of Sept. 11, state and local officials Tuesday coped with an imaginary train derailment.

The mock drill involved hazardous waste near the nuclear reactor and an earthquake that damaged key safety systems at the plant.

Things went well, according to a debriefing held for the dozens of officials who crowded into the state’s emergency operations center at the Vermont State Police headquarters.

Albert Lewis, the new director of Emergency Management, had a wrong number for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and some people’s computer programs didn’t work. Others said things were a little disjointed when the exercise first got going, but quickly improved.

There was a little confusion about emergency sirens versus the tone alert radios, but it was quickly straightened out by the state police radio dispatchers.

The real report card will come in a couple of months, after the Federal Emergency Management Agency details what state and Entergy Nuclear officials did well, and what they need to improve.

The graded exercise is held every two years; the last one was held only days before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. That full-scale exercise gave Vermont Yankee generally OK marks, but listed about 30 areas that needed attention.

Since then, there are new procedures in place, both for the state and their federal evaluators.

According to John Swartz, with FEMA’s regional office in Boston , evaluations now will be much more objective, rather than subjective. The criteria are clearly defined, Swartz said.

Swartz is one of a large FEMA team that evaluates nuclear plants’ emergency planning in the Northeast.

In Waterbury , agency heads and emergency planners conferred and studied their computer screens, or studied data being kicked out by their fax machines, or talked on gray telephones.

While many people studied computer screens, there was a lot of old-fashioned note-taking and filling out of paper forms.

“Sometimes computers confuse people,” Swartz said.

State funding for the emergency planning comes largely from Vermont Yankee, which saw its contribution last year double from $400,000 to $800,000. A report from the state auditor said the real cost of emergency planning to Vermont taxpayers was closer to $1.2 million.

John Sayles, deputy commissioner of the Department of Public Service, studied a large laptop computer that linked him with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which in turn has a direct link to the control room at Vermont Yankee.

Sayles’ computer could display key information about radioactivity in the drywell, radioactivity released, gas pressure and wind direction, among about 20 different issues, he said.

Every hour, there were updates from the incident director, Duncan Higgins, the state emergency planning deputy director.

For Razelle Hoffman-Contois and William Bress of the Department of Health, Tuesday’s exercise was a big improvement over even two preparatory drills, which had been held in the past couple of months as a dry run.

Hoffman-Contois said Entergy Nuclear officials had been extremely helpful with special training and tours of the plant to better prepare for the FEMA exercise.

“Since Entergy took over, they’ve been incredibly helpful,” Hoffman-Contois said, as she and Bress read pages of fake data about the plant belching from a special fax line that would help them plot the plume of radioactive gas that was released during Tuesday’s scenario.

With one of the ubiquitous laptop computers, Bress and Hoffman-Contois plotted and fed the information to their bosses, including Health Commissioner Dr. Paul Jarris, who would make the decision about evacuating Vermont towns and what doses of radioactivity would be safe.

Their recommendation was to evacuate Vernon , but no other Vermont towns in the emergency evacuation zone.

“They’ve given us a lot more peace of mind,” Bress said.

Entergy Nuclear bought Vermont Yankee from a consortium of New England power utilities last July, and it sent two observers to the Waterbury center.

Kerry Sleeper, the new commissioner for the Department of Public Safety, said he would be issuing a report by the end of the month on the overall evacuation plan for Vermont Yankee.

The state has held off sending its annual letter of certification on the plan, and at least one of the five towns surrounding Vermont Yankee — Dummerston — has refused to approve its evacuation plan.

Sleeper said he had been waiting for the exercise to be held before completing the report for Gov. James Douglas, who had asked Sleeper for the new look at the nuclear power plant’s emergency planning issues.

Sleeper said he and Lewis were looking for federal funding for a new emergency operations center for Public Safety, which would be used for the various Yankee drills, as well as any emergency operations.

The center was last put into operation around the anniversary of Sept. 11. It is also activated for large-scale emergencies such as flooding or storms.

Sleeper said the new center would probably cost “millions,” but he said federal funding would provide 75 percent of funding.

Funding for emergency planning for Vermont Yankee recently doubled, from $400,000 to $800,000, and Sleeper said he had requested an additional $300,000 in this year’s budget, but that the Vermont House had taken it out.

Down in Brattleboro , no problems were reported.

“We met our objectives,” said Robert O. Williams, the Entergy Nuclear spokesman. “Things went well.”

“I think things went quite well,” added Brattleboro Town Manager Jerry Remillard, who was one of about a dozen people staffing the town’s emergency operations center. “Everything gets determined by the wind direction and it was blowing toward Massachusetts . We didn’t have to do any sheltering.”

For Mark Leary, 15, of Hinesburg, a member of the cadet corps of the Civil Air Patrol, Tuesday marked his third exercise at the Waterbury center. Leary was one of the “runners” who copied documents and distributed them to drill participants.

“Last time more happened. This year it was kind of slow,” Leary said.

Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.