A Radioactive Retaining Wall

This retaining wall not far from the Readsboro, Vt. General Store was built with concrete blocks from now-closed Yankee Rowe nuclear power plant. Photo: Vyto Starinskas, Rutland (Vt.) Herald.

A retaining wall in Readsboro, Vt. is built of radioactive concrete blocks that once helped shield the core of a nuclear reactor, recent tests have shown.

Analysis of the retaining wall, conducted in February by the Vermont Department of Health, show it is contaminated with the radioactive isotope tritium. The results were released in mid June. State and federal officials, however, said the wall poses no health risk. The tritium has a half-life, or remains radioactive, for 12.3 years. It was built with 35 large, interlocking concrete blocks taken from the reactor building of the nearby nuclear plant in Rowe, Mass., about three miles from the small southern Vermont town of Readsboro in Bennington County.

The blocks were taken from the site, with the company’s permission, by an employee, Tom Dente of Readsboro, who owns the Readsboro General Store with his wife, Brenda. “It made a beautiful retaining wall; it was the cheapest thing I could build, ” Dente said.

After intensive sand-blasting and cleaning, tests used at the time showed the blocks were free from radioactivity, according to the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The new tests surprised plant officials, they said, because this time the tests showed the concrete contained tritium, a byproduct of the nuclear fission process.