The Connecticut Mirror’s Arielle Levin Becker talks about the relatively smooth rollout of Connecticut’s new health exchange, also some anti nuclear activists in Vermont may see their job as done, while others are looking beyond the closing of VT Yankee, and even if you’re not a fan of baseball, it’s hard not to catch the Red Sox Fever — Jeff Wagenheim says this season is like a new world, and writer Bill Bryson remembers almost missing a World Series opportunity.
What Does Vermont Yankee Closure Mean for Pilgrim Nuclear?
Entergy Corporation’s plan to shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is raising questions about the future of nuclear power in Massachusetts.
Entergy says it’s closing Vermont Yankee for economic reasons. It cannot compete with cheaper sources of electricity production, like natural gas.
Entergy also owns Pilgrim Nuclear in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Bill Mohl, a senior executive at Entergy, told Vermont Public Radio on Tuesday that there are no plans to shutter the Massachusetts facility.
“Pilgrim is a slightly larger facility and has some slightly different characteristics than VY,” Mohl says
But activist Mary Lampert says the financial pressures forcing Vermont Yankee to close are also affecting Pilgrim Nuclear. She says Pilgrim is old and will need pricey repairs, which won’t make sense as long as wholesale electricity prices remain so low.
“Pilgrim is an antique. Like all antiques, things start falling apart and it’s necessary to expend a lot of money,” Lampert says.
Pilgrim got permission from the feds in 2012 to run for another 20 years, but Lampert doesn’t think the plant will last that long.
Entergy To Shut Down VT Yankee Nuclear Power Plant In 2014
Entergy Corporation announced Tuesday that it plans to close the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant by the end of next year.
Spokesperson Rob Williams says the decision was an agonizing one for Entergy’s board of directors, who saw a shutdown of the Vernon plant as a last resort. But he says unfavorable economics made the decision necessary.
“The economics are fairly complex but, to put that simply, the main competitor that led to this decision or contributed to it, is the price of natural gas,” Williams says.
There’s no word yet on what will happen to the plant’s 600 employees. Williams will only say they will be treated fairly as the plant transitions from normal operations to decommissioning, plans for which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the plant has two years after shutdown to submit.
“We will continue to assure that the plant is operating safely while it’s operating, and then we will assure that it it being decommissioned safely while it is being decommissioned,” NRC spokesperson Diane Screnci says.
Screnci says decommissioning involves removing fuel from the reactor vessel into a storage facility and the clean up and removal of all systems and components contaminated by radioactivity. That includes everything from soil to pipes that carried water to cool the reactor.
Under NRC rules, Screnci says that process could take up to 60 years.
Entergy: Vermont Yankee to close by end of 2014
Updated at 1:35 p.m.
Entergy Corp. says it will shut down the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station by end of 2014, ending a long legal battle with the state.
“This was an agonizing decision and an extremely tough call for us,” Entergy’s chairman and CEO Leo Denault said in a statement. “Vermont Yankee has an immensely talented, dedicated and loyal workforce, and a solid base of support among many in the community. We recognize that closing the plant on this schedule was not the outcome they had hoped for, but we have reluctantly concluded that it is the appropriate action for us to take under the circumstances.”
Entergy, based in New Orleans, said the plant is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014. The station will remain under the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission throughout the decommissioning process.
“We are committed to the safe and reliable operation of Vermont Yankee until shutdown, followed by a safe, orderly and environmentally responsible decommissioning process,” Denault said.
The company has been battling with the state since 2010. That’s when the Vermont Senate voted against a measure that would have authorized a state board to grant Vermont Yankee a permit to operate for an additional 20 years.
Vermont Yankee, the state’s only nuclear plant, opened in 1972 in Vernon, near the Massachusetts state line. In the past, the plant has provided as much as a third of the state’s electrical supply.
“They’ve made the right decision,” Gov. Peter Shumlin told Vermont Public Radio. “Thety’ve made the right decision for Vermont. They’ve made the right decision for Entergy.”
Shumlin said that more than half the plant’s workers live outside his state, in New Hampshire or Massachusetts.
“These employees are smart people,” Shumlin said. “They knew that the state of Vermont very much wanted the aging plant shut down. Entergy has now made the conclusion that that’s the right thing to do. and now my job as governor is to work with the other governors – who’ve pledged to do so – to help these folks find great jobs.”
Shumlin said he talked to Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire on Tuesday morning.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Massachusetts AG Coakley Joins Vermont Yankee Appeal
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is joining her counterparts in eight other states to support Vermont’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that limited that state’s authority over the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
During a visit to Springfield Tuesday, Coakley said the original decision failed to acknowledge the legitimacy of vermont’s legislative process. The ruling, she says, relied too heavily on arguments that the only consideration at stake was the safety of the plant – which all acknowledge is an issue for federal, not state, regulators.
“States, particularly Vermont, but all states have an interest in some dual regulation around economic issues, around the viability of the plant for providing utility and energy to a particular state, and that for the judge to say it was just a safety related decision, and therefore pre-empt, we believe was incorrect.”
Coakley also says the Vermont case could play a role in the future of the Pilgrim Yankee nuclear plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Coakley and other officials have called for federal regulators to take a new look at that plant’s safety, given lessons from the nuclear accidents following Japan’s earthquake last year.
“We still think, and we’re not alone in this, that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission moved too quickly, without doing an extensive enough review of the particular safety issues in Plymouth, particularly after that incident in Japan, with the kind of storage and the threat that could arise in Plymouth, and so we’re going to continue our court challenges on that. But it is important for the court to make determinations as states do have some say around the licensing of plants that go beyond just safety issues.”
In the last year, federal regulators have extended the operating licenses for both Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim Yankee for another 20 years. The fight over Vermont’s authority is expected to eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Radioactive Strontium Found in Vermont Fish – Far From Nuclear Power Plant
Radioactive Strontium and Cesium have again turned up in fish taken from a Vermont water body. But this time the fish were from a lake far north of a spot in the Connecticut river near the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant, where a similar finding was made last year. The state's chief of radiological health, William Irwin says the finding indicates that radioactivity in both samples was caused by the Chernobyl accident in 1986, and widespread nuclear arms testing in earlier years.
"Sadly the contributions of radioactivity into the environment from nuclear weapons testing that occurred in thee early 1960s was immense."
The recent finding in small mouth bass taken from lake Carmi in far northern Vermont, Irwin says, is evidence that the finding of similar levels of strontium and cesium in fish taken just upstream from the nuclear plant were NOT caused by the plant itself. Irwin adds that slightly elevated levels of a radioactive form of iodine found in environmental samples taken soon after last year's nuclear accident in Fukushima Japan have now dropped substantially.
"The information that I've been reading indicates that as bad as that collection of reactor accidents was in Japan, the amount of radioactivity that was released still was much less than was released by Chernobyl., And that which was released in 1986 by Chernobyl still was dwarfed by the amount that was released by the nuclear tests of the 1940s, 50s and 60s."
Irwin says that he and colleagues from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and federal agencies have embarked on a wide-ranging sampling program that aims to paint a clearer picture of radioactivity in this region's environment.