Patty O'Donnell at the Department of Energy Summit on Nuclear Power Plants

A lilac 

Department of Energy Summit on Improving the Economics of Nuclear Power Plants

On May 19, the Department of Energy held a summit on Improving the Economics of America's Nuclear Power Plants.  The four-hour meeting included many distinguished speakers, including Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Senator Cory Booker, and more.  You can watch the entire meeting at this link.

A major purpose of the meeting was to find ways to keep America's nuclear fleet running.  Scientific American reported on the meeting. They quoted Secretary Moniz: "We are supposed to be adding zero carbon sources, not subtracting or simply replacing (them)..." The Scientific American article features a picture of Vermont Yankee. The Bloomberg article on the meeting has the following title -- Moniz: Closing Nuclear Plants Poses 'Huge Problem'.

Vernon's own Patty O'Donnell spoke at this meeting.  O'Donnell described the human impact due to Vermont Yankee closing.  If you move the video slider to the 2:39 mark (2 hours and 39 minutes into the four hour video) you can watch her ten minute talk.  It was an important and moving description of the effects of the plant closing. Her talk showed a part of the human face of "why we need nuclear energy."

Adams blog focuses on O'Donnell's talk

Rod Adams' Atomic Insights blog post about the meeting focused on O'Donnell's talk. His post is Real people are harmed when other people decide to close nuclear plants.  I encourage you to read it, and also to read the comments. Adams blog gets interesting and knowledgable comments.

Adams also made a YouTube of O'Donnell's talk.  He has it posted on his blog post, and I am sharing it here.  Big THANK YOU to Rod Adams!  A ten-minute video is so much more appealing than a four hour video. I share his video below.





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Two little notes:

I used a picture of a lilac on this blog post because a lilac is blooming outside my window now, and because I imagine myself handing a bouquet of flowers to Patty O'Donnell.

My own major blog post on this subject is Circles of Pain around Vermont Yankee Closing.