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March 15, 2008 * Vermont Yankee - state legislature and license renewal March 13, 2008 * Vermont Governor requests independent safety assessment for VYNPP March 2, 2007 *
Vermont utilities join to plan new power sources
The sources of Vermont's future electricity supplies are quite uncertain. Vermont currently gets about a third of its power under a contract between four utilities and the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant; another third comes under a similar arrangement with the hydropower-rich provincial utility Hydro-Quebec. Vermont Yankee's current operating license and the utilities' power purchase contract with the plant expire in 2012. Vermont Yankee is seeking a 20-year license extension, but even if it gets it, that doesn't guarantee that Vermont's utilities will continue to get power from it at a competitive price. Hydro-Quebec power flowing into Vermont phases out in the middle of the next decade. State and utility officials have expressed hope that Vermont be able to work out a new deal to continue getting Canadian power, but there are no guarantees there, either. On Thursday, the four utilities -- Central Vermont Public Service Corp., Green Mountain Power Corp., the Washington and Vermont electric cooperatives -- and a power purchase agency (Vermont Public Power Supply Authority) announced that they were looking for a consultant to study what Vermont's future power generation sources should be. "We are looking for a comprehensive study of the costs, infrastructure requirements, risks and other features of new generation that could be built in Vermont," the utilities said in a joint statement. "We need this comprehensive study so that we can determine how best to provide environmentally acceptable power to Vermonters at a competitive price." The study will look at issues ranging from the cost and availability of fuels for various generation types to environmental impacts, to how well various parts of Vermont's transmission system would accommodate new power flow and how long it might take to get the new generation up and running. March 3, 2006 Vermont Yankee 20% uprate approved by NRC; state will share extra revenue Vermont's nuclear power plant won permission Thursday to increase its output by 20 percent, a step advocates say is crucial to meeting the region's energy needs but critics claim will increase the risks of a nuclear accident at the aging reactor. "This is great news," said Rob Williams, spokesman for the Entergy-owned Vermont Yankee. "This is great news for us and it is also great news for the region's electrical energy supply." At the higher level of 640 megawatts, Vermont Yankee's output would be enough to power 60 percent of Vermont. David O'Brien, the state commissioner of public service, said that his department "made sure that consumers could be assured that VY would remain a safe and reliable source of power that would benefit the state as a whole." Timothy Nulty, a public member of the state's advisory panel on nuclear power, said the uprate is a bad deal for Vermont. "The NRC decision is no surprise because the NRC looks at the uprate from their own perspective and that perspective is focused on safety, narrowly defined," he said. "They are not looking at it from Vermont's perspective, and no one can say that this is a good deal for Vermont because right now there is only downside for Vermont." Nulty said that's because Vermont doesn't have any claim to any of the increased power, yet must shoulder the possibility the ramped-up operations will decrease the reactor's reliability. "Vermont is exposed to the downside but doesn't get any upside," he said. Williams countered that 10 megawatts of the additional power is committed to the Vermont Electric Co-operative, a utility based in Johnson that serves 37,000 customers in 90 towns throughout Vermont and three towns in Massachusetts. In addition, Williams said, Vermont Yankee has committed to a revenue sharing agreement that should bring the state more than $20 million. [Source: Christopher Graff (AP writer), "Vermont Yankee gets green light to raise power", The Associated Press State & Local Wire, March 3, 2006 12:54 am GMT] April 16, 2005 * No-Nukes of the North -- Vermont's very civil war over nuclear power. ... lately, the issue of nuclear power has come into play. Articles in Wired and Forbes have made the pro-nuclear case, and then, in a sure sign that the old attitudes are changing, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a pro-nuke piece a few days ago. The new, trendy case for nuclear power is that it makes electricity without putting carbon into the air. If you believe that greenhouse gases are a cause of global warming and that this increase in the world's temperature will have catastrophic effects, then nukes look pretty good. Global warming is the hip, new crisis; Three Mile Island is so last century. The anti-nuclear people, then, are losing ground and have become the reactionaries in a fight where they believe they are on the side of the future. In Vermont these people call themselves progressives, and the state's lone congressman, Bernie Sanders, is typical of the breed. Clinging with a death grip to the certainties of the '60s, they can be self-righteous, sanctimonious, utterly humorless, and incapable of civility when dealing with political opponents. (They also make good ice cream.) If you live in Vermont and don't share their faith, you can get pretty tired, pretty quickly of their didacticism. So I was looking forward, maliciously, to seeing them struggle with their new status... I wasn't sure of my directions but I knew I had the right place when I saw the rusting pickup with a hand-painted plywood sign in the bed. Veterans Against Nuclear Poison. Shaping up, I thought, to be that kind of night... Cultural profiling was no problem. The people with the pony tails were the anti-nukes. ... Vermont Yankee has been storing spent fuel in a seven-story pool of water since it began operating some 32 years ago. The pool was never meant for permanent storage. According to the original vision, most nuclear waste would be reprocessed and the rest would be stored safely somewhere else by the federal government. Well, the federals changed their minds about reprocessing. Too much risk that some of the fissionable material that is a byproduct of the process would wind up in the wrong hands. (Europeans countries, among others, continue to reprocess.) And, after a couple of decades of research and millions of dollars in construction, a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is still empty. Nevada doesn't want the stuff and says putting it in Yucca Mountain is an unacceptable risk. Never mind that everyone from the NRC to the EPA has said the site is safe. The attitude is simply -- Not In My Backyard. Or, in this case, Not In My New Backyard. Clark County is the fastest-growing county in the nation and it is, basically, Las Vegas. But a city built on chance doesn't want to take any chances with nuclear waste. Among the objections to Yucca Mountain is that there is no way of knowing if it will still be stable and safe 100,000 years from now. Anyone accustomed to the odds in a casino ought to be able to live with that kind of uncertainty. But . . . the new Nevadans don't want the radioactive waste near their new homes. Never mind that the stuff was made in plants that provided electricity to their old homes (or that Las Vegas uses electricity more profligately than any city in the world). In America, you get to pack up and leave the old life behind, especially if you are moving to Vegas. The spent fuel is part of your former existence -- like the bad debts and discarded spouse. On their side, the Nevadans have the new minority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, making sure the honeycomb of tunnels under Yucca Mountain will remain vacant at least until the spent fuel pool at Vermont Yankee fills up in 2007 or 2008, and maybe longer. So, because the feds welched on their end of the deal, Vermont Yankee became a nuclear waste storage facility -- or dump, depending on your point of view. This presents an opportunity for people who never wanted the plant in the first place. Their solution? Deny a permit to store spent fuel in dry casks, close the plant down, and go to "clean, renewable energy." ... Like most people in the room, I suspect, I wasn't swayed by any of these arguments. I favored the dry cask storage plan specifically, and nuclear power in general, before I went into the gym and I still favored them, almost four hours later, when I left. But, unexpectedly, I felt more and more charitable as the night wore on. The state of Vermont had been handed a problem by other, grander people down in Washington. As an exhibition of the way they did business down there, you had the Senate hearings on John Bolton's fitness to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. Those proceedings did not exhibit a small fraction of the thoughtfulness and civility I saw in the Brattleboro high school gym where, among others, a former governor of Vermont waited three hours for his opportunity to speak for three minutes (pro nuke). He packed more eloquence into those three minutes than Joseph Biden has managed in a lifetime. If the meeting didn't change minds, it clarified thinking in an atmosphere of civility and seriousness... June 3, 2004 Vermont Yankee - examples of NRC's approach to its primary mission: ensuring adequate protection of public health and safety A resident of Greenfield, Mass. expressed concerns, via letter to NRC, about Vermont Yankee, including the proposed power increase, emergency planning, and the possibility of a terrorist attack. Here's excerpts from NRC official's reply letter: The NRC's primary mission is to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety. The NRC will not approve the Vermont Yankee power increase, or any proposed change to any plant license, unless our technical staff can conclude that public health and safety will be assured. We have taken great care in preparing the proposed technical reviews and inspections regarding the Vermont Yankee power increase in order to ensure that these reviews and inspections will identify and address potential safety concerns for operating the plant at increased power. Our detailed technical review, coupled with the associated program of inspections, will provide us with the information we need to make a decision on the safety of operation of Vermont Yankee at increased power. You expressed concern that the proposed power increase at the plant would lead to increased radioactive discharges. Allowable radioactive effluents from commercial nuclear plants are dictated by Federal regulations. In order to ensure that these regulations are met, Vermont Yankee conducts a radiological effluent monitoring program. As part of this program, Vermont Yankee monitors and reports on radiation levels in river water and sediment as well as in fish, milk, and vegetation samples. Following any power increase, Vermont Yankee would continue this program and would be required to continue to meet Federal radioactive discharge standards. NRC regulations require that comprehensive emergency plans be prepared and periodically exercised to assure that actions can and will be taken to notify and protect citizens in the vicinity of a nuclear facility in the unlikely event of a radiological emergency. The NRC regulates the onsite emergency planning and requires nuclear plant operators to have detailed procedures for handling accidents, making timely notification to appropriate authorities, and providing accurate radiological information. Our oversight involves direct assessment of onsite emergency planning and preparedness of the facilities that we regulate, in addition to oversight of plant operations and security. At the Federal level, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has the lead in offsite emergency planning and response for nuclear power plants. The NRC assists FEMA in carrying out this role. Both the NRC and FEMA evaluated the most recent exercise at Vermont Yankee in April 2003, and both agencies determined that there is reasonable assurance that appropriate protective measures to protect the health and safety of surrounding communities can be taken and are capable of being implemented in the event of a radiological incident at Vermont Yankee. NRC regulations set high standards for safety and security programs at nuclear power plants and other sensitive nuclear facilities. Since the NRC's inception, security has been an important part of the NRC's regulatory activities, with defense-in-depth as the guiding design and operating principle. NRC regulations ensure that nuclear power plants are among the most hardened and secure industrial facilities in our nation. The many layers of protection include robust plant design features, sophisticated surveillance equipment, physical security protective features, professional security forces, and access authorization requirements. Together, these layers of protection provide an effective deterrence against potential safety or security problems related to terrorist activities that could target equipment vital to nuclear safety. Although there have been no specific credible threats against the nation's nuclear power plants, following the events of September 11, 2001, the NRC has taken a number of steps to improve the already high level of security, including more training for security guards and requiring additional guards at the plants. The effectiveness of these security program improvements has been verified by the NRC. I reiterate that the NRC's primary mission is to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety. I would like to assure you that corporate and local economics do not factor into our decision-making process.
* Vermont Yankee - NRC will use new engineering inspection process December 8, 2003 * Vermont Yankee - state questions uprate credit sought for containment pressure |