Vernon New Hampshire?

A few days ago my friend Bob Hargraves wrote a letter suggesting that Vernon secede from Vermont and join New Hampshire. The letter was published in the Brattleboro reformer, and I quote it here:

Saturday May 29, 2010

Vernon could secede to N.H.

Editor of the Reformer:

The people of Vernon are being ostracized by misguided Vermonters who have turned public concern about global warming into an anti-Vermont Yankee theme. Vernon is home to many good people who work at Entergy’s nuclear power station there. The legislature’s current plan is to turn this power producing, tax revenue producing asset into a mothball in a ghost town.

New Hampshire’s Connecticut River waters border Vernon and lap at the edge of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. New Hampshire waters cool the plant. New Hampshire is not seeking to shutter its nuclear plants such as Seabrook.

Vermont Yankee could be in New Hampshire if Vernon seceded from Vermont and joined New Hampshire. The Vermont Legislature would have no say in the relicensing of the New Hampshire plant. Vermont Yankee could continue to provide tax revenues and jobs to Vernon residents for another twenty years. Citizens and businesses in both states would continue the economic benefits of low electric power costs, maintaining good jobs and industry on both sides of the Connecticut River. Vernon would be a vibrant community, not a ghost town.

Robert Hargraves

Hanover, N.H., May 26

You may remember Bob as the person who prepared the excellent Rotary Slide Show about Vermont Yankee, which I described in my post on Summing It Up. Here's a link directly to his presentation.

Vernon, Vermont

Let's acknowledge that VY is still in Vermont, and it just ended a refueling outage that included many upgrades. Various start-up issues (small new leak, problem in the switchyard) have the anti-Yankee folks viewing-with-alarm, and Arnie Gundersen explaining that these problems are typical of Yankee, and probably indicative of the End of the World as We Know It.

Arnie hasn't noticed a slightly bigger leak somewhat south of here, I guess.

Singing Millirems

In honor of the outage, here's a video from about three years ago. Fifty Ways to Save A Millirem. I particularly like the percussion. You don't see drums like that everywhere. Well, you can see drums like that everywhere under some circumstances. But you don't see them in most bands.

P.S. A quick thank you to Rod Adams for linking to my post in his post

Who Says Nukes Have No Sense of Humor Or Rhythm?

And yet another link! I was on the Rod's Atomic Show Podcast last night. Among other things, we spoke about public meetings held by the NRC in Vermont and Maryland. Very different audiences, to put it mildly.