Editor's note: This is the seventh in a series of stories
dealing with emergency preparedness in the 10-mile evacuation
zone around Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.
BRATTLEBORO -- Even if an emergency situation was to develop at
Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, a release of
deadly radiation wouldn't occur immediately, said Neil Sheehan,
spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "In the event
of even a severe accident, it will unfold over a matter of
days," said Sheehan. A reactor can't explode like a bomb, he
said, because the fuel used is enriched to about 6 percent, as
opposed to the 90-percent enrichment needed for a nuclear
weapon. And, he said, there are barriers between the fuel and
the environment, including the cladding around the fuel pellets,
the reactor cooling system and the containment building. In
2007, the NRC conducted the State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence
Analyses (SOARCA) to develop what it considered a more realistic
study of the potential consequences of