Yes Vermont Yankee

PV Solar and Vermont: Not a Good FIt. Guest Post by Charles Kelly

2012-01-30T14:00:00.002-05:00

PV Solar Energy and the State of Vermont: Not a Good Fit

It is interesting to witness all the hype about PV solar energy fields in Vermont, and how these fields will be a panacea for our future energy needs. Even if we put aside the vast land area that solar requires, there is real concern that our energy planners are over-selling Solar Photovoltaic. Excessive investment in solar will cause taxpayers to pay substantially more for their electricity to the detriment of their personal savings.

Over-reliance on solar is an ill-conceived strategy. Our state energy planners seem more concern with hitting the perceived hot buttons of green energy and the subsidies that come with it, than conducting a pragmatic and thorough study of how well PV solar energy fits in our state.

Cost and Efficiency

Here are a few facts about solar, backed up by creditable data:

Solar panels are not remotely competitive with Coal, Gas, or Nuclear with regards to efficiency, cost, and materials.
Because of cloud cover; solar radiation reaching Vermont is 40% less per year (8 MJ/m2) than that reaching Montana, at the same latitude, and 59% less than New Mexico. In other words, we pay the same for solar panels, but unlike other states we get less production per panel.

Solar Technologies and Critical Materials

There are two basic solar panel technologies: crystalline silicon and thin film.

Silicon panels are more efficient, but costs more. Silicon semiconductor manufacturing, particularly the cutting of silicon ingots, is an energy-intensive, CO2-producing process. Taking this into account, the total net energy generated during the life (~ 25 years ) of the panels is reduced by as much as 10%. In addition panel output degrades about 0.5% per year due to aging, a significant reduction over 25 years.

Thin film panels use exotic rare earth metals, such as cadmium telluride, gallium arsenide, and indium. Only two nations, China and Mexico, have significant deposits of these materials. So much for being energy independent with PV Solar. Even with these sources, there are not enough of these materials on the planet to satisfy world need. There are no proven substitutes. The 2011 U.S. Department of Energy report Critical Materials Strategy outlines the severity of material limitations not only for PV solar, but wind power as well.

Efficiency, Cost, and Materials: The Three Warning Signs

Efficiency, cost, and materials are three warning signs that should not be ignored by state energy planners,. Planning decisions made now will affect rate payers and taxpayers alike for the next quarter century and beyond. Why jump into a technology that is not suitable for the New England area? In time, household and business electric bills will be much higher due to rolling the expensive solar energy into rate schedules. At that point, it will become abundantly clear to the average Vermonter that we have been misled, whereas the top 1% of households that are part of tax-shelter LLCs will have enjoyed a lucrative 20-year joyride courtesy of Vermont's SPEED program.

About Charles Kelly:

Charles Kelly, BME and MME Villanova University, P.E. Pennsylvania and Vermont, Consulting Engineer to Lithium Battery Industry. Granted two U.S. patents for battery and composite material design. Senior Principal Design Engineer (Ret.) Enersys Advanced Systems. Project Engineer (Ret.) Raytheon Engineers & Constructors for PSC of NH Seabrook Nuclear Station. Supervising Test Engineer (Ret.) for power industry components, Schutte & Koerting Co. Philadelphia, PA.

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Solar panel illustration from Wikipedia

Nostaglia Time: Shumlin in Favor of Vermont Yankee in 1998

2012-01-29T19:46:00.012-05:00

Shumlin and Vermont Yankee: The Old Days

In 1998, Peter Shumlin was President Pro Tem of the Vermont Senate, and Vermont Yankee was owned by a consortium of utilities. In 1998, Shumlin sent a letter in support of Vermont Yankee to Mike Empey, a Vermont Yankee supporter. Mike Empey just sent the letter to me and gave me permission to post it. Shumlin writes that he fought an effort to prematurely close Vermont Yankee, "I can assure you that as long as I am one of the people in charge of the leadership of the Vermont Senate, no such provision will become law under our watch. Vermont Yankee contributes tremendously to the economy in Windham County, not to mention our power needs." Yes. Shumlin wrote this and signed it.

Mr. Empey works at Vermont Yankee, but he is not any type of official spokesperson. This posting of a 14-year old letter is not an official Entergy statement. Seems to me that official Entergy statements are never this amusing....

You can double-click to enlarge the image.

89th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers up at Idaho Samizdat

2012-01-29T11:55:00.004-05:00

The 89th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers is up at Idaho Samizdat. Dan Yurman has put together a great Carnival. Some features include:

Make Your Smartphone into a Radiation Detector from Nuclear Diner
Myths and truths of nuclear liability insurance from Atomic Insights
Reports on the Blue Ribbon Commission Final Report from NEI Nuclear Notes

This Carnival also includes two new blogs (new to the Carnival, at least):

TalkNuclear from the Canadian Nuclear Assocation
i-Nuclear which covers world nuclear, and is based in UK.

This is a great Carnival! There's more, of course: new reactor types, Russian nuclear icebreakers, cultural bias and nuclear energy. Come to the Carnival! Enjoy your Sunday evening with the best reading in the nuclear world!

In local news, not the Carnival, I recommend an op-ed by Howard Shaffer. The Vermont Energy plan is supposedly about moving to renewables. Actually, the plan is about burning more natural gas and coal. Shaffer: Energy plan relies too much on fossil fuels.

Careers in Nuclear with an AA Degree and Art In Nuclear. Nuclear Science Week Special.

2012-01-26T14:45:00.012-05:00

This is National Nuclear Science Week, and with everything else going on, it almost escaped me. Here's a taste of it: Careers and Art.

Careers: John Wheeler and the Value of A Nuclear Education

When Howard and I visited a charter high school in Massachusetts, many of the students had questions about jobs in the nuclear industry:

What kinds of jobs are available in nuclear energy?
What are the requirements to obtain these jobs?

John Wheeler posted about nuclear energy careers this week. I wish we had John Wheeler's blog post available when we went to the Massachusetts high school. However, Wheeler hadn't yet written his post at that time!

In Explore a Great Career In Nuclear Energy, Wheeler gives an overview of nuclear careers, especially careers that start with the new curriculum for an Associates (AA) degree in Nuclear Energy. This uniform nuclear program is available at 40 community colleges around the country. The degree is recognized at all nuclear plants in the U.S. After graduation with this degree, jobs at power plants start at around $45,000 a year. Actually, these are careers, not just jobs, with a clear path to more responsibility, education, and money.

Since two years at a community college usually costs no more than $6,000, a nuclear AA degree is probably the most cost-effective career program available. Also, these nuclear jobs cannot be outsourced to any other country, because the plants are right here.

And some nuclear plants aren't right here. There's a huge number of new builds abroad, and some of those countries are already recruiting experienced American workers. A young person with a spirit of adventure can choose a wonderful international career.

Art: Knowledge Through Art

Jobs are important, and so is art. Suzanne Hobbs Baker is founder of PopAtomic Studios, a not-for-profit enterprise whose motto is Energy--Knowledge Through Art. (I am on the Board of Directors of PopAtomic.) We carried several PopAtomic Posters at our rallies in support of Vermont Yankee.

Baker was recently chosen to give a TEDx talk, and I embed it below. Also, a hat tip to Atomic Insights and Nuclear Street. Both blogs embedded this talk before I got around to it.

For More Fun with Nuclear Science Week

I encourage you to visit:

Nuclear Science Week website for overviews and activities
Nuclear Clean Air Energy site for links to presentations about nuclear science and by nuclear engineers, including what it is like to be a young woman working in nuclear energy
ANS Nuclear Cafe, with a series of posts and picture galleries of some of the Nuclear Science Week activities
Atomic Power Review, with a Nuclear Science Week post every day this week, including a beautifully illustrated post on Russian nuclear icebreaker ships.

The State and the Control-H Defense: A Guest Post by Cavan Stone

2012-01-25T14:48:00.008-05:00

I am no lawyer but after reading the ruling it looks like a pretty cut and dry case of federal preemption.

Of course the legislature did not help their case by leaving so much evidence in the legislative record that they were regulating Radiological Safety. It's clear that the legislature was trying to conceal its motivations. They bungled so much that The Daily Show would have a field day with it. It's comical that they would think the judge would not catch on to their widespread use of the replace button (Ctrl-H) in Microsoft Word when they blurt out right in the public record, "Okay, let’s find another word for safety."

Luckily, if we look at the past cases referenced, judges (including Judge Murtha) are well aware of States legislatures' use of the replace button to “nullify nearly all unwanted federal legislation by simply publishing a legislative committee report articulating some state interest or policy – other than frustration of the federal objective – that would be tangentially furthered by the proposed state law."

While this ruling is a major victory for nuclear, I don't think this case will be the last preemption case. Rather we could very well see an arms race between state legislatures improving their skill at concealing their motivations and the federal judges' ability to discern them. Thankfully, at the moment, the judges are more legally astute than the legislatures.

Yet, legislatures appear to be getting more clever as evidenced by what's happening in New York right now. This is why we cannot let up. As noted in the legislative transcript, what drove the legislature is that they keep seeing citizens with "concerns that you can’t address directly the way they want them to be addressed.”

We need to show our elected officials that a large majority does not support this action. Instead, we want legislation based upon the scientific findings from trusted, unbiased civil servants in places like the VT Department of Health and the NRC. Due to their results, we find Vermont Yankee to be a source of public good. Thus we enthusiastically support it.

About Cavan Stone

Cavan Stone is a physics graduate student who works with the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute. He has had other guest posts on this blog. for example: Where Does Our Energy Come From? This Control-H post first appeared on the Save Vermont Yankee Facebook Page. If you are on Facebook, stop by the page and Like it! You can see posts by Stone, Shaffer and others on the Save Vermont Yankee Facebook Page.

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Keyboard graphic from Wikipedia

Hostess Twinkies from Wikipedia, in honor of the Twinkie Defense. That is Meredith's comment, not Cavan's.

The Decision and the Next Decisions plus Some Relevant Links

2012-01-24T18:30:00.010-05:00

The Next Decision Is the State's Decision

Judge Murtha ruled on the Entergy case last week, and the ruling came down completely for Entergy. That's my opinion, at least. The question is: will the State appeal? There was certainly a lot of talk in the early days about the "losing party is certain to appeal" and "fighting it all the way up to the Supreme Court."

Talk is cheap. Lawyers are expensive. Judge Murtha ruled on three points. In my opinion, some of the points are not easily subject to appeal. Will the State actually appeal? That's the next decision.

According to WAMC radio and WCAX TV, Governor Shumlin is discussing a possible appeal with Attorney General Sorrell. Shumlin will not announce a decision until midweek. In other words, he may announce his decision tomorrow.

Or Maybe It is Entergy's Decision. Will Entergy Sue the State For Expenses?

I think my local paper, the Valley News, has the best scoop on the possible appeal in its front-page article by John Gregg today. In the article, I learned that any appeal must be filed within 30 days. The State might appeal some parts of the ruling and not other parts. (What would that do to the full decision? I am SO not-a-lawyer!) The State of Vermont might be liable for some of Entergy's legal fees, specifically for the arguments about the commerce clause. It's worth reading this article. Too many of the articles in the local papers are just moaning and complaining about the ruling. This one has some good information.

If the State Appeals

I think the state has very little ground to appeal Murtha's ruling. The Judge's ruling stands on three sturdy legs. The first leg of the ruling is the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The second leg is contract law. The third leg is state pre-emption of NRC prerogatives. Let's look at these issues separately in terms of a possible appeal.

A state can't insist a business in the state give good prices in-state and higher prices out-of-state. That violates the Commerce Clause of the Consitution, and even AG Sorrell thinks Entergy could collect legal fees from the state on this subject.

Nobody can change a contract unilaterally. In this case, a state can't change a contract unilaterally. This is standard contract law AND a clause of the Constitution AND this issue was the basis for one of the first cases decided by the United States Supreme Court. The Georgia state legislature tried to break its own contracts by passing a new law. The Supreme Court did not allow Georgia to do so. As of 1810.

The NRC has the responsibility of regulating issues of radiological safety. State actions attempted to pre-empt this federal prerogative. Perhaps the State could attempt to gather evidence that it was not considering radiological safety in its Senate vote. However, with the other two legs of the ruling in good shape, weakening the radiological pre-emption leg would not lead to the verdict being overturned.

Some Useful Links On the Case:

John Gregg article on State Reviewing VY Appeal.

Guest post on Next Steps After the Decision, by Howard Shaffer, on this blog.

Guest post on Rule of Law Upheld, by George Angwin, on this blog

Vermont Tiger post by Decision, (More Like A TKO) by Geoffrey Norman

ANS Nuclear Cafe Post by Howard Shaffer Priorities for 2012 in Vermont Politics (about the Clean Energy Development Fund, Hurricane Irene and the ruling)

Three excellent posts by Steve Skutnik of Neutron Economy.

Vermont Yankee Lives to Power Another Day

A Brief Summary of the Vermont Yankee Decision

Why the Vermont Yankee Case Matters

The first Skutnik post describes the State's case as similar in negotiating style to Darth Vader's methods: the contract is what I say it is!

Oh. I can't resist. I am embedding the video to which Skutnik links.

All About Me

I am back from the hospital and doing well. I'm not on heavy-duty painkillers anymore, but my life DOES seem like a round of naps and physical therapy (which tires me enough to want another nap). I'm not at full speed, so you can expect more guest blogs and so forth for at least another two weeks. Still, I am blogging. Friends don't let friend blog on opiates.

Thank you to everyone who wrote with concern. I am absurdly and insanely grateful to George Angwin and Howard Shaffer for their truly excellent posts on this blog!

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Statue of Justice from the Czech Republic. She is holding a book of the law. I have always liked this image better than the traditional "scales" image. The scales don't visually acknowledge that the weighing is not a stand-alone activity, but is done in context of the law.

Beyond the Federal District Court Decision. Guest post by Howard Shaffer

2012-01-23T10:00:00.003-05:00

When it bought Vermont Yankee in 2002, Entergy agreed to apply for Certificates of Public Good from the Public Service Board. It applied for and received certificates for a power up-rate and for used fuel storage in dry casks. It also applied for a certificate for operation after March 21, 2012.

The Public Service Board held hearings on the certificate for continued operation, and these hearings were apparently completed. Thus, the Board is ready to either issue a certificate or refuse one. I expect the Board will not act until the Attorney General reviews the District Court decision and officially advises the Board what actions it may take. Then the Board would either issue a Certificate of Public Good, issue one with conditions, or refuse to issue one.

There are a number of factors the Board may consider while deliberating on whether to issue a certificate. Let us evaluate some of these.

Safety

One thing the Board cannot consider is safety!!

The environment

The plant has a forty-year record showing no negative effect on its environment, as is required by its license. No basis here for "not in the general good."

The water quality permit

The Public Service Board and plant opponents are suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claiming that its extension of Vermont Yankee’s license was invalid because the application did not contain proof of compliance with the Clean Water Act. The plant currently operates under an extension of its water quality permit from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.

To us non-lawyers, this is a murky business. If the plant’s current permit is not valid, why does the State let the plant operate? On the other hand, if the plant does have a valid permit, why sue the NRC? Moreover, if the claims in the suit are valid, how come there was no action on this during the five years the NRC was considering the license extension? In the end, it is difficult to see why this is the business of the Public Service Board rather than of the permit issuer, the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.

If the suit fails, there is no basis for a negative finding because the plant is still required to obey the terms of the permit without any Board intervention. If the suit succeeds, then the status of the water quality permit becomes irrelevant.

Economics

Vermont utilities will be buying no power directly from Vermont Yankee after March 21, so the price of its electric power is irrelevant. The price of electricity for Vermont rate payers will be based on the wholesale market rate determined by the grid operator. Part of this grid power will be from Vermont Yankee, and its wholesale price will be higher than the contract price paid before March 21. Vermont utilities have made no new contracts with Vermont Yankee, apparently expecting the plant to close down.

Vermont ratepayers may, however, benefit from the agreement made at the time Entergy purchased the plant. Vermont utilities will get half the profits realized at any wholesale price above 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

Vermont Yankee has a large payroll and purchases many services in Vermont. In addition, the plant pays a large part of the cost of the Emergency Plan for the area around it. Brattleboro and neighboring towns are required to have a plan because of the railroad, among other things. It seems the Board could find that the economic impact of Vermont Yankee is positive.

Reliability

The plant has been very reliable. Reliability affects the price the plant has to charge, and this affects profits. Lack of profits would mean that the revenue expected from the above 6.5 cents sales would not be received. It would seem that possible lack of expected, but not guaranteed, revenue is not a basis for a finding of “not in the general good.”

Esthetics

There have been no complaints of noise or other esthetic problems. The plant erected a fence to hide the Dry Casks from being seen from the river, the far shore, or the field north of the plant. It does not seem there is a basis for finding negative esthetic effects.

Conditions

The history of actions and legal obstructions by plant opponents may cause the Board to require improved communication with the public as a condition of granting a Certificate of Public Good.

Examining the Court’s Decision

The news has carried stories since the District Court decision reporting that State agencies are researching ways to prevent plant operation. It remains to be seen what “rabbits will be pulled out of what hats.”

District Court Upholds the Rule of Law. Guest post by George Angwin

2012-01-19T23:35:00.000-05:00

From her hospital bed, Meredith asked me to post a brief note about and link to Judge Murtha's ruling today on the Entergy challenge to the Vermont legislature. The ruling essentially enjoined the State of Vermont from enforcing attempts to close the plant or cripple its operations.

I have paraphrased below the key conclusions of the ruling. Its full text is at

http://www.vtd.uscourts.gov/Supporting%20Files/Cases/11cv99.pdf

Judge Murtha ordered:

1. The State shall not enforce Act 160 to compel Vermont Yankee to shut down after March 21, 2012, because it failed to get legislative approval for a Certificate of Public Good.

2. The State shall not enforce the provision of Act 74 that requires legislative approval to store spent nuclear fuel after March 21, 2012.

3. The State shall not condition the continued operation of Vermont Yankee on requiring that it sell power to Vermont utilities at rates below wholesale market rates.

My street-talk version of these injunctions is that Judge Murtha is telling the State of Vermont that:

1. You cannot unilaterally change the terms of the 2002 contract between the State and Vermont Yankee.

2. You cannot use the spent nuclear fuel to shakedown Vermont Yankee.

3. You cannot extort ruinously low wholesale rates for Vermont Yankee power.

This ruling re-affirms the rule of law, which is the basis of our prosperity and our freedom.

Personal: Meredith's operation went well, and I expect to bring her home tomorrow.

The Politics of Fear. Guest Post by Robert Hargraves

2012-01-18T16:09:00.001-05:00

Fear sells. Fear for child safety lets Verizon Wireless sell tracking of kids’ cellphone locations, though child abductions have not increased. Fear of household invasion is raising sales of household alarms and security devices, though crime rates have fallen. Fear of disease sells unnecessary full body CT scans, discovering pseudo diseases that raise health care costs.

Frank Furedi, at the University of Kent, cites fear of genetically modified crops, mobile phones, global warming, and foot-and-mouth disease. He argues that perceptions of risk, ideas about safety, and controversies over health, the environment and technology have little to do with science or empirical evidence.

Politicians use fear. Bush used fear of Hussein’s atomic bomb development to rally support to invade Iraq. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that the use of the term War on Terror was intended to deliberately generate a culture of fear, because it “obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.” Furedi continues, “Politics has internalized the culture of fear. So political disagreements are often over which risk the public should worry about the most.”

Vermont politicians have used fear this way. Arousing fears of Vermont Yankee has enabled politicians to posture themselves as public saviors, focus on a single topic, and get elected. Yet this power plant is the safest, carbon-free, least expensive source of electricity Vermonters can have.

Yet fear causes flight — back to nature — back to the forest and the Tree of Souls in Pandora in Avatar. Producer David Cameron knew his audiences’ emotions when he designed this best selling film grossing over $2.7 billion.

Frightened people think of natural power — from windmills, waterfalls, sunlight, and wood-burning — will save us. The arousal of fear and the flight to renewable energy obscures the facts about their risks, costs, and environmental impacts. If we accept green, renewable, natural energy as the ultimate goal, then we also thoughtlessly accept the proffered stepping stone of natural gas, even if it does emit more CO2.

This is an emotional conflict — fear vs nature. Einstein said we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. So let’s try another level of consciousness — rationality. Listen to fear messages and consider their sources and content. Do they come from scientists, engineers, regulators, or radiation oncologists? Do they have numbers? What are the costs? What risks are acceptable? One in 77 people end their lives in traffic accidents, yet we accept this death rate as the price for driving. Can we be rational about the risks, costs, and environmental impacts of Vermont Yankee?

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Dr. Robert Hargraves teaches Rethinking Nuclear Power at Dartmouth ILEAD. Hargraves and I co-taught Energy Safari at Ilead. Hargraves promotes the development of thorium reactors through his book, Aim High, and through videos.

In terms of this blog, he is perhaps most famous for his video Vermont Yankee Explained, and for his post, Vernon, New Hampshire. In that post, he suggests that the town of Vernon should secede from Vermont.

This op-ed has also been published by True North Reports.

The illustration is The Scream by Edvard Munch, from Wikipedia

There is No Jobs Bonus. Decommissioning Helps Long-Haul Truckers But It Destroys Local Communities.

2012-01-16T13:00:00.001-05:00

Decommissioning Plans, Made by Nuclear Opponents

A recent post described the new taxes that Governor Shumlin's administration wants to place on Vermont Yankee. There are two taxes, actually: one on fuel rods, and one to increase the decommissioning fund. Meanwhile, at ANS Nuclear Cafe, Howard Shaffer wrote about opponent tactics. Opponents plan to form new "affinity groups" with the same people as members, but new names for the groups. Decommissioning is a major focus of these groups.

It's also a major way for the opponent groups to salve their conscience about throwing hundreds of people out of work. "Decommissioning will be a jobs bonus!"

No. It won't.

Will Decommissioning Funnel a Billion Dollars into the Vermont Economy?

In an early March press conference, Governor Peter Shumlin called decommissioning Vermont Yankee “a huge jobs issue for us.” He wanted immediate decommissioning of the plant because it would “fuel $1 billion” into the Windham County economy over the next ten years.

The jobs Shumlin is describing are not jobs held by the current workers. As reported in an article in True North Reports and updated in this blog, more than 80% of the plant employees would be laid off within two years of plant closure, whether or not the plant is put into SafStor. There are 650 employees at the plant now: in two years, less than 100 employees would remain.

Though plant people would be laid off, contract labor would be brought in for decommissioning. What kind of payroll would the contractors bring to the area, compared to the payroll of the plant when it is operating?

The Contractors Come to Town

People who have lived through a local plant decommissioning say that the effect of contractors is not noticeable in the town. Bob Blagden, a selectman in Wiscasset Maine while Maine Yankee was decommissioned, said the “contractors must have picked up some people, but it wasn’t noticeable.” A long-time resident of the town, who did not want his name used, said “They may have hired some people, but this was nothing in comparison with what we lost.”

Are these people correct? Or is Shumlin correct in thinking decommissioning is a jobs bonanza?

The residents of Wiscasset are correct. It took some research to figure this out, but a best estimate is that the total salaries for contractors in the area would be about $20 million a year, while the plant has a payroll of $65 million a year. Decommissioning is a job cliff, not a job bonanza.

What is a Billion Dollars?

Before reviewing the question “would decommissioning fuel a billion dollars?” for Windham County, we have to ask what “fueling a billion dollars” means. Is this money straight payroll, or does it count “multipliers”?

The “multiplier” effect is the well-known economic calculation of how many other jobs are based on a group of steady jobs. For example, two economic studies of Vermont Yankee started with the fact that there are 650 employees at Vermont Yankee, and a yearly payroll of around $65 million An IBEW study in 2008 calculated that Vermont Yankee provided 900 “multiplier effect” jobs in the state, while a separate report prepared for the Vermont legislature in 2010 claimed Vermont provided about 700 multiplier-effect jobs. Both estimated a multiplier effect of at least two times the plant payroll.

Being conservative, we could estimate that Vermont Yankee adds a total of $100 million a year to the local economy (less than a times-two multiplier effect). At that rate, VY “fuels” one billion dollars to the local economy in ten years, and in twenty years (till 2032) it would fuel two billion dollars.

In comparison, how much money would the contract labor of a decommissioning project add to the local economy?

Decommissioning the Yankee Plants

The total expenditure for decommissioning Yankee Rowe, Connecticut Yankee, and Maine Yankee was $750 million, $500 million, and $850 million, respectively. (Data from a paper on “Lessons Learned from Decommissioning” by Wayne Norton, president of Yankee Atomic.). The projects took varying amounts of time, from 7 to 15 years, but let us assume they all took ten years, in parallel with the Shumlin time estimate. At that rate, expenditure rates on decommissioning were between $50 and $85 million a year, numbers similar to that of the Vermont Yankee payroll.

However, comparing total costs of decommissioning to payroll costs of an operating plant is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Most significantly, decommissioning a nuclear plant includes major expenditures outside of the plant locality.

Decommissioning a nuclear plant requires millions of pounds of slightly radioactive waste to be hauled to low-level waste disposal sites in the West. Maine Yankee shipped 460 million pounds of waste, and Connecticut Yankee shipped 350 million pounds. Container manufacturers, long-haul truck drivers, and waste disposal sites are the recipients of waste-disposal money, not the people in the towns near the plant.

How much money stays in the towns near the plant and how much goes to hauling and waste disposal sites? We can start by looking at the probable payroll (not total cost) of decommissioning.

The Zion Explanation

I could not ascertain the local payroll versus haulage costs for the decommissioning the Yankee plants. These numbers are proprietary to the companies that did the work, and I hit a dead end trying to find out. However, there's a current decommissioning project in Illinois. The company doing that project, EnergySolutions, was very helpful to me.

EnergySolutions is beginning to decommission the Zion Nuclear plant in Illinois. EnergySolutions has a Zion website partially devoted to showing that Zion decommissioning will bring economic benefits to the region. The accompanying pie chart is on that website. The EnergySolutions public outreach officer for the Zion project, Larry Booth, was also kind enough to send me the economic report on which the chart is based "The Economic Impacts of Decommissioning the Zion Nuclear Power Station." (The report is not on the web.)

On the pie chart, we can see that the salaries for the ten-year decommissioning process at Zion add up to $215 million dollars.

In more detail, page 14 of the Zion economic report has a chart of personnel. That chart is at the top of this blog post. Double-click to enlarge.

At its height, in years 2 through 5, there will be around 300 people on-site decommissioning the Zion plant. That is about half the number of people working at Vermont Yankee currently. The six other years, the staffing is much lower, down to five people in year 10. Clearly, decommissioning is not a ten-year jobs bonus for the site.

Much of the Zion economic project report is devoted to explaining the multiplier effects of the project. This is called “output” on the pie chart. In the report’s careful reasoning, $200 million in on-site salaries generates $600 million in other economic outputs over ten years. However, using that multiplier, $1.3. billion in salaries at Vermont Yankee ($65 million per year for twenty years) would add $3.9. billion in other economic benefits, for a total economic impact of $5.3 billion dollars over the next twenty years of operation.

Apples to Apples Comparison

The solid facts are that Vermont Yankee has a payroll of $65 million per year, and decommissioning Zion will be a payroll of $20 million a year. Decommissioning the Yankee plants probably had a similar payroll, since the people in town saw little economic benefit from the presence of the contractors. As one well-connected man from Maine said: “I didn’t know anyone who got a job there.”

By careful assessment of multipliers, the total economic benefit of any project can look excellent. However, comparing apples to apples (on-site salaries to on-site salaries) decommissioning a nuclear plant is not a jobs bonanza compared to continued operation of the plant.

The Jobs Cliff

Closing Vermont Yankee will push the current plant workers off a jobs cliff, as described in a previous article. It will push the local economy off a cliff also, despite the presence of contract laborers. The contract labor force can be expected to have only about a third of the payroll of the operating plant.

Shumlin says that decommissioning is a “huge jobs issue.” It is, indeed, a huge issue. Decommissioning will be a huge job loss for southern Vermont. The one clear financial beneficiary from decommissioning Vermont Yankee will be low-level waste disposal sites in the West, and long-haul truck drivers. Decommissioning will be a financial loss for southern Vermont. It will destroy the local communities and the local job base.

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A version of this blog post was published at True North Reports. I am grateful to Rob Roper for permission to republish it here.

87th Carnival of Nuclear Energy up at ANS Nuclear Cafe. Plus Some Other Announcements

2012-01-15T12:04:00.009-05:00

The 87th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers is up a ANS Nuclear Cafe. Dan Yurman has once again put together a fascinating carnival.

There's a lot of information about mining and mineral extraction including: discussion of the decision not to mine uranium near the Grand Canyon (NEI Nuclear Notes), description of radiation releases from fracking (Nuke Power Talk), and description of China buying a uranium mine in Namibia (Next Big Future).

There's a review of The Conundrum, a book forecasting the end of energy availability. Atomic Insights wonders if the author has heard of uranium and thorium?

There's lessons from Fukushima: the Flex Strategy for nuclear safety (NEI Nuclear notes) and a new clean-up method for radioactive elements in soil (Next Big Future). There's new material development, too (Next Big Future).

New reactor deals are coming along (Idaho Samizdat) and there are new ideas of communicating about nuclear energy to women (ANS Nuclear Cafe). Meanwhile, here at Yes Vermont Yankee, there always seems to be a new lawsuit!

Other Announcements

Nuclear Science Education: National Nuclear Science Education Week starts on January 23, and I urge you to read about it at the Nuclear Science Week website. Also, a tip of the hat to Dan Yurman for his new bibliography of non-technical nuclear books. His list is a wonderful resource. I also recommend Will Davis post at Atomic Power Review on Nuclear Science Education Week, which includes links and information on getting speakers. Every day at Nuclear Science will will have a different topic, and Davis plans to cover these topics on a daily basis at Atomic Power Review. My own blog has a post about resources for high school students to learn about atomic energy.

Temporary Blog Changes: For personal reasons, I will be less available for about three weeks, starting Wednesday January 18th. There will be more guest bloggers than usual, though I will also be blogging. Also, comment moderation will be slower. Otherwise, things will be pretty much the same.

Every now and again I imagine reshaping this blog, with new formats, tabs to blog pages as well as posts, and so forth. Maybe, after three weeks of part-time blogging, I will be fired up enough to make changes! The daily grind does tend to grind down the idea of reformulating, rethinking, etc.

Taxing Fuel Rods: The Vermont Legislature Plans Another Law Which Will End Up in Court

2012-01-14T09:01:00.011-05:00

The Vermont legislature is facing the fact that the Clean Energy Development Fund will cease to be funded when Vermont Yankee stops paying into it in March. This fund has paid part of the costs of many a solar panel and wind turbine. For the Vermont legislature, watching this funding go away is painful! Replacing this tax with another tax on Entergy is an important goal of the legislature, even mentioned by Governor Shumlin in a press conference that was mostly about recovering from Hurricane Irene.

So, the legislature coming up with another way to make Vermont Yankee pay into the clean energy fund. House bill H479 plans to tax spent fuel. The legislature must think these fuel rods are very valuable, because t they plan to raise tens of millions of dollars a year taxing them!

As usual in Vermont, this is almost certainly going to end up in court. The proposed bill H479 talks about nuclear plants in Vermont (plural). But there is only one plant. A tax aimed at only one company is usually illegal. However, as I pointed out in my post about the "Entergy must pay Vermont's Costs in the Lawsuit law, the Vermont legislature passes bills are illegal, unconstitutional, and can't be enforced. These bills make the faithful feel good. "We're doing something, even if it won't actually work."

The bill has two parts: a tax on fuel rods (amount unclear, perhaps $15 million a year) and a state-required decommissioning fund. The state-required fund ("post-closure funding tax") would require contributions of $25 million a year.

Howard Shaffer has an excellent post on this bill, which was published at True North Reports yesterday. His post: H479 Analysis: The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy. Here's a quote from Howard:

Opponents have already circulated a petition to towns and cities within 20 miles of the plant, requesting support for a tri-state Decommissioning Oversight Committee. They intend to meddle, as they have elsewhere in New England. Their “contribution” consists of trying to get ridiculously low levels of radioactive contamination as cleanup standards. This has resulted in hauling off multiple truckloads of demolished concrete that pass granite boulders along the road that are more radioactive than the cargo.

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Image of dry cask storage from NRC student information area.

Enlightenment and Renaissance: Which Should Come First for Nuclear

2012-01-12T09:45:00.007-05:00

Several months ago I blogged about an engineering presentation at Dartmouth. Dr. Swartz presented a talk with the provocative title: If Vermont Yankee Had an Accident Like Fukushima.

Swartz concluded that the "worried well" would be the major problem after any type of nuclear accident. Civilians would not receive radiation at a dose that would measurably increase their chances of getting cancer or limit their life-expectancy. They would also not believe any official assurances that this was the case. Dr. Swartz said it is up to the scientific community to explain the facts to people, and to reduce the health effects of widespread fear and anxiety.

In other words, we need education about radiation. We need widespread enlightenment about its effects.

Llewellyn King and Nuclear

Nuclear Townhall is sponsoring a set of videos about nuclear energy. In the short video below, Llewellyn King explains why the Enlightenment (education) has to come before the Renaissance (new plants) in this country. In history, the Renaissance came far earlier than the Enlightenment. So the nuclear industry has its work cut out for it!

Llewellyn King is an iconic figure in energy information, having founded Energy Daily about forty years ago. I remember Energy Daily from my days at EPRI. Copies were passed around among relatively low-level technical employees like myself and other project managers. Division heads received their own copies. Everyone read it every day, because it was the best source of insights for the energy industry. I do mean that everyone at EPRI read it. If a nuclear research manager had lunch in the cafeteria with a coal research manager, they would have a common point of conversation: the articles in Energy Daily.

King recently wrote a splendid op-ed about nuclear power: Sound the Trumpets for Nuclear Power. It's not particularly politically correct for this state. For example, his editorial praises the role of the U S Nuclear Navy in keeping the peace. Still, every now and again, I like to share the words of someone who speaks the truth, even if it is impolitic.

It makes a refreshing change from watching the Vermont legislature in action.

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Update: I am pleased that this post is now featured on the Energy Collective.

The Sixth Lawsuit about Vermont Yankee: Suing for the Cost of Replacement Power

2012-01-10T18:18:00.017-05:00

I never should have done it. Four days ago, I published a post Five Legal Wrangles About Vermont Yankee.

I counted five, but lo and behold! Today there's a sixth lawsuit! You just can't keep up a count around here.

The Cooling Tower Problems

In August 2007 and July 2008, Vermont Yankee had widely-publicized collapses of a part of the cooling tower bank. The first incident happened because it happened. Vermont Yankee has rather old wooden cooling towers, and there was a maintenance problem on one of them. The second incident happened because of an incomplete repair of the first incident. In both cases, the plant stayed on-line, but de-rated power. It lowered power output for 11 days (first incident) and 12 days (second incident).

On the basis of these incidents, Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) and Green Mountain Power (GMP) are suing Entergy. They had to buy more expensive replacement power during the time of lowered output from Vermont Yankee. They say that the plant was negligent about maintaining the cooling towers, so they deserve the money in recompense. You can read their press release here and it has been widely reprinted as a news article. Albany station WAMC had a short program on the lawsuit, hosted by Pat Bradley. Don Kreis of Vermont Law School gives his opinion, and I give mine. (The program is three minutes long.)

If Everything Isn't Perfect, We're Suing

Briefly speaking, this is a ridiculous lawsuit. There are all sorts of utility contracts out there, and CVPS and GMP did not have a contract in which Entergy had to pay them for replacement power. That is the end of the story. GMP and CVPS didn't have a contract that required reimbursement.

The utilities are claiming that Entergy's plant maintenance was so bad that the de-rating was due to Entergy negligence. I have one word for that: Ridiculous! Vermont Yankee has a high capacity factor, and has had a series of breaker-to-breaker runs (from one refueling to another without a stop). In this case, it wasn't even off-line for the repairs. It had just powered down.

If utilities sued every time a plant powered down or went off-line unexpectedly, there would be no end to it! Of course, if a plant is not operating at full capacity, something went wrong. I suppose this could have been prevented if everything had been done perfectly. Let's look at coal plants, for example. They have to keep testing the coal they receive. Let's say they receive some coal and they don't get the chemistry analysis quite right and boom...their boiler is coated with slag and they are off-line. (Most coal plants test coal extensively and blend coal to avoid this situation. They don't always manage to avoid it.) Should a coal plant be sued on the basis that they should have done a better chemical analysis?

Utility Contracts

There are all sorts of utility contracts out there. Bob Hargraves and I visited seven plants when we led the ILEAD course on Energy Safari. If you read the posts on the Energy Safari blog, you will read about power plants that:

sell power at the market price when the price is high enough
sell power at a fixed price, and have to reimburse the utility when they have promised power but can't deliver
sell power at a fixed price, and don't have to reimburse anybody if their power isn't available
don't want to tell us the terms of their contracts

If a utility wants to buy power that is available without interruption at a given price, it writes a contract saying that the power plant must reimburse the utility for any power that is not provided. Of course, the utility can expect to pay more for power on that basis, just as you can expect to pay for an "extended service contract" on an appliance. Insurance against failure costs money.

Insurance

The utility can also pay money for insurance. If the utility buys insurance against having to buy higher-cost power, it doesn't have to put any terms in the contract with the power plant.

For example, I attended a hearing at the State House when GMP and CVPS testified that they actually have insurance policies which would reimburse them for replacement power costs if Vermont Yankee power was not available to them. The policies began to pay if Vermont Yankee was off-line for more than about 30 days. I am sure the utilities could have bought other insurance: insurance against three-day outages, twelve day power reductions, anything. Insurance companies love to sell insurance! However, insurance against small events would have been expensive, since such events are very likely. Most companies self-insure for small problems.

Money or Harassment?

I can never know anyone's motives, of course. However, to me this lawsuit sounds more harassment than like a business situation. Surely the utilities know what kind of contract they have with Vermont Yankee? Surely they know that they don't have the sort of contract that includes reimbursement for replacement power? Surely they know about the various types of contracts? Surely they know that accusing a plant of negligent maintenance won't fly, when the plant is running from fuel loading to fuel loading (breaker to breaker), 500 days or more, without unplanned shut-downs? Surely they know they could have purchased insurance against the costs of replacement power? Surely they know they actually have purchased insurance against the costs of replacement power due to long outages?

GMP and CVPS are acting as if they don't know any of this.

Interestingly, the utilities want to have a jury trial on this subject. I think they are hoping to capitalize on the "Entergy Louisiana" and "strontium fish" rhetoric of the Vermont administration. They hope to win their case by pounding on the table.

Washing Machines

The Entergy lawyers can argue their case without any table-pounding.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. CVPS and GMP had opportunities to insure themselves against paying the cost of replacement power. They could have stipulated that we pay the cost of replacement power as a requirement in their contract with Entergy. Or they could have bought third-party insurance for their costs during power derates or outages. CVPS and GMP did not taken any such action.

"Instead, these utilities are in the position of someone who does not buy the extended warranty on the new washing machine, but expects to get free service anyway. We at Entergy are pleased that they expected perfect operation of the plant. We are pleased our general excellent maintenance and breaker-to-breaker runs may have led them to expect perfect operation. However, they took no steps to protect themselves if operation was imperfect. Though we are flattered at their expectations, we must point out that expectations of perfect operation are unrealistic, and are certainly not enforceable through the courts."

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Picture of the Comerford Hydro plant from Energy Safari blog. Picture taken by Bob Hargraves. All other graphics from Wikipedia..

86th Blog Carnival at NEI Nuclear Notes

2012-01-10T07:00:00.002-05:00

The 86th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at NEI Nuclear Notes.

Many of the bloggers at the Carnival have delved into books, legislation, long reports, and law cases. They have written excellent summaries, complete with information and opinions. Reading their posts, you can become knowledgeable without reading all that material yourself. On the other hand, if you have already read the original documents, you can comment on the blog posts. So you can still have fun!

Some of the reports include:

Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat reviews a book on the Integral Fast Reactor. This program included the whole fuel cycle for the reactors, including waste management.
At ANS Nuclear Cafe, Yurman delved into the recently-passed Energy and Water Appropriations bill of 2012. Nuclear energy research was largely spared from major cuts.
At Yes Vermont Yankee, I described five, count'em, five current or recently-resolved lawsuits about Vermont Yankee.
At Nuclear Diner, Cheryl Rofer summarized Japan's interim report on the Fukushima accident. There is more known about the communication failures than about the physical failure sequence.
At Atomic Power Review, Will Davis describes an upcoming symposium about reporting on Fukushima. The reporting was pretty terrible, and there's hope it will be recognized at this symposium.
At Atomic Insights, Rod Adams looks into energy density and fuel availability. If we want a future of more than 100 years of abundant energy, the answer is New and Clear. (My pun, not Rod's.)
At NEI Nuclear Notes, Mark Flanagan reviews how France and the U.S. are upgrading reactors in response to Fukushima.
Brian Wang describes Toshiba's new system for cleaning soil of radioactive cesium.

Read the short, well written version of all this interesting material. Read the bloggers! Come to the Carnival!

Update Note: I also recommend Howard Shaffer's post today at ANS Nuclear Cafe: Vermont Outreach Continues as Opponents Reorganize

Podcast Discussion of Vermont Yankee (and more)

2012-01-09T07:34:00.008-05:00

Vermont Yankee Discussion

Last night, Margaret Harding and I were guests on the Atomic Show podcast, hosted by Rod Adams. Adams is the blogger at Atomic Insights, while Harding blogs at 4 Factor Consulting.

The main subject of discussion on our podcast was the Vermont Yankee lawsuit, especially the interstate commerce aspects of the case. As Rod wrote in his description of our conversation:

It still confuses me why people who live in Vermont have such a basic misunderstanding of the country in which they live; no state has the right to control interstate commerce. All of them gave that up when they signed on as members of the United States of America.

Sigh. Rod doesn't live in Vermont. As I wrote in a recent post, Vermont also passed a blatantly illegal law requiring Vermont Yankee to pay Vermont's costs in the ongoing lawsuit. Governor Shumlin and his obedient legislature seemed determined to pass law after law that get argued right up to the Supreme Court. Where Vermont loses.

Here's a link to the podcast of Atomic Show #177, Vermont Nuclear Energy Politics.

Nuclear Communications, Then and Now

Vermont Yankee was not the only topic of discussion on the podcast. We take a detour into nuclear communications, and especially, how nuclear communications were messed up in the early days. At first, some of the "silent service" aspects of the nuclear navy dominated the nuclear power communications style. Adams was in the nuclear navy, so we weren't talking behind the backs of the many fine Navy Nukes that run our power plants! But the Navy communications style was a problem in the 70s and early 80s, and it is good to admit that.

I also recommend Rod's post Greetings from a proud member of the 'nuclear party'. This post was also briefly discussed on the podcast, and is up this morning at ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Five Legal Wrangles About Vermont Yankee

2012-01-05T10:41:00.024-05:00

Everybody expects Judge Murtha to rule on the Vermont Yankee lawsuit this week. However, this week is almost over. Unless Murtha is planning to throw his ruling into the famous Black Hole of the Friday News Releases, I think he will not rule this week. I could be wrong.

So today is a good day for a retrospective blog post on all five legal wrangles about Vermont Yankee. In reverse order of importance.

5. Mark 1 Reactors and the NRC

What: Beyond Nuclear and other groups petitioned the NRC to shut down all Mark I reactors.

What happened: The NRC turned the petition down. The NRC also said it would review the emergency containment venting. Of course, the NRC was reviewing the venting anyway, as part of the ongoing Fukushima-inspired reviews.

What's amusing: Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear dislikes the idea that the Mark 1 vents exist at all. Gunter said he can't sleep at night (or maybe he meant that the NRC people shouldn't be able to sleep at night) because Oyster Creek isn't safe.

4. Vermont Joins New England Coalition in Suing the NRC about a Water Permit that Vermont Does Not Require

What: The New England Coalition (NEC), a long-time anti-nuclear group, is suing the NRC, saying that they shouldn't have granted a license renewal to Vermont Yankee because VY doesn't have an appropriate water quality permit. The Vermont Department of Public Service joined the lawsuit along with NEC.

What happened: As is the custom, the State extends water quality permits unless something has changed about the water discharges. For the state to require Vermont Yankee to get a new permit would cost the state time and money. Instead, the state sued the NRC for granting a license renewal to Vermont Yankee without Vermont Yankee having a new water permit. There has been no ruling on this to date.

What's amusing: As I said in my blog post about the water permit: Vermont is suing the NRC, claiming it was the NRC's obligation to make sure that Vermont Yankee had an up-to-date permit. Apparently, the state didn't care about the permit, except that the state wanted to be sure that the NRC cared.

3. State Passes an Illegal Law to Bill Entergy for the State's Costs in the Lawsuit

What: When Entergy sued the state of Vermont, Shumlin quickly had a law passed requiring Entergy to pay for the state's costs in the lawsuit.

What happened: The law was immoral, unconstitutional, and can't be enforced. That's why the state Attorney General is not attempting to enforce it. As the Attorney General admitted: the concept is shaky. He's not trying to collect from Entergy.

What's amusing: Attorney General Sorrell also said that he doesn't want to muddy the waters by attempting to bill Entergy while the judge is deciding the main case. I find this selective enforcement of laws quite upsetting (sarcasm alert!). However, non-sarcastically, I do wish Sorrell had attempted to collect the money. Entergy would have objected, and Sorrell could have found himself defending this unconstitutional law in the same court, and in front of the same judge, as the main lawsuit. Since the bill-Entergy law exists, I wish Sorrell had enforced it and "muddied the waters."

2. Reactor Operators Sue the State For Loss of Property Rights in Their License

What: Several licensed reactor operators brought suit against the State of Vermont. They claim Vermont has denied them their jobs and taken their property rights in their licenses, without due process.

What happened: The lawsuit is in front of Judge Murtha of the District Federal Court. He is the same judge who is hearing the main lawsuit between Vermont and Entergy. As I described in a blog post, the operators have recently asked Murtha to not dismiss their lawsuit.

What's amusing: The State wants to frame this lawsuit as a relatively frivolous suit by people who believe they have a perpetual right to their jobs. However, it is actually a suit about the lack of due process in Shumlin's attempts to shut down Vermont Yankee. Again, I do wish the Attorney General was enforcing the state law that says Entergy has to pay the State's costs in the lawsuit. If the pay-costs case ended up in front of the judge at the same time as the operator's case, the judge would have to take notice of the lack of due process and constitutionality in Vermont's dealings with Entergy. As the lawyers say: Res ispa loquitur. The Thing Speaks for Itself.

(Okay. I know that isn't what the lawyers would probably say in this case. I'm not a lawyer. However, I do think the passage of an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder against Entergy does Speak for Itself.)

1. The Big Kahuna Legal Case: The Lawsuit to Keep Vermont Yankee Operating

What: In April, Entergy sued the State of Vermont. Vermont was attempting to shut down Vermont Yankee through various legislative maneuvers, despite the fact that Vermont Yankee has a license from the NRC.

What happened: The case was heard in September, and most people assumed a ruling would come by the end of the year. It hasn't.

What's amusing: As I noted in a blog post, there are at least three legal issues in front of the judge:

State pre-emption of Federal regulatory prerogatives of nuclear safety.
State breach of contract by one-sided changes in a contract.
The plant's position in interstate commerce and the commerce clause of the Constitution.

The lawsuit is far from amusing: Vermont Yankee matters to this state. Are we going to be able to keep a clean in-state source of power and jobs and revenue?

However, one thing is moderately amusing as we wait for the ruling: both parties have said they would appeal. Whatever Judge Murtha decides, another judge is sure to look at his decision. So..the amusing part..why are we all waiting with bated breath to hear from him? Of course we want to know his ruling and his reasoning, but his ruling is probably just one step in a process.

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Picture of the Brattleboro District Courthouse on June 23, 2011. It is the morning of the injunction hearing. Robbie Leppzer is interviewing me, and Vermont Yankee opponents are in front of the courthouse. Howard Shaffer took this picture.

Painting: The Oxbow: The Connecticut River near Northampton, MA. Cole Thomas, 1836

Reactor Control Room from NuclearTourist

Attorney General of Vermont Acknowledges "Shaky Concept" in Charging Entergy for Vermont's Expenses

2012-01-03T17:00:00.003-05:00

The Bank of Entergy

Vermont Yankee received its license extension from the NRC, but the Vermont legislature thought a one-house vote on a one-sided contract change could shut the plant down. Entergy sued the state, and Governor Shumlin's reaction was swift. He would fight! In an April blog post, I quoted a Brattleboro Reformer article (now behind a paywall) as follows:

Attorney General Bill Sorrell said his office has been preparing for well over a month for the possibility that either Entergy would be suing the state or it would continue operating the plant, forcing the state to sue Entergy.

"We've known this was going to end up in court," he said. "The governor authorized us to get more resources, both in staffing and expert witnesses. We've got a lot of work to do, but we're not scrambling woefully behind." (emphasis added by blogger)

Shumlin hadn't caught on to the fact that the Bank of Entergy was closed. He still thought he could order up "more resources" whenever he wanted to do so. Shumlin was used to the idea that Entergy paid for everything.

Just as you must pay the costs for your car inspection and license certificate, Entergy was required to pay all state costs connected with their application for a Certificate of Public Good (CPG). Vermont took as much advantage as it could of Entergy's requirement to pay. For example, Entergy had to pay Arnie Gundersen and Peter Bradford $300 an hour to be on the Public Oversight Panel (POP). The POP was a new invention that the state required for this particular CPG application.

As I wrote in my blog post about the lawsuit:

"I don't think Shumlin really understands that the game has changed. The 'Bank of Entergy' is closed to him.....His only source of funding right now is the taxpayer."

Shumlin Attempts to Open the Bank with A Bill of Attainder

Shumlin immediately had an addition placed in another legislative bill. This addition required Entergy to pay Vermont's costs in the lawsuit. In another blog post, I called this an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder law, a law directed at one individual or company. I wasn't the only one to notice this law was immoral and unconstitutional.

Cheryl Hanna of the Vermont Law School posted: It is my humble yet considered judgment that not only is the law unenforceable, but it is also likely unconstitutional.

John McClaughry of the Ethan Allen Institute posted this in Vermont Tiger: It’s one thing to bill back to a Public Service Board applicant the costs of issuing a final order on its application. But it’s quite another to bill back the state’s legal costs of defending against a litigant whose application the politicians have forbidden the PSB even to rule upon.

Gov. Shumlin’s ethically challenged billback scheme is one more deplorable disgrace to the once honorable state of Vermont.

Shumlin forced the passage of a bad law. It won't stand up to scrutiny. Has anybody in the state government noticed this?

Yes. The Attorney General has noticed.

The Shaky Concept

Today, Terri Hallenbeck of the Burlington Free Press posted: Despite law, Vermont not billing Entergy back for lawsuit.

Here's a quote from that post: Attorney General Bill Sorrell said his office has not billed Entergy back, and he conceded that’s because the concept is shaky.

He said the state is waiting for a verdict in the case and didn’t want to muddy the waters by trying to bill the other party in the meantime. If Entergy prevails in the case, “It’s uphill sledding to suggest they should pay our costs,” Sorrell said. “We would want to take a hard look at the legality of charging them.”

If the state prevails, he said, “We would take a harder look at it than if we lose.”

Translation: That law won't stand up in court. Vermont can't bill Entergy.

In short, the Bank of Entergy is closed to the State. However, I hope and expect that the Vermont Yankee power plant will remain open.

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Photo of Bill Sorrell from VPR article in which Sorrell announced there would be no criminal prosecution of Entergy.

Full Disclosure: John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute. I am director of the Energy Education Project, which is part of that Institute.

The Other Vermont Yankee Lawsuit: Reactor Operators Sue For Property Rights

2012-01-02T13:26:00.013-05:00

Everyone expected Judge Murtha to rule on the main Vermont Yankee lawsuit by the end of the year in 2011. This lawsuit was brought by Entergy against Shumlin et al in their capacities as officials of the State of Vermont. Entergy claims that the state cannot force Vermont Yankee to close, since the NRC has extended its license.

The main lawsuit is complicated, and I have blogged about the overlapping issues, including state pre-emption of nuclear safety regulations. For this lawsuit, you can also connect to all the filed documents on the Vermont Attorney General's web site.

On this suit, newspapers reported last year that "a ruling is expected by the end of the year." I don't know where they obtained this information. I cannot find a quote from Judge Murtha saying that he would rule in that time-frame. 2011 is over, and the ruling didn't happen.

The Operator Lawsuit

However, the Entergy lawsuit is not the only Vermont Yankee case in front of Judge Murtha right now. In June, several licensed reactor operators brought suit against the state. They claimed that the state has denied them their jobs and taken their property without due process. The state wanted their case dismissed, of course. In December, the reactor operators asked Judge Murtha not to dismiss their case. The Brattleboro Reformer has a reasonably complete article on the operators' request to Judge Murtha.

Basically, the state claims that the operators have no legally protected right to their jobs, so their lawsuit should be dismissed. The operators claim that the state is attempting to shut down Vermont Yankee without a legally-valid reason, and therefore, it is inflicting harm on the operators without due process. Much of the argument depends on interpretation of various due-process clauses in the Constitution. For example, the Fifth Amendment includes the words: No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...

Due process is a knotty concept in the legal world. If you read either the Wikipedia article on due process, or the Brattleboro Reformer on the operators' request to Judge Murtha, I can guarantee that your head will swim.

I'm not a lawyer, and we're not going there.

The German Experience

As far as I can tell, the operator's claims are very similar to the claims that Vattenfall, the big Swedish utility, is making in a lawsuit against Germany. Vattenfall owns several nuclear plants in Germany. As Spiegal On-Line reported in November: Nuclear Phase-Out Faces Billion-Euro Lawsuit.

From Vattenfall's point of view, the German government's decision to abandon nuclear power has destroyed the value of its assets....

The fact that Vattenfall is a Swedish company will help it in German courts, according to the Spiegel article.

According to Handelsblatt, Vattenfall has an advantage in seeking compensation because the company has its headquarters abroad. As a Swedish company, Vattenfall can invoke investment rules under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), which protect foreign investors in signatory nations from interference in property rights.

Last time Vattenfall challenged the German government, they settled out of court. Sounds likeVattenfall knows how to get compensated when the German government acts arbitrarily toward its power plants.

(By the way, nothing in the law seems to operate on time. The Spiegel article says that the Vattenfall lawsuit suit would be filed by Christmas. It wasn't. Newspapers said Judge Murtha would rule on Vermont Yankee by January 1. He didn't.)

A General Concept: Due Process

Following the individual twists and turns of due process is difficult, but the concept is easy. The government cannot deprive individuals or companies of their property without due process of law.

Civilized countries have tax laws in place (due process). Uncivilized areas have thugs who show up at the door and ask for "protection money." The thugs require arbitrary amounts, deriving people of their property according to the whim of the thugs.

Governments aren't supposed to do that. They aren't supposed to take your property or forbid you to operate your business, just because they feel like it. When governments act like thugs, they get themselves sued. The Magna Carta in Britain started the trend toward limiting the powers of government. Here and in Germany, recent lawsuits are forcing governments to acknowledge that their citizens also have rights.

I am no lawyer, so I can't even begin to predict how the current lawsuits will turn out. However, the principal is clear and straightforward. Even a government can't seize property or close down a business without due process.

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John of England signs the Magna Carta, from Wikipedia

85th Carnival Of Nuclear Energy Bloggers: Right Here at Yes Vermont Yankee!

2011-12-31T14:30:00.017-05:00

Looking to the Future: World-Wide

The 85th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers is being hosted by Yes Vermont Yankee. The Carnival is right here, right now. When I signed up to host the Carnival, I promised to post it this weekend. However, I wasn't sure whether I would post it this year or next year.

In a small burst of ambition, I'm putting the Carnival in place in 2011.

Fearless Predictions: Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat offers his annual "fearless predictions" for the global nuclear energy industry in 2012. His post, Predictions, Speculations and Raw Random Ideas for 2012, starts with a description of the future for Japan (of course). Until 2011, Japan and France were two stalwarts of the nuclear field. Now they face new challenges. China and India will move ahead, and the U.K. maintains progress for its new build.

The two big new deals in 2012 are the Czech Republic's Temelin project for up to five new reactors worth $28 billion and an expected tender by Saudi Arabia for up to 16 new reactors worth $112 billion.

New Directions: While she wouldn't quite characterize it as a New Year's projection, Gail Marcus of Nuke Power Talk considers New Directions in her post. She speculates that the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident in Japan may increase the pressure to continue the development of advanced reactor technologies, including some of the SMR designs, that hold the promise of being more robust in the event of a "Fukushima-type" accident. This would be any scenario that can lead to a prolonged loss of cooling water or backup power. However, she cautions people to heed the words of Admiral Rickover, who famously enumerated the differences between a "paper reactor" and a real reactor.

Moving Forward in the U.S. Margie Jepson blogs at Nuclear Clean Air Energy as part of Entergy's Nuclear Clean Air Energy education initiative. In The 2011 Year: So Long! Jepson looks back at the Year of Fukushima. Then she looks forward to the ways that 2012 will expand many of the excellent trends of 2011 in this country. Reactors are being built, capacity uprates have been granted by the NRC, and the uranium enrichment facility (planned for eastern Idaho) now has an NRC license.

Nuclear Plants to Fight Climate Change: At Canadian Energy Issues, Steve Aplin writes Extreme heat, electrical load, and political stability: the connection and the solution. 2011 was a year of record extreme weather in North America. The extreme episodes were fueled by the higher temperatures in the earth’s atmosphere, which gave extra energy to the heat waves and wind storms that ravaged the continent. It is an alarming trend. One upshot is that there will be huge demand for electricity for summer air conditioning. Aplin argues that this demand must be met by CO2-free nuclear plants, not by CO2-belching natural gas-fired ones.

By the way, I like the energy tracker on Aplin's blog, displaying real-time electricity data for Ontario. I include a screen shot of the tracker. Double-click to enlarge the graphic.

Fusion Power Moves Closer: Brian Wang of Next Big Future truly looks to the future with a blog post on how fusion power moves closer, due to results from a lab in Germany. A gamma ray laser and a Bose-Einstein Condensate could help make it happen.

Fire Put Out: Wang also reports on a Russian submarine which caught fire. The fire was successfully extinguished. (To me, this is the scariest story of the bunch. The Russians do say the ICBM's were not on the ship at the time of the fire.)

Students are the Future: What questions do young people have about nuclear power? Recently, Howard Shaffer and Meredith Angwin had opportunities to hear their questions. Meredith Angwin discusses the questions as well as the answers, and the implications for nuclear education. The post, Young People and Nuclear Power, is at ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Fukushima Update and Japanese Nuclear Future: For many people within the nuclear industry and outside of it, 2011 will be remembered as the Year of Fukushima. Will Davis of Atomic Power Review posts Fukushima Tepco Update for December 28. This post provides a set of updates on situations relative to Fukushima Daiichi: An announcement by Fukushima Prefecture with wide implications; a report by TEPCO on core, pressure vessel, and containment damage; and TEPCO's announcement of an attempt to "scope" No. 2 containment. In this post, Davis has provided his own illustrations to explain the information from TEPCO. I believe his excellent use of graphics is one of the reasons that Atomic Power Review is so widely read.

Scientists Punch Holes in the Linear Non Threshold Theory. Leading researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, including a leading cancer researcher, designed an innovative experiment in which they could see cells repairing themselves after irradiation. As you might expect (but they showed) repair was much quicker and better after low doses of radiation. Another hole in the LNT theory. I blogged about it in the controversial post Will a Little Bit of Radiation Hurt You? Berkeley Scientist Break the Hold of Linear Non Threshold Reasoning.

Here's to a great 2012, for the Nuclear Industry and for the entire world!

To all my friends, and to everyone who reads this blog:

Have a healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year!

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Update: Happy New Year! On this morning of January 1, 2012, I also want to say "Happy Birthday to Yes Vermont Yankee." I started this blog as a New Year's resolution on January 1, 2010.

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Photo from Wikipedia of New Years fireworks in London

Will Vermont Yankee be Replaced by Unicorns? Pictures of the Rally, and a Critique of the Vermont Energy Plan

2011-12-29T19:30:00.031-05:00

The Rally

Thank you to Kay Trudell for the photos of the rally in support of Vermont Yankee this October! We just put an entire album of pictures on the Save Vermont Yankee Facebook page. These four pix are just a sample.

I couldn't resist putting in a picture of Howard Shaffer carrying a great sign

The Energy Plan for Unicorns

There's a new Vermont Energy Plan. It says that we are going to use 90% renewable energy by 2050. It says that we don't need Vermont Yankee, but we do need a new natural gas pipeline. That's the plan.

John McClaughry of Ethan Allen Institute has a great critique of the energy plan today at Vermont Tiger. McClaughry's title tells where Vermont's energy supply is heading: Unicorn Power for Vermont! Read it. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll laugh and cry, both at the same time. (Full disclosure: The Energy Education Project that I direct is part of the Ethan Allen Institute. John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute.)

New Blog on the Blog Roll: ScienceWonk and Radiation Risks

2011-12-28T10:47:00.004-05:00

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is a non-profit group that is dedicated to providing rigorous, objective, evidence-based analysis and practical policy recommendations on national and international security issues connected to applied science and technology. It was founded in 1945 by many of the scientists who built the first atomic bombs.

Looking at their website, I see that FAS is mainly concerned with national security, and also with science education and basic science. In other words, FAS and I would might have never crossed paths. However, Cheryl Rofer of Nuclear Diner recommended a new FAS blog, ScienceWonk, to nuclear bloggers like myself. I have just added it to the blog roll.

ScienceWonk is written by Dr. Y, a certified health physicist with 30 years experience in nuclear power and related fields, including planning for radiological emergencies. Dr. Y writes about radiation risks and other risks. For example, one post is called Putting Radiation Risk in Perspective. This post includes a link to the irradiated gemstone scare stories of a few years ago. Another post about airport screening safety includes a discussion of low-dose effects. Here's a fine quote:

Science is a field that makes predictions that can be tested and falsified – any putative risk from exposure to 100 mrem is far too small to be detected via epidemiological studies of the affected populations and the hypothesis that this harm is taking place cannot be tested and cannot be falsified. As such, until our epidemiological tools improve, such speculations are intriguing but may not be scientific because of this lack of falsifiability – they represent a belief or even a philosophy rather than a scientific position.

I hope you will enjoy ScienceWonk.

Oh yes, and visit Nuclear Diner, too! It includes a discussion forum and a blog. Nuclear Diner is open to people in favor of nuclear power and those opposed to it. Cheryl Rofer is one of the founders of Nuclear Diner, and she's also the one who told me about the ScienceWonk blog.

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Sunday on La Grande Jatte, by Georges Seurat, was done with the technique of pointillism. If you look at the dots, you see dots. You have to step back from the canvas to see the big picture. Dr. Y used it as an illustration in one of the ScienceWonk posts.

A Tale of Two Classrooms: Talking about Nuclear Energy at UVM and at a High School

2011-12-27T08:20:00.014-05:00

At ANS Nuclear Cafe this morning, I have a post: Young People and Nuclear Power.

Recently, Howard Shaffer and I attended a film about nuclear energy at the University of Vermont. I blogged about the film and panel discussion.

However, we also visited a charter high school in Massachusetts. This was a very different experience. The senior class at the high school has been engaged in an intense cross-disciplinary study of nuclear energy and Vermont Yankee issues. We spoke to the entire senior class.

The high school students who had studied nuclear power asked very knowledgeable questions, and some were interested in careers in nuclear energy. At the University of Vermont, few of the college students at the film knew much about nuclear power. Many of the college student questions were anti-nuclear position statements disguised as questions. ("Why hasn't the NRC ever turned down a license extension application?")

The ANS blog post is the story of only two classroom events, but examples are often more interesting than general statements. I hope you will enjoy reading it.

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Picture of historical building at University of Vermont, Billings Library, from Wikipedia

Woodblock print of Thetford Academy (oldest secondary school in Vermont) from Wikipedia.

Christmas Carnival of Nuclear Bloggers at Atomic Power Review

2011-12-25T13:28:00.006-05:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. Happy Holidays and happy celebrations!

The 84th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers is up at Atomic Power Review. Thank you to Will Davis for keeping the Carnival going in the middle of the holiday season.

I have to start with a direct link to a poem in the Carnival, from ANS Nuclear Cafe. A Priori wrote The Wait for the License. It starts:

‘Twas the wait for the license,

When all through the site,

Not a module was fitted,

No matter how light.

Work orders were logged

On the systems and boards

For the moment when workers

Would show up in hordes.

The owners and contractors

Eagerly waited

To pour some concrete

That is safety-related.

And I in my trailer,

Hearing no bosses’ words,

Had flipped out my smart phone

To play Angry Birds.

Hard to top that one! Well, on to the prose....

Jim Hopf at ANS News and Gail Marcus of Nuke Power Talk discuss Jaczko and the NRC, and Dan Yurman describes the progress on recent Areva projects. The Enrichment facility in Idaho is on hold, but the EPR reactors in China are doing well, taking far less time than the first reactor of that type, which is being built in Finland. It's the end of the year, so Gail Marcus and Jeff Madison of Cool Hand Nuke do a retrospective on 60 years of nuclear power, while Brian Wang of Next Big Future includes a roundup of nuclear news. Want also reviews the status of SMR reactor proposals, and even covers fusion and coal news.

Yes Vermont Yankee submitted a post about materials resources for nuclear education for high school students. From Atomic Power Review, Will Davis adds more resources to the High School list. It is in the spirit of the holidays to consider young people, and it is in the spirit of nuclear energy to consider nuclear education.

Once again, Will Davis starts his carnival with a tease picture from the nuclear archives "Guess this!" I couldn't guess, but may you can. Hint. It's a reactor...

Have happy, safe and joyful holidays! Have some fun at the Christmas Carnival!

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About the picture. It reminded me of someone I knew well in high school, and of a situation that scared me half to death.

In high school, a fellow student invited me to come to her house for their traditional Christmas Eve party. Her parents were refugees from Vienna, fleeing Hitler. I knew this. What I didn't know was the German, Austrian, Danish (etc) custom of lighting the Christmas tree with real candles. As they got out the long tapers and started lighting the candles. I was terrified. At the end, it was okay. I mean, the house didn't burn down, which is my criteria for "lighting candles on the Christmas tree was okay." I wouldn't do it myself, and not just because I mostly celebrate Hanukkah!

I urge you to have safe and enjoyable holidays. Remember-- LED lights are quite attractive. They come in many colors, unlike candles. Much preferable, IMHO.

Photo from Wikipedia of a Danish Christmas tree with candles.

Will a Little Bit of Radiation Hurt You? Berkeley Scientists Break the Hold of Linear Non Threshold Reasoning.

2011-12-23T09:00:00.002-05:00

Berkeley Scientists Watch Cells Repairing Themselves after Exposure to Low-Level Radiation

Lawrence Berkeley laboratory scientists recently announced results of innovative radiation experiments. The scientists watched cells repairing themselves after being exposed to low-level radiation. Here's the press release: New Take on Impacts of Low Dose Radiation: Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Evidence Suggesting Risk May Not Be Proportional to Dose at Low Dose Levels

Here's a quote from the press release:

“Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”

Mina Bissell is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and is known throughout the world for her breast cancer research. Her awards include being elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and further honors from the Curie Institute in France and the American Cancer Society. She has so many awards that Portugal has named an award FOR her: the Mina J Bissell award to a scientist who has transformed our perception of a topic.

Though the techniques were innovative, and the scientists very distinguished, these recent low-level radiation results are not actually surprising. From common sense, we would expect that a body could heal itself well from several low-dose radiation exposures, while having a harder time healing from a single high dose exposure. After all, we expect ourselves to heal after any number of skinned knees, but that says nothing about our ability to heal from stab wounds.

Why Is This A Big Deal? Well, The Official Theory of Radiation is Response is Strictly Linear

In other words, the official theory of radiation response is that a couple of skinned knees is the same as a stabbing.

Risks from low levels of radiation are generally assessed with the Linear No Threshold (LNT) theory. This theory states that the risks of cancer are in direct proportion to the amount of exposure, even for very small exposures. This methodology of risk assessment is supported by a series of reports called the BEIR reports: Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation. BEIR I through BEIR VII have been issued under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. I include a link to the BEIR VII summary document from the National Academy.

Despite this heritage, the BEIR reports are controversial. For one thing, the assumption that there is no threshold for radiation damage is impossible to prove in a world where everyone is exposed to background radiation. For another thing, the linearity of damage at low levels always struck many scientists as unlikely. In general, small amounts of toxins are handled well by organisms, while large amounts can kill. The relationship between zero effect and lethal dose is not generally linear.

Or, as one of my friends put it: BEIR says that if 100 aspirins taken at once is lethal, and 100 men each take one aspirin apiece--one of those men is going to die. That would be a linear response to low dosage aspirin consumption.

Actually, BEIR VII waffles a bit at low dosages. Here's a quote from the summary:

There are two competing hypotheses to the linear no-threshold model. One is that low doses of radiation are more harmful than a linear, no-threshold model of effects would suggest. BEIR VII finds that the radiation health effects research, taken as a whole, does not support this hypothesis. The other hypothesis suggests that risks are smaller than predicted by the linear no-threshold model are nonexistent (sic), or that low doses of radiation may even be beneficial. The report concludes that the preponderance of information indicates that there will be some risk, even at low doses, although the risk is small.

Note that the report does not actually claim that the risks are linear at low doses, but merely that there is some risk though the risk is small.

If you would like to think about some painful consequences of LNT, I encourage you to listen to this podcast about Fukushima or read my blog post about it. Rod Adams invited me and Cal Abel to be on a podcast to discuss the very real question of when Fukushima evacuees could go home. I especially encourage you to read the comments on both the podcast and the blog post.

Following LNT Would Lead to Really Weird Cancer Therapies

"When all is said and done, there's a lot more said than done."

I have always followed the policy of attempting to look at what people do, rather than what they say. People still get dental x-rays. People move to Denver, where background radiation is high. More people move to Denver than move to the Mississippi delta, despite the low background radiation in Mississippi. But let's look at a stronger example.

Let's look at radiation therapy for cancer. Many people undergo radiation treatmentS. The plural is important.

Radiation oncologists know that the healthy flesh heals after a treatment, so treatments are spaced out: six weeks of three times a week, two months of twice a week, etc. I remember one man in my writing group who moved to Boston for two months to be treated. Why did he have to do this? Why didn't he just visit Boston, get one massive treatment, and come home to Vermont? Because, even at high doses, the body heals between treatments. There is a repair mechanism, as there is for everything else our body encounters.

Giving radiation therapy in one dose would hugely damage the surrounding tissues, compared to giving the same amount in smaller doses over a long time. Even at the relatively high doses of radiotherapy, response to one dose versus response to many doses is not linear. Wade Allison has an excellent description of the planning behind radiation therapy in his book, Radiation and Reason.

LNT and Small Doses

From low-level radiation exposure research at Berkeley to the standard methodologies of radiation oncology specialists to Fukushima...it seems to me that it is time to stop using LNT as the gold standard for assessing risk.

LNT is wrong and therefore will lead to incorrect results. Even BEIR doesn't really defend it, and yet it is the de facto law of the land.

A major tip of the hat to Rod Adams of Atomic Insights blog, for his post Lawrence Berkeley National Lab announces breakthrough study of low radiation dose effects

Aspirin Graphic from Wikimedia

Photo of Mina Bissell from her website.

Geiger Counter graphic from Wikimedia.

Carbon Dioxide and Nuclear Energy

2011-12-19T09:15:00.005-05:00

Nuclear Plant Opponents and Climate Change

Let's talk a little about carbon dioxide.

Burning fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide leads to climate change.
Nuclear power produces only negligible amounts of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases.

Opponents of nuclear power are stuck with these facts about carbon dioxide, but they try to get around them. They want to have their cake (close nuclear!) and eat it as they wrap themselves in environmental nobility (stop climate change!) How do they do this?

Few opponents will say carbon dioxide doesn't matter, because then they would be "climate change deniers" -- which is the wrong political party.
Some opponents say that both nuclear and fossil should be and will be replaced very quicky by renewables, so the comparison is not important.
Some say nuclear power cannot make much of a dent in the problem anyway, and the nuclear fuel cycle makes as much carbon dioxide as natural gas.

Gundersen: A Little Carbon Dioxide Doesn't Matter

At the January Janus Forum debate at UVM, Arnie Gundersen took a different approach than the ones I outlined above. He discussed nuclear plants (Vermont Yankee) and climate change. Here is what Gundersen said in January.

Gundersen's argument is that nuclear plants have poorer Carnot efficiency than fossil plants and therefore heat up the rivers more, which is bad for the fish. He claims that Vermont Yankee heated the river and decreased the shad in the Connecticut from 70,000 fish to 16 fish. Therefore, the little bit of global warming we would get if we replaced Vermont Yankee with fossil power does not matter very much. He claims we will save the river, even if we hurt the climate a tiny bit.

Actually, there are far more than 16 shad in the Connecticut River, but this post is not about refuting Gundersen. I did that in an earlier post, Hot Climate and Cold Fish. My aim in this post is to show the variety of complex, baffling, and ultimately false arguments nuclear opponents make about carbon dioxide and nuclear power.

France versus Denmark on Global Warming

Luckily for pro-nuclear people, we don't have to make complex arguments. We don't have to look at the future when (hopefully) renewables-do-it-all---and pretend that future is here right now. We don't have to tell lies about the nuclear fuel cycle being as bad for the climate as natural gas. We don't have to claim that warm water (not hydroelectric dams or imported bass) is killing the native fish.

Pro-nuclear people can be straightforward, because we have real facts and can make a real arguments. Pro-nuclear people can can look at actual countries (Denmark and France), actual carbon dioxide numbers, and cheerful videos to show that

Nuclear Energy is a major ally in the fight against carbon dioxide increase and changing climate.

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Video Note: Gundersen video is from the UVM debate in January. France/Denmark video by MyLiberationBaby for Brave New Climate.

Gundersen note: Gundersen made similar remarks about the river when he was on the panel discussing the Transparent Radiation film at University of Vermont about a week ago. (I don't have links to the panel itself, so I will link to my post on the UVM film.)

Climate Change Note: I am aware that a certain portion of my readers do not believe carbon dioxide is leading to climate change. I think carbon dioxide is leading to climate change, and that is a problem. However, I was pro-nuclear long before climate change was an issue. Whether you think carbon dioxide causes climate change or not, I hope you can agree that using up our fossil fuels for generating electricity is not a good idea, since nuclear power will do the job just as well.

83rd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers at ANS Nuclear Cafe

2011-12-18T10:49:00.005-05:00

The 83rd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers is up at ANS Nuclear Cafe. Thank you to Dan Yurman for once again putting together a great Carnival! Once again, the scope is world-wide.

However, starting in Washington, Nancy Roth of Fuel Cycle Week covers the dirty laundry on display at the Jaczko hearings. The Chairman doesn't act like a Chairman of a commission, a collegial and knowledgeable group of people who come to together to share information, reason, argue and decide. It sounds as if Jaczko's "chairman" model may be closer to "Chairman Mao." Meanwhile, at Nuclear Diner, Cheryl Rofer links to background documents and summary documents for the hearings, so you can read the dirty laundry for yourself. (I know. That was a really weird metaphor.) Gail Marcus of Nuke Power Talk also reviews the hearings, from the perspective of someone very knowledgeable about nuclear regulation, both here and in Japan.

At Atomic Power Review, Will Davis begins a series of summary reporting and opinion pieces, which will supplement his detailed and careful descriptions of events in the United States and Japan. Many of us have relied on his Japan posts, and we look forward to his more wide-ranging posts in the future.

New types of reactors make news in the Carnival. At ANS Nuclear Cafe, Dan Yurman describes recent events in the evolution of the Traveling Wave Reactor, which is supported and encouraged by Bill Gates. At Next Big Future, Brian Wang links to the very positive report on Small Modular Reactors SMRs by the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago.

On the smash that incorrect-information front:

Cheryl Rofer of Phronesisaical points out that you can't make a bomb with Na-22, even if you smuggle it to Iran.
Steve Aplin of Canadian Energy Issues wonders why we are not reprocessing.
Victoria Barq of NEI Nuclear Notes shreds an article by Sovacool that gives the "dirt" on nuclear power.
At Yes Vermont Yankee, I review an anti-nuclear film sponsored by University of Vermont. Among other things, the film notes with alarm that uranium 238 has a 4 billion year half-life. (You mean that fact didn't worry you?)
Dan Yurman wonders whether the Fukushima reactors will truly be in cold shutdown.

In a grab-bag of other news, good, bad, and maybe ugly:

At Idaho Samizdat, Dan Yurman notes that Areva is overextended and stopped work on the Eagle Rock Enrichment facility, despite a loan guarantee, an NRC license, and contracts in place to buy 70% of the plant output. (bad news)
At Nuke Power Talk, Gail Marcus discusses energy and animals. Nuclear power plants are good for endangered crocodiles. Unfortunately, wind turbines aren't good for animals in general. (good news for nuclear)
At Next Big Future, Brian Wang talks about Russia's plans to dominate the world uranium market (maybe ugly news? I mean, they already supply Europe with natural gas...)
At Idaho Samizdat, Dan Yurman celebrates the fact that many in the Fukushima evacuation area are allowed to return home (GOOD news!)

That's all the news for now! Come to the Carnival, and enjoy yourself. Visit and tell your friends!

Howard Shaffer Testimony to VSNAP: Perspective on Vermont Yankee Errors

2011-12-14T14:05:00.023-05:00

Errors at Vermont Yankee Reported to the NRC

Recently, Vermont Yankee announced that it had reported two personnel errors to the NRC. The first error occurred during the refueling outage in October. A worker flipped a circuit breaker on the shut-down cooling system, causing the water temperature to rise briefly and an alarm to sound. The plant was off-line at the time. The second error, in December, was taking both of the plants diesel generators out of service at the same time. This error (the generators were not in use) lasted for about 2 minutes before the mistake was noticed and corrected. As the NRC spokesman noted: Vermont Yankee has other backup systems as well (as the generators), including batteries and a tie to a nearby hydroelectric plant.

Naturally, the opponents have commented. In the Rutland Herald, Ray Shadis was quoted: “They were Homer Simpson moments...The two screw-ups are part of a continuum of ongoing, goofy, inexplicable stuff”. Shadis further noted that he expected the next three months to be the most dangerous in the plant's forty years of operation. In the same article, Arnie Gundersen said that the Public Oversight Panel (he was a member) identified similar issues three years ago.

Yesterday, the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel (VSNAP) met in Vernon, Vermont. The mission of this panel has never been clear to me. According the VSNAP web page, it "considers issues" and writes an annual report to the governor and the legislature. At VSNAP meetings, most of the meeting time is spent on public comments. Vermont Yankee opponents generally show up in force. One of the public comments about the plant was from George Harvey, as reported in the Brattleboro Reformer. "These people have a history of lying....They’re clearly operating out of self-interest. They’re not interested in our making informed decisions, they’re only interested in making money."

Neither Howard Shaffer nor I could attend the VSNAP meeting, due to other obligations. However, Howard sent VSNAP the testimony below, which I am very happy to share.

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Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel

From: Howard Shaffer PE (nuclear) Vermont, NH, MA, IL
Startup Engineer and Support Engineer for Vermont Yankee

The two personnel errors at VY open the discussion to consideration of the initial design of the whole nuclear power program, and all our technologies.

In all my Navy Nuclear power and submarine training it was emphasized that the greatest care is required. You must communicate and double check before taking action. Yet it is acknowledged, and proven by experience, that people make mistakes. Therefore, designs must include backups and consideration of "what ifs."

Nuclear Power Plant Design

In nuclear reactor plant design, of all types, it seems to have been considered that there will be failures of hardware, and people. People include Operators, Managers, and Regulators. In addition, it was believed that in spite of all design, training, and precautions, some day, somewhere, a reactor core would be damaged and melt. The radioactive products were assumed to get out of the vessel and piping. Therefore, a backup was needed. It is the Containment. I call it the "garbage can over the tea kettle." It worked at Three Mile Island. At Fukushima the containments worked for a while, until the lack of cooling for the fuel caused melting and releases. It has been forgotten by the media that the Japanese government ordered an evacuation on the first day of the event, long before releases began.

We, the world nuclear power community, have organizations to communicate lessons learned, in addition to the regulatory agencies. These organizations are the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations in the US, and the World Association of Nuclear Operators. Airplane regulators communicate world wide too.

Human Interaction

Comparing nuclear power to perfection is a political ploy. What in human endeavor is perfect? Try comparing airplanes and cars to perfection. The certainty of error is no excuse. Every accident is investigated and lessons learned incorporated. This is true of the flooding after hurricane Irene, the fire in downtown Brattleboro, house fires, plane and train crashes, car accidents, and nuclear power plant accidents and errors. If you are against something politically, compare it to perfection, and demand zero errors.

In my Navy nuclear power training, I had to read the book containing reports of all the errors that had happened to date. By then, 1963, the book was thick. As years went by, the book got too thick to manage. Errors were being repeated. The book was replaced with a manageable volume of the "classic errors." Why were errors repeated? Errors are repeated in spit of all efforts, because people are human. There are always new people, people changing jobs, rules changes, design changes, and time and other pressures.

NRC licensees are required to have a formal program to document, report, investigate, learn from, and take corrective action on, Human Errors. It is always appropriate to ask if any events constitute a pattern.

Conclusion

The nuclear power program, and Vermont Yankee, should be compared to the available alternatives. On this basis, using the measures the EPA uses: deaths, injuries, accidents, and environmental degradation, it appears that in the 1950's Congress made a very wise decision in choosing nuclear power as a replacement for coal.

Footnote

In a recent press release on the Cross Border Air Pollution Regulations, the EPA stated that:

Pollution from Coal Burning is responsible EVERY YEAR for

34, 000 early deaths due to asthma
$280 billion in health costs
15,000 non fatal heart attacks
19,000 acute bronchitis cases
400,000 cases of aggravated asthma
1.8 million sick days

The UVM Film: Speaking for Themselves about Power Plants

2011-12-12T16:41:00.043-05:00

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Hillary Archer of the Gund Institute at University of Vermont (UVM) directed a film about nuclear power, Transparent Radiation. It's a pretty negative film.

Actions speak louder than words. If the Gund Institute thought coal plants were a bigger problem than nuclear plants, they would have made a film about coal.

However, in my previous post about the film a lengthy comment stream made it clear that some people at Gund thought I was misquoting them or misrepresenting the film. So in this post, I am being extra-extra careful. In this post, I have one quote from the film....followed by my opinion. Then I have the two film trailers...followed by my opinion.

My opinions are clearly marked. Readers can read the quote, watch the trailers, read my opinions, and come to their own conclusions.

Energy Choices Quote

After I heard this quote in the film, I asked for the entire quote to put in my blog. I thank Hillary Archer for sending me the quote.

The quote describes a possible energy future.

"If we were able to reduce our per capita energy consumption in the United states from what it is, even to European levels, which is still a very developed society, we'd be cutting our energy demand generally in half, and doing about the same to our electricity demand. So if you envision this stack, we've taken 50% and made it unnecessary. It's easy to imagine that the 20% that we get from nuclear could be in the 50% that's rendered unnecessary, so this whole issue of you need nuclear power is rendered irrelevant." by Eric Garza, in the film Transparent Radiation, 2011

My opinion: I interpreted this quote as saying that shutting nuclear plants is a very high priority action. Since 50% of our electricity comes from coal, cutting back electricity use by 50% could mean that we didn't need any coal plants. As I read this quote, I think it implies that shutting nuclear plants is higher priority than shutting all the coal plants. The nuclear plants would be the first to go. That's how I interpreted this quote.

In several email exchanges with people at Gund, they have made it quite clear that they think my interpretation of this quote is completely incorrect.

However, my opinion of the quote remains the same. IMHO, the quote recommends shutting the nuclear plants first. Other people's opinions that my opinion is incorrect--doesn't change my opinion.

Trailers for the Film

Here are the two trailers for the film, Transparent Radiation. Each is less than two minutes long, so you can watch them both.

My Opinion:

Scare First: The first part of each trailer is basically attention-getting. It consists of rather frightening footage, usually with Geiger counter sounds in the background. Trailers include tsunami footage and (one trailer) atomic bomb footage.

In watching the early attention-getting frames, I am most puzzled by what happens about sixteen seconds into the trailers. It looks like workers at Fukushima, dressed in anti-c's (radiation protection clothes), are carrying a body bag. Indeed, two people drowned at the Fukushima plant during the tsunami and one person was killed when his crane toppled during the earthquake. (About 20,000 people in Japan died during the catastrophe. Most were drowned or crushed.) Deaths at the plant were caused by the natural catastrophe. Anyhow, the body-bag sequence is both puzzling and irrelevant to nuclear energy. That is my opinion.

(Someone is sure to point out that one man at the plant died of heat exhaustion later, while working. It doesn't look like these men are carrying him. First you see the men in a cluster outside the plant, then carrying the bag.)

Reform Later: Moving from the scare scenes at the beginning, the trailers then consist of many people making general statements. Most of these statements strike me as almost religious in tone: variations of the theme that "we have to rethink everything" or "it's a new age." We are also described as needing to curb our insatiable appetites for material goods, stop neglecting the limitations of the world, and so forth. These statements may be a call to personal action, but I don't see them as having much to do with nuclear.

There are a few statements about nuclear energy. These are also very general remarks, without much substance. For example, there is one statement that "nuclear is not a silver bullet." This is a straw man. Did some unknown person, not in the film, say nuclear is a silver bullet? I know that nuclear can be a great help in slowing global warming, but I don't know any nuclear supporter who would call it a silver bullet. There is also one statement in the trailer about renewables, claiming that we have lacked interest in renewables and are holding on to things we are used to.

I noticed only one number in these trailers: concern with U238 and its four billion year half-life. I described my opinion of this long-half-life statement in my previous post, so I won't repeat myself. (The 50% quote above was in the film, not the trailers.)

My concluding opinion

The trailers are very well done as advocacy pieces. They start with scary images, and move on to almost religious statements about how we can do better. This is a good sequence for convincing people. It is regularly used in advocacy (and propaganda and sermons and political speeches) of all kinds.

In my opinion, these are excellent trailers, but not trailers that encourage thought about energy choices. The images and words are visceral and direct: This is frightening! We must reform!

The problem with pro-nuclear people (like me) is that I load up my posts with numbers and comparisons. I can see by these trailers that a more direct approach works better.

And yet...somehow...this is not the sort of thing I expected to see as a university project about energy.

End Note: Ms. Archer is a lovely and gracious person, and I feel badly about having a low opinion of the film. I am grateful that she sent me any quote that I requested. I have decided that being a film critic must be a really really terrible job.

The UVM Film, Billion Year Half-Lives, and Coal is a Straw Man

2011-12-10T17:26:00.028-05:00

Last week, I attended the film Transparent Radiation at University of Vermont. The film poster is to the left. The purpose of this film was to show the negative side of nuclear energy, echoing the viewpoint of the filmmakers.

After the film was shown, there was a panel discussion. Howard Shaffer was on the panel. Shaffer blogged about the film and his panel experience at the American Nuclear Society's ANS Nuclear Cafe: Transparent Radiation--A Film: The View from the Panel.

Howard and I thought that I might blog at ANS later this month, perhaps my post would be The View from the Audience. In preparation for writing the blog post, I contacted the film director, Hillary Archer, and also a faculty member at the Gund Institute, Gary Flomenhoft, for further information and quotes.

The email conversation didn't go all that well. This was at least partially my fault. I am grateful that Archer obtained all the quotes I wanted. She was very gracious.

The Quote I Wanted

I emailed Archer that I wanted to obtain the quote about the how some nuclear materials had a four billion year half-life, because I loved that quote and I wanted to use it in my blog. She sent me the quote, but she also was very interested in why I loved it. Would I share my opinion of the quote?

After a bit of back and forth, I wrote Archer an email about the quote. Later I thought: Why let a good rant go to waste? I'll put the email on my blog! So here it is. I have edited it a little by removing a short paragraph that referred to earlier emails. I also include the entire quote from the film, as sent to me by Archer.

My Email to Hillary Archer

Hello Hillary

Thank you for the quote. I appreciate you sharing this and helping me be more accurate!

-snip-

You wanted my opinion of the quote, and I said that my opinion would be in the blog. I don't have an obligation to share my opinions with you before I even write them. I DO have an obligation to get the quotes right, and I have been working at that..

However. I will share my opinion of this quote, since it seems to be important to you. This quote shows a completely backward understanding of radioactivity and its dangers. It's the most perfect misunderstanding of radioactivity: half-life as scare story. During the film, I giggled during this quote. This whole business about protecting ourselves from U 238, which has been here since the planet was formed! It was very funny. U 238 is all over the place: in rocks, in coal, in the ocean. But these guys are going to hide it away, because it has a long half-life so it must be very dangerous. And somehow, nuclear energy caused it! Nope, the supernova that exploded and made the earth 4 billion years ago...that caused the existence of U 238!

On to a little education about radioactivity. A long half life means an isotope is less dangerous. Think about it. Let's say you have a 100 atoms of an isotope with a half life of ten minutes. You can expect 50 radioactive decays in the first ten minutes. Short half-life, lots of radiation released quickly.

Let's say those 100 atoms are of an isotope with a half-life of ten years. The first ten years will have 50 decays, or one decay every couple of months. Long half-life, very little radiation released at a time.

This is why we can build a building of granite, which contains long-half-life radioactive materials. The long half-life means the granite isn't very radioactive. A 4 billion year half-life means very low radioactivity indeed!

It makes a good scare story, though. Be afraid. Be very afraid. It's gonna be radioactive for billions of years (as it has been already)! But to anyone with a bit of understanding of radioactivity, it's a giggle.

By the way, since you value honesty. Half of the electricity in this country comes from coal. Comparing coal and nuclear is not a "straw man," as Gary called it. You cannot dismiss facts by claiming: "that's a straw man." That is not honesty about energy.

By the way, I just found this today. Might be interesting...

http://nuclearaustralia.blogspot.com/2011/12/coal-1-fukushima-every-6-months.html

Thank you for sending me the exact quotes. I appreciate the quotes, and I appreciate the time you took to send them. I hope I have answered your questions. I have taken some time about it, and tried my best to answer.

Best,

Meredith

The Quote Itself

First, a note. The exact words in Gary Flomenhoft's email to me were: "I believe nuclear vs coal is a straw man argument." He likes neither nuclear nor coal.

Further, the quote I requested from the film Transparent Radiation. I thank Hillary Archer for providing the full text of the quote.

"Take a look at one of the most toxic wastes we produce: plutonium, one of the most toxic substances know to humans, half life of 23,400 years more or less. And that means half of it will be gone in that long, but it's so toxic we need to wait many many many half lives. There are other nuclear wastes that are extremely dangerous, with a half life of a million years; depleted uranium, a half life of four billion years- the life of the planet. So we have to keep track of these wastes, at the very minimum, many multiples of how long civilization has been around. Most likely for as long as the human species has been around or much longer." Joshua Farley from the film Transparent Radiation, 2011

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Composite image of the Crab Nebula Supernova from Wikipedia

Coal image also from Wikipedia.

Resources for Nuclear Education In High Schools

2011-12-10T11:00:00.000-05:00

Back to High School

So far, in blogging and nuclear advocacy talks, I generally speak to adult audiences. That seems to be changing.

A few weeks ago, a high school assistant principal found me on the web. This has turned into an opportunity for one of the Energy Education Project supporters (a nuclear engineer who lives near that high school) to give a talk at the high school. Then another high school teacher contacted me. That contact has become an opportunity for Howard Shaffer and me. We be talking to social studies and chemistry classes at that school.

Two days ago, a high school student from one of the Vermont Academy high schools contacted me. He wanted some help in putting together a senior project about nuclear energy. The project will be presented to the entire school.

At that point, I cried "Help!" to my American Nuclear Society Listserve, asking for information about high school curriculum materials for nuclear energy. As I expected, some very knowledgeable people led me to good resources. I am using this blog post to share the information.

Nuclear Energy Resources for High Schools

Department of Energy

A prime resource on the web is at the Department of Energy site for teachers:

http://www.ne.doe.gov/students/Track_teachers.html

This has activities, fact sheets, and brochures on nuclear power plant safety.

My evaluation: Great stuff, but you are going to have to hunt through it. Lots of good material, but uneven.

National Nuclear Science Week

Nuclear Science Week is January 23 through 27. and has a terrific website:

http://www.nuclearscienceweek.org/

This includes activities and downloads:

http://www.nuclearscienceweek.org/for-teachers-students-parents/topics-and-downloads-for-curriculum/

One of my favorite parts of the website is the day by day set of resources with links and video clips:

Getting To Know Nuclear (Monday)

Nuclear Careers (Tuesday)

My evaluation: This site is rich, up-to-date, and easy to navigate. It can be used even if your school is not participating in Nuclear Science Week.

Energy Solutions and Power Path

Energy Solutions Foundation pioneered a curriculum for nuclear energy. This material is part of the Power Path curriculum developed by Entergy, Areva and others.

http://energysolutionsfoundation.org/

http://nuclearcleanairenergy.com/resources/education/power-path/

The Power Path site includes games, information, fact sheets, activities, and debate points for high school debaters. Power Path is truly a curriculum. Much is downloadable, other parts of the curriculum can be attained by emailing abecker@entergy.com.

The Power Path Curriculum is available and approved for use in several states.

My Evaluation: Power Path is excellent. It seems to be the most complete and organized of nuclear energy resources for high schools. I recommend it highly,

No, I am not just saying this because Entergy owns Vermont Yankee and is also a sponsor of Power Path! I am saying it because people on my ANS Listserve have used Power Path materials in their children's schools, and they said the materials were great. Of all the resources I have listed in this post, this is the only one for which I have user-feedback.

Facts on File Books

Facts on File (a publisher) is coming out with a series of six books about nuclear energy.

http://www.infobasepublishing.com/Series.aspx?SeriesISBN=084944

The book titles include:

Radiation
History of Nuclear Power
Nuclear Accidents and Disaster

The books are meant for high school and college libraries. Some books available now; some will be available early next year.

My Evaluation: I haven't read these books, and they are pretty pricey at $45 each. However, all the books are written by James Mahaffey, a Ph.D. who wrote the excellent book Atomic Awakening. That book is on my Kindle, and it is clear, authoritative, and amusing. I expect these books are also excellent.

Conclusion

There are many resources available for talking and teaching about nuclear energy in high schools. I hope my readers will add even more, in the comment section.

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Afterword: Academies in Vermont. In the mind-1800s in Vermont, many Academies were founded as private secondary schools. Later, when the Vermont townships decided to provide secondary education for everyone, the Academies were already in place. The townships chose to provide tuition vouchers for the Academies rather than set up rival and redundant schools. Nowadays, the Academies take tuition vouchers from local school districts, and they also take private paying students. They are usually still private schools (sort of). The Academies have long traditions and high standards, and are very Vermont. I decided to illustrate this post with graphics of two of the Academies.

Thetford Academy Woodcut from Wikipedia

Colby Hall at St. Johnsbury Academy from Wikipedia.

82nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs at Nuclear Clean Air Energy

2011-12-09T16:32:00.006-05:00

The 82nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs is up at Nuclear Clean Air Energy. It's the first time this website has hosted the Carnival. In this Carnival, you can see the bloggers: Margie Jepsonincluded all of our pictures when she put the post together. It's such a good idea---why didn't I think of that when I hosted the Carnival?

In the Carnival, Gail Marcus of Nuke Power Talk describes the nuclear anniversaries of December. December isn't just Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa any more--it's also Nuclear Firsts month.

Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes reports on an interview with Jaczko. Budget woes at NRC may slow things down. Who knew things could get slower at the agency?

Will Davis of Atomic Power Review describes his reading list for the winter days that are coming. He plans to curl up with some good nuclear books. Davis describes the books, and we can read them vicariously. This sounds easier than reading them directly.

I look at that fish again. Actually, it's not worth looking at a fish with background levels of Sr90. Instead, I look at what Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists says about the fish. I suggest Lochbaum begin to write science, not propaganda.

Rod Adams at ANS Nuclear Cafe reports on a key study of the future of Small Modular Reactors. The study was done by University of Chicago: this university is is my alma mater and my husband's alma mater and my mother's alma mater and my father's alma mater and...Well, you might say I have some ties to the place! I am glad to see University of Chicago exploring and supporting SMR development.

Finally, Cool Hand Nuke has the world-wide news of the new builds in China, Brazil and Russia. And the crocodiles are doing well in their protected habitat near Turkey Point. Good news about nuclear.

It's the Carnival! Come for a visit!

Vermont Notes: Films, Fukushima, Statehouse Flaps

2011-12-07T09:36:00.016-05:00

Blog posts, podcasts, and letters about Vermont and Vermont Yankee.

An Anti-Nuclear Film, and a Pro-Nuclear Person on the Panel Discussion

Howard Shaffer and I work closely together on Vermont Yankee advocacy. He is head of the Vermont Pilot Project of the American Nuclear Institute.

A film about nuclear power was developed at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics of the University of Vermont. As we expected, this film was anti-nuclear. You can see a trailer for it here. Last week, at University of Vermont, Howard Shaffer and Arnie Gundersen were on a panel discussing the film. Today Shaffer has a blog post at ANS Nuclear Cafe: Transparent Radiation--A Film.

In his post, Howard Shaffer describes the film, the audience questions, and the panel members answers. This film and panel was a Vermont event, but the film will be entered in many film festivals. How it is received will be relevant beyond Vermont.

Fukushima Podcast

People who lived near the Fukushima Power Plants want to go home. What should be the criteria for ending the evacuation? Rod Adams has a podcast: Let Fukushima Residents Go Home. Participants are Rod Adams, me, and Cal Abel. Adams is the blogger at Atomic Insights (and an ex-submarine officer). Abel is an ex-submarine officer and current grad student at George Tech. The conversation includes

Why are the local Fukushima cattle dying? (because nobody is feeding them),
Is the Linear Non Threshold Theory reasonable?
How come people drive cars, smoke, and have dental fillings? Driving, smoking and mercury can be considered "Linear Non-Threshold" activities or substances.

Warning. There are sound quality issues with the podcast. I talk too softly and Rod breathes too loudly.

High Jinks and High Rollers in the Vermont State House

High Jinks: John McClaughry posts in Vermont Tiger: It Takes One to Know One. Tony Klein is chairman of the Vermont Natural Resources Committee in the Vermont House of Representatives. Klein is upset about proposed anti-wind legislation. Klein is a fierce opponent of Vermont Yankee. I was in a committee room when Klein said that the existence of Vermont Yankee on Vermont soil could ruin the Vermont Brand.

Klein is also a proponent of wind turbines, and he is very upset that the proposed legislation could "pocket veto" wind without a vote. McClaughry points out that the Vermont House illegally "pocket vetoed" Vermont Yankee by not voting. (The famous vote was only in the Vermont Senate.) As McClaughry says: It Takes One to Know One.

Full Disclosure: The Energy Education Project that I direct is part of the Ethan Allen Institute that was founded by John McClaughry.

High Rollers: In the Bennington Banner (unfortunately behind a paywall) L.A. Leonard of Rutland wrote a letter to the editor. An excerpt is below:

Vermont recently lost a federal lawsuit trying to prevent companies from selling patient information to pharmaceutical companies. The Supreme Court rejected the law saying it violated free speech of companies and the law lacked coherence. We now learn taxpayers will be responsible for $1. 8 million not counting $600,000 for fighting the court case. This could be just the tip of the iceberg as experts believe there are still more plaintiffs to come.

Leonard then compares this case to the Vermont Yankee case. He predicts similar losses to the taxpayers from that lawsuit, and ends his letter as follows:

The legal fights could go on for years. May one suggest the governor, Attorney General Bill Sorrell and other state officials start picking up the tab rather than continue to burden taxpayers with no end in sight.

An excellent suggestion, which will be ignored. When it comes to Vermont Yankee, our legislators are addicted to Other People's Money.

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I decided to illustrate the Leopold letter with a picture of the Vermont Statehouse Dome, captured from Wikipedia. Note that that the dome is covered in gold.

The Strontium Fish and Lochbaum and Markey

2011-12-06T08:32:00.008-05:00

In a recent post, The Strontium Fish and the Associated Press, I described how AP wrote stories about Vermont Yankee releasing strontium 90 without mentioning the quantities of these releases. As I pointed out in the post, the releases were on the order of 10 to the minus 7 or minus 8 curies a year. The AP described releases, but did not describe the quantity of strontium released. The amounts were in the ten-billionths of a curie range.

Markey and Lochbaum

Representative Markey of Massachusetts, a long-time nuclear foe, saw this plant-released strontium-90 theme and decided to run with it. (Maybe Markey saw it in the AP articles.) Markey wrote a letter to the NRC, accusing the NRC of letting Vermont Yankee get away with lying to the press. Here's a link to Chairman's Jaczko's answer to that accusation. Jaczko said: The quoted licensee statements in your question are not without foundation based on the above information. (Vermont Yankee is the licensee).

Aside: For more information on Markey, Vermont Yankee, and the NRC, I recommend Victoria Barq's posts at NEI Nuclear Notes.

Markey's letter to Jaczko includes a copy of a letter from David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, written to the Entergy spokesman Larry Smith. (You can read the entire Lochbaum letter in the link.)

In his letter, Lochbaum says:

I was forwarded a copy of the statement you (Larry Smith) released on August 2, 2011, which contained the following statement. "There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Vermont Yankee is the source for the strontium-90...."

'Absolutely no evidence'?

Really? Come on.

How about the report that Entergy submitted to the NRC on May 11, 2011...(that) stated that 3.17 E-08 curies were released in gaseous form...during the 1st quarter of 2010...Past reports (show other releases)....

So what you said in the statement about not detecting strontium-90 in the monitoring wells may be true, but it is not the whole truth is it Mr. Smith? In fact, it is so short of the whole truth as to be very misleading bordering on deceitful.

Mr. Lochbaum includes the numbers 31 billionths of a curie, but he uses a shorthand that not everyone will follow. Then Lochbaum calls Larry Smith's statement "misleading bordering on deceitful" for claiming Vermont Yankee releases do not affect the amount of strontium in the local fish. In my opinion, Lochbaum is assuming that nobody reading his letter will have any idea of what 3.17E-08 means. It means 31 billionths of a curie.

However, in the next paragraph of his letter, Lochbaum has to backtrack. After all, he is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Lochbaum just called Smith's statement "misleading," but if he ends there, Lochbaum is in trouble. If he ends there, somebody is going to notice that Lochbaum is saying that a plant release of a few billionths of a curie ...ended up in this fish. Not a scientific conclusion! So Lochbaum continues, trying to get on firmer ground:

The whole truth is that Vermont Yankee routinely releases strontium-90 to the environment. This fact does not mean that Vermont Yankee is the primary or sole source of the strontium found in the fish. But this fact also means that Vermont Yankee cannot be excluded as a potential source, as your very misleading statement sought to establish.

Whew. With a statement that is more propaganda than science "Vermont Yankee cannot be excluded as a potential source," Lochbaum attempts to step back into scientific credibility.

Science and Propaganda

Really, Mr. Lochbaum? We cannot exclude the potential of a meteor hitting Radio City Music Hall tomorrow. In the exact same sense, we cannot exclude the potential that some of that billionth part of a curie of Sr 90 wandered nine miles up the river and got into that fish.

We also must include the fact that Lochbaum chooses to use the least-accessible method of expressing scientific notation. Then he doesn't explain the notation. Lochbaum uses tortured sentence construction, such as "cannot exclude."

In my view, everything in this letter is constructed as propaganda, not science. Lochbaum lards his letter with "oh shucks" verbiage and then accuses Entergy of lying. He makes no attempt to explain anything, or put anything in context. He seems to be just hoping that nobody notices the weakness of his statements.

Really, Mr. Lochbaum? Come ON! For Pete's sake, man! Write science, not propaganda!

My conclusion: Entergy told the truth. I leave it to my readers to judge Mr. Lochbaum's words. Perhaps he has expressed himself in a way that is so short of the whole truth as to be very misleading bordering on deceitful.

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Update: Victoria Barq at NEI Nuclear Notes has an excellent post published yesterday: NRC’s Jaczko Responds to Rep. Markey on the Sr-90 Issue at Vermont Yankee

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Geeky addendum

To see the effluent reports for Vermont Yankee for yourself, you can see radioactive effluent reports from 2005 to 2010 at this page on the NRC website. For earlier years, you have to go to this NRC page and do a search by clicking on Begin Web-based ADAMS search.

Some example results:

2002

Strontium 89 and strontium 90 releases, by quarter.

All as particulate, all from the stack, 2002, all in curies:

First quarter. Sr 89 --5.5 times 10 exp -5
Second quarter. Sr 89-- 1.3 times 10 exp -4
Third quarter:Sr 89--3.5 times 10 exp -5
Fourth quarter: Sr 89--5.78 times 10 exp -5
In the second quarter, there was also a release of Sr 90-- 1.75 times 10 exp -7 curies.

Total release of Sr 90 for the year 2002 was 1.75 times 10 exp -7 curies, or approximately 2 millionths of a curie. Total release of all types of radioactive Sr for the year was 2 ten-thousandths of a curie.

2005

The equivalent release numbers for 2005 were: no strontium 90 detected, but Sr 89 release of 6.3 times 10 exp -6 one quarter, and 6.5 time 10 exp -6 another quarter. These were all high-level releases (from the stack) as in 2002. However, in 2005, there were also ground-level releases of Sr 89 and Sr 90 in the first half of the year, at the level of 1 times ten -8 curies. Total releases here are in the neighborhood of 1 ten-thousandth of a curie, mostly Sr 89, not Sr 90. Sr 90 was at 10 exp -8 curie level.

2010

As Lochbaum said, 31 billionths of a curie of Sr 90. But he made it sound pretty scary. Entergy tries to mislead! Deceitful! Sr 90 released! Etc etc etc.

81st Carnival of Nuclear Energy posted at Idaho Samizdat

2011-12-04T18:44:00.005-05:00

The 81st Carnival of Nuclear Energy is now up at Idaho Samizdat. Dan Yurman has put together a great Carnival with terrific bloggers! How do I know? The first post featured in the Carnival is my blog post about AP's biased reporting.

More seriously...thank you, Dan, for featuring my post in such a prominent position. All the posts are terrific, and cover a lot of topics, from history to politics and economics. It's a world-wide Carnival!

At Atomic Power Review, Will Davis describes the Nuclear Firsts of the month of December. The Chicago pile, for example, went critical in December. As usual, Will has great graphics.

The Chicago pile was part of a weapons program. In the next Carnival entry, Cheryl Rofer of Nuclear Diner describes the cost of nuclear weapons. Expensive little things! Expensive in many ways! We all agree it is better to build nuclear power plants.

Brian Wang at Next Big Future has a world-wide reach, describing the ambiguous war against the Iranian nuclear program, the costs of power generation in China, and a molten salt reactor project gathering speed in Australia and the Czech Republic.

Gail Marcus, of Nuke Power Talk, covers Japan in her post. As I have mentioned before, Marcus lived and worked in Japan. Regulatory changes need to happen in Japan, but these changes don't seem to be happening.

Getting back to the United States, Jim Hopf at ANS Nuclear Cafe discusses loan guarantees: solar, nuclear, Solyandra. Not all loan guarantees are the same. A very important post, and a fascinating and lengthy comment string about loan guarantees of all kinds.

Meanwhile, at Idaho Samizdat, Dan Yurman examines the NRDC contention against the severe accident mitigation guidelines at Limerick. Conclusion: if NRDC wins their contention, consulting firms will make a lot of money. However, since safety procedures are updated regularly, there is very little chance that the plant will need to make major changes.

Come to the Carnival. It's fun! It's new! It's international! Reading the Carnival is a great activity for a cold winter evening!

The Strontium Fish and the Associated Press

2011-12-02T09:00:00.002-05:00

In August, the Vermont Department of Public Health analyzed some Connecticut River fish for radioactive strontium. To their surprise, they found strontium in the flesh of one fish (they usually find it in the bones). Amounts were background levels, and officials in the Department of Health said that they did not believe the strontium came from Vermont Yankee, there was no pathway from Vermont Yankee to the river for strontium, and the levels of strontium in the fish were very low. The fish would have been safe to eat. (For background on all this, I recommend Victoria Barq's posts at NEI Nuclear Notes and NRC Chairman Jaczko's letter to Representative Markey on the subject.)

Larry Smith, plant spokesman, said there was "absolutely no evidence that Vermont Yankee is the source for the strontium 90."

On the same day as the announcement, AP reporter Dave Gram wrote an article which said that Smith's statement did not mention the plant's announcement in May of 2010 that strontium-90 had been found not in groundwater, but in soil samples taken from the plant grounds.

Indeed, there had been some strontium found in soil near the tritium leak. All such soil was removed and appropriately disposed. No strontium was ever found in the groundwater, which means it did not migrate to the river. As I quoted in my August blog post, Irwin (of the Vermont Department of Health) says he doesn’t believe the Strontium-90 found in the fish was from Vermont Yankee. “We would need to see a pathway between the source and the fish,” he said.

You would think that would be the end of the story. It wasn't.

The Next AP Report

On August 6, Gram wrote another article about the fish. In this article, Gram reported that the Vermont Nuke Plant Had Past Radioactive Releases. Quoting his article: But in at least one of the quarters in each year from 2002 to 2005, Vermont Yankee told the NRC in its annual report on radioactive leaks that it had released some strontium-90, a radioactive substance linked to cancer and leukemia.

A question occurs. Did Gram look at the reports to the NRC, or did he just quote Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear about the reports without checking the reports? Basically, yearly releases of Sr 89 and 90, combined, were about two ten-thousandth of a curie. This information on quantity is in the NRC reports referenced above. I am preparing another blog post with links to NRC reports. (If you are impatient with my blogging, please go to the NRC website and search the Adams files for Vermont Yankee effluent reports.)

All put together, the reported releases are tiny. Strontium 90 releases from the plant are even smaller: I added strontium 89 and 90 to get ten-thousandths of a curie. Strontium 90 releases are on the order of ten to the minus 7 or 8 curies. This is in the level of ten to hundred billionths of a curie. In the biosphere, these releases cannot be distinguished from background strontium.

Why No Numbers?

Those numbers are not in the AP story, however.

So, question arises: why did the reporter write that there were releases and not quantify the releases? The numbers are in the same NRC reports that lead to the conclusion that "Vermont Yankee reported releases" to the NRC. Did the reporter not know the quantities (poor quality reporting)? Did he know, but decide not to admit the quantities were very low (biased reporting)? Obviously, I don't know the answer to these questions.

However, I do not want to just point a finger at a single reporter. This type of reporting looks like Business as Usual for AP about nuclear energy.

AP Reporting on Nuclear

The Pulitzer Prizes are awarded through Columbia University, and the Columbia School of Journalism is widely acknowledged as one of the premier schools of journalism in the country.

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) is a prestigious watchdog for good journalism. In the past three months, CJR has criticized two AP series for disorganized and slanted reporting of nuclear matters. In the first review, September 28, CJR first blasted the Nuclear Energy Institute for a heavy-handed response to the AP articles.. Then CJR got around to looking at the AP articles themselves.

But the AP series, while it tackles a critically important public policy issue, suffers from lapses in organization, narrative exposition, and basic material selection, what to leave in and what to leave out.....As a citizen reader with no particular background in nuclear power generation but residing less than 50 miles (the preferred safety margin, according to the AP report) from one of these old clunkers, I felt throughout like I was clinging to a pendulum, swinging wildly between “Uh oh” and “Phew, false alarm.”

Two months later, AP had an article about the consequences of Fukushima. On November 22, CJR reviewed the AP work on Fukushima.

Journalists often play up the dramatic and alarming aspects of the information they’ve found, and play down or leave out the ameliorative, neutral, or balancing aspects that might help do justice to the truth, but which could “weaken” the story. The AP’s article illustrates what this looks like.

Conclusion: when the CJR gives several negative reviews to a source for biased or confusing reporting on a particular issue, something is happening at that source. I think something is happening at AP. When I read an AP story about nuclear, I expect to see biased reporting.

Update: Canadian Energy Issues blog linked to this post and expanded on some of the themes. The title of their blog post is Why so much anti-nuclear sentiment at a time when the world urgently needs a major expansion of nuclear energy? It is being deliberately manufactured, by leading mainstream media vehicles like the Associated Press Thank you to Steve Aplin of Canadian Energy Issues.

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Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, from Wikipedia.

In full disclosure: our son-in-law is a professor at Columbia, and several members of the family (including our daughter) hold degrees from that institution.

A State of Confusion: The Suit About the Water Quality Permit

2011-12-01T12:46:00.010-05:00

In mid-November, the State of Vermont sued the NRC, claiming that the license extension granted to Vermont Yankee was not valid because the NRC did not have proof that Vermont Yankee was in compliance with the Clean Water Act.

Actually, the anti-nuclear group, New England Coalition (NEC), started this suit, and the state joined in. Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) is acting as the lawyer for NEC. The Vermont Department of Public Service is pursuing this suit, along with NEC/CLF.

Meanwhile, several other groups have joined the lawsuit: New York State, Riverkeeper, and Scenic Hudson have asked to be friends of the court. The Brattleboro Reformer has an excellent article on the lawsuit and the various parties to it.

If you can figure this one out, please tell me. If Vermont Yankee did not have an appropriate water quality permit, why didn't the state do something directly about it? As the Reformer article notes: Under the doctrine of "cooperative federalism," states are allowed by choice to enforce standards such as those set out in the Clean Water Act. In fact, states are allowed to impose even more stringent standards than required by federal law.

In other words, the state had the power to enforce permit requirements. A state can even enforce special permit requirements. For example, cars sold in California need to meet stronger pollution control standards than the national standards set by EPA.

For some reason, though, Vermont is suing the NRC, claiming it was the NRC's obligation to make sure that Vermont Yankee had an up-to-date permit. Apparently, the state didn't care about the permit, except that the state wanted to be sure that the NRC cared.

I don't understand it. Or maybe I do.

Scuttlebutt

Okay. I am not a lawyer, and I don't understand this one. However, the scuttlebutt I have heard is that the state extends water quality permits routinely, unless something is changed, because it costs everybody an arm and a leg to actually reapply and re-assess such a permit. Apparently, the state made the decision (sometime in the past) that nothing much had changed at Vermont Yankee, and the water quality permit could be extended. Then, just a few months ago, with the change of governor, the state suddenly had a change of heart. The state was shocked, shocked to discover Vermont Yankee was operating on an extended water quality permit! As a matter of fact, they sued the NRC about it.

As I said, I am not a lawyer, and I am in state of confusion about this one. I thought I might try calling lawyers about it, but decided that even the lawyer's answers would be beyond me. If Vermont Yankee didn't have an appropriate permit, why did the state let them operate? If Vermont Yankee did have an appropriate permit, why is the state suing the NRC?

It doesn't make any sense, but at this point, "not making sense" is what I expect from the current state administration in its dealings with Vermont Yankee.

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The Oxbow: The Connecticut River near Northampton, MA. Cole Thomas, 1836

The Casablanca graphic is free-floating around the web, shocking as that is.

Gaz Metro and Vermont: Today's Update

2011-11-30T08:40:00.010-05:00

Green Mountain Power(GMP) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GazMetro of Quebec. GMP has applied to the Vermont Public Service Board for permission to take over Central Vermont Public Service: Docket 7700. If GMP owns CVPS, over 70% of Vermont will be served by a utility owned by Gaz Metro.

Since Gaz Metro also owns Vermont Gas Systems (VGS), the only natural gas supplier to Vermont, this electric utility merger would be a major consolidation of Vermont energy infrastructure (electric and gas) in the hands of a foreign corporation. To me, this is very different from Unilever owning Ben and Jerry's. There are other sources for ice cream in Vermont. With the Gaz Metro takeover of GMP, there will be no competing sources of energy in most areas of Vermont. Governor Peter Shumlin favored a Gaz Metro takeover of CVPS, discouraging a bid from another Canadian utility.

In analyzing the ramifications of this possible merger, I feel it has three over-arching issues.

Foreign ownership of much of the energy infrastructure in the state.
Consolidation of ownership by one powerful company.
Weak regulation and conflict of interest in Vermont's own regulatory process.

I covered the first two issues in an article this morning at True North Reports: The GMP/Gaz Metro merger. I plan to cover the third issue: weak regulation and conflict of interest, in a future article at True North Reports.

Conflict of Interest Article at Vermont Digger

This morning, Vermont Digger published an article about the conflict of interest issue in Vermont, which is being energetically pursued by Senator Vince Illuzzi. The Commissioner of the Department of Public Service, Elizabeth Miller, is married to a lawyer who is a partner in the law firm representing GMP in the merger. The Vermont Digger article is Before the PSB: State senator leverages fight over independent counsel for Gaz Metro merger. I encourage you to read it. The DPS says Ms. Miller does not have a conflict that would cause her to recuse herself. The Digger article is excellent, with many links to original documents, such as the DPS answer to Senator Illuzzi. I recommend this article very highly.

When I write my own article (promises, promises) I also plan to cover recent Public Service Board decisions that protected utility and Gaz Metro interests, and did not protect the citizens. The charter of the DPS is to be the advocate of the ordinary citizen in cases before the PSB. DPS is not fulfilling to that charter, in my opinion.

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John McClaughry, head of the Ethan Allen Institute, was one of the first to raise the issue of infrastructure consolidation and conflict of interest, in his Vermont Tiger post Sen Illuzzi and the Utility Merger Case. The picture of Senator Illuzzi is borrowed from that post.

Nuclear Advocacy and Nuclear Blogger 80th Carnival

2011-11-27T09:58:00.009-05:00

Radiation Film and Panel

On November 30, the film Transparent Radiation will be shown at the Gund Institute of the University of Vermont. The film is about nuclear energy, but the trailers also show nuclear bombs. The trailers also include people talking about how depleted uranium will be radioactive for billions of years. As will granite, of course!

Howard Shaffer learned that there would be a panel discussion of the film, and asked to be on the panel. Actually, Howard asked if he and Dr. Ed Maher, recent past-president of the Health Physics Society, could be on the panel. They are now on the panel, along with Arnie Gundersen and others. Arnie Gundersen's wife, Maggie Gundersen, endorses the film very strongly.

I am happy that Howard and Ed will be on the panel. However, considering both the venue and the film, I thought it would be good to tell pro-nuclear people about this event, in the hopes that some of us could come and support them. I wrote an email to my email list about it. Rod Adams is on the email list, and Rod posted my email on the Atomic Insights blog today: Nuclear Advocacy Opportunity in Vermont--November 30.

I hope some of you can come. The film and panel begin at 4 p.m Wednesday November 30 on the UVM campus. The event is being held in the administration building, which has a visitor's parking lot. Details at Rod Adams blog. Thank you, Rod!

Update: A press release at Vermont Digger.

80th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Posted at Next Big Future

Neither rain nor snow nor Thanksgiving weekend stops the Nuclear Bloggers from their work. Today, the 80th Carnival of Nuclear Bloggers is hosted at Next Big Future. Okay. I admit it. It's a smaller Carnival this time. That just means you can read it more quickly!

The Carnival includes a fascinating blog post by Will Davis of Atomic Power Review on the history of PRA (Probablistic Risk Assessment). If you ever wondered what that was, but had your eyes glaze over as it was explained, this is a must-read post.

Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat describes the concrete cracking problems (solvable) that are delaying restart at two reactors.

Rod Adams at Atomic Insights describes attending a meeting of a student chapter of the ANS. The students want to know how the industry is going to counter the barrage of advertising from the fossil fuel industry, especially "clean" natural gas. (I want to know, too.)

Gail Marcus of Nuke Power Talk has two posts, one about Japan's hundred-year energy plan, and one about polls about nuclear power which show support--even in Japan.

Brian Wang of Next Big Future looks at anti-nuclear Chris Busby, who is selling "anti-radiation pills" in Japan (really!). Wang and environmentalist George Monbiot suggest that nuclear opponents run as fast as they can to distance themselves from this guy! Wang notes that the Fukushima reactors are nearing cold shutdown. Wang also includes two radiation surveys of Japan. One, of Fukushima workers, shows no contamination. The other, of the soils in Japan, shows contamination in some areas which must be addressed before these areas can go back to food production. Most of the radiation in one area was emitted on March 15, and in the other area, radiation came March 21. This is not cheery reading. On the other hand, the "on-going spewing from the crippled reactors" scare-mongers are just wrong. Bad things happened in March. We all noticed, and now it is time to clean up.

Nagasaki bomb image from Wikipedia. Bomb imagery is included in some of the film trailers.

The Society of Friends and Nuclear Power and Vermont Yankee

2011-11-26T08:30:00.013-05:00

The Putney Society of Friends

On November 22, a letter about Vermont Yankee appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer. This letter was unusual, because it was sent by the Putney Society of Friends.

Editor of the Reformer:

As members of the Religious Society of Friends, we believe we are called to be good stewards of the earth.

Whether through weaponization, accident or mismanagement, the destruction of life and the degradation of nature has been, and continues to be, an ongoing consequence of the use of nuclear technology.

As a result of these concerns, Putney Friends Meeting firmly supports the Vermont state government’s efforts to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant by March 21, 2012. We call on all our members and attenders to consider joining the citizen’s movement working to enforce the people’s will on this matter, up to and including nonviolent protest and civil disobedience.

We are made to be an integral part of this wondrous Creation. Let us choose now to take up our stewardship commitment, fully accepting our responsibilities to care for our planet and its peoples. Let us choose now to join with other Friends, and all people of good will and understanding, to move forward through worship and through witness to accomplish our goals.

Signed on behalf of the Meeting,

Carol Forsythe,

presiding clerk.

Not a Friend Myself, You Know

I am not a member of the Society of Friends. I'm Jewish. I found this fatwa a bit disturbing, since it is fossil fuels that degrade nature. (By the way, a fatwa is a religious ruling, not a call to murder. I couldn't think of a better word for this letter from the Putney Meeting. The letter is a religious ruling against Vermont Yankee, and calls on pacifist Friends to take non-violent action against the plant.)

However, I do have a friend who is a Friend. Karen Street writes the blog A Musing Environment, and she and I have had friendly discussions on this blog about energy use. We don't always agree.

Street wrote an excellent article in the Friend's Journal about nuclear power. She's in favor of it. The article is Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Power in Japan.

Here's a few quotes from that article, and I would also recommend reading comment 11, which is her rebuttal to some comments on the article.

Fear of other can obscure and distort our perceptions of actual risks. For better or worse, one doesn't have to seek sources of risk in one's own behavior when there is a convenient other to blame for untoward outcomes, such as callous scientists and industry, inadequately regulated by government....Nuclear power plays a pivotal role in the we-good, they-bad fights among many Friends...While we steep ourselves in fears of what might happen at a nuclear plant this month or next, the climate continues to change at a frightening rate....A fear that says, "Well, nuclear power may end up killing someone" is, in this way of thinking, allowed to take precedence over far greater dangers to human beings. Any fear that says, "My fear is more important than the facts," a fear based on "what ifs," blinds us to steps that would address real and present dangers.

Her article is very carefully researched. The article, combined with comment 11, is a good resource for anyone studying nuclear power.

It is also fairly long. If you don't feel like reading it (or even if you do) I recommend this Friend's radio program interview instead. You can hear Street's kind and thoughtful voice, and think about what it means to be a Friend or a friend or an environmentalist.

Here's a link to Street at Northern Spirit Radio. You don't have to sign in, by the way. They want you to sign in, but you don't have to.

Church and State and People

Separation of Church and State means that the State can't favor any particular Church. However, churches can definitely take stands on matters of state. This is the way freedom works. Still, I was not happy to see a church taking "shut down Vermont Yankee" as a religious injunction.

Karen Street is a woman who owns no car, rides a bicycle, does not travel by plane, and is concerned with the future of mankind. As I mentioned before, she walks the talk about environmentalism and climate change.

Through Karen Street, I see that the Society of Friends is not monolithic, and I am grateful for that.

Update: Karen Street has an excellent update on her post, at Energy Collective today. The Discussion Continues: Nuclear Power in Japan. Street answers the questions raised as comments on the first post.

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Quaker Star, symbol of Society of Friend's Service, from Wikipedia

Natural Gas and Nuclear: A Local View

2011-11-24T17:00:00.001-05:00

The View from the Corner Office

This month, the CEO of Exelon and the CEO of Entergy both gave speeches about the future of nuclear power. As reported in Platts, John Rowe of Exelon spoke about the Exelon/Constellation merger and looked at the future of nuclear. These are his words:

The Calvert Cliffs-3 project is "utterly uneconomic," Rowe said after a speech at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington....

"At today's [natural] gas prices, a new nuclear power plant is out of the money by a factor of two," Rowe said, echoing one of the main points of his speech. ".... It's economically wrong. Gas trumps it," he said.

Well, okay, that's clear.

Meanwhile, Entergy President J. Wayne Leonard was honored by the National Wildlife Federation. National Wildlife Federation Honors J. Wayne Leonard with Achievement Award: Entergy CEO Honored for His Commitment to Gulf Coast Restoration, Addressing Climate Change. Some quotes from National Wildlife's description of that event:

With Leonard’s passion, leadership and strong points of view, Entergy has accomplished the following during his 10 years as CEO:

Entergy became the first US electric power company to establish a voluntary stabilization target for carbon pollution emissions and established a $30 million Environmental Initiatives Fund to support internal and external carbon pollution reduction projects. From 2001–2010, Entergy was 14% below its stabilization goals, achieving emission reductions which were 69 million tons below the goals.

The Time-Picayune reported the awards ceremony, partially reprinted by the National Wildlife Federation:

In an emotional speech to executives of the National Wildlife Federation on Friday night, Leonard said his controversial support for what would amount to a carbon tax stems from his attempt to face his own mortality...

"I can think of no time in history when the planet is in as much peril as it is today," he said. "We were not supposed to be facing the possibility of mass extinctions in anybody's lifetime ... but here we are."

These CEOs have very different views of the future of fossil fuel combustion! However, both Leonard and Rowe are CEOs, with CEO-type obligations. Rowe of Exelon faced building an expensive new nuclear plant, and he walked away from it. While he was walking away, he took the opportunity to lob a few cracks at nuclear. Meanwhile, Entergy is committed to low-carbon power, but Entergy recently announced it is going to buy a 550 MW natural gas plant in Rhode Island. Both Entergy and Exelon own fossil and nuclear units.

Such is the view from the corner office.

The View from the Peanut

My own office is a corner. It's a corner bedroom in my house. My view of fossil fuels and nuclear is more limited than the view of the CEOs, but it is also less constrained.

I have always admired George Washington Carver, a man who protected the soil of the South and prepared many products from peanuts, thereby partially weaning the South from cotton. Oh, and did I mention he was born a slave?

Carver said:“When I was young, I said to God, 'God, tell me the mystery of the universe.' But God answered, 'That knowledge is for me alone.' So I said, 'God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.' Then God said, 'Well George, that's more nearly your size.' And he told me.”

Inspired by Carver, I decided to look at two power plants as the examples of nuclear and natural gas: Vermont Yankee and a local combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant in New Hampshire. Not a Big Picture, just two plants.

My blog post comparing the plants is posted at ANS Nuclear Cafe: Gas and Nuclear: A Comparison of Two Local Plants. The post grows out of the Energy Safari course that just finished. Here's a link to the course blog post about the natural gas plant. The course blog post has many excellent pictures, taken by Bob Hargraves.

The Peanut Draws Her Conclusions

Here are some conclusions about the two plants. For a more complete picture, please see the ANS post and the Energy Safari post.

The natural gas plant is very new, clean and efficient.
It doesn't take many people to operate a natural gas plant. This is good (efficiency) but also bad (not a good source of employment, unlike a nuclear plant.)
The economic choice between natural gas and nuclear is not a slam-dunk, even if Mr. Rowe thinks it is.
Despite the historically low price of natural gas, and the high thermal efficiency of the CCGT plant, the local gas plant is still forced to shut down more often than it would prefer. Its power is among the most expensive power on the grid. Many times, its break-even price is too high for the grid, and the grid operators don't buy its power.
The CCGT is a good plant for load-following.
Choosing between natural gas and nuclear is a false choice, anyhow. They are both reliable sources of electricity.
Fossil fuels, including natural gas, contribute a lot more to global warming than nuclear does. Despite all the hoopla about global warming, this is not usually taken into account in power choices.

I encourage you to read the ANS blog post, and tell me what you think of my view-from-the peanut.

Think locally, act locally, perhaps?

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Diagram of a turbo-electric COGAS power-plant. Such installations are used stationary and on some ships. 1. Electric generators. 2. Steam turbine. 3. Condensor. 4. Pump. 5. Boiler/heat exchanger. 6. Gas turbine. From Wikipedia article on combined cycle plants

George Washington Carver in his laboratory, photo from Wikipedia.

Thanksgiving: Gratitude List

2011-11-23T19:45:00.009-05:00

I am grateful that

1) I don't live in a tent in Siberia in the 1860s

I just finished Tent Life in Siberia, a tale of traveling through Siberia in the 1860s. The author writes like Mark Twain, with a similar sense of humor. I dare anyone to read this book without laughing out loud.

Despite the humor, this is a book about--traveling in Siberia in the 1860s. To instill gratitude for absolutely everything in your life, I can't think of a better plan than sitting down to read this book.

2) I have a washing machine, and before I owned one, I used a laundromat.

For this, I recommend Roslings' video, below. Why energy availability matters, especially to women.

3) Friendship

We just returned from a trip to California, where we used to live. This trip gave us another opportunity to realize how grateful we are for our long-term friends. K and K, this means you!

The Debate at UVM: Arnie Gundersen and Myself

2011-11-21T12:17:00.010-05:00

NEI Nuclear Notes has a recent post about Gundersen: In Attack on AP-1000, Anti-Nuke Gundersen Hits a New Low. I commented on that post with a note about debate in January between me and Gundersen, This was the Janus Forum debate at University of Vermont (UVM): Vermont Yankee, Shut It Down or Keep It Running? Because of the NEI blog post, some people have asked me if I have a link to that debate.

I posted an audio link to the debate on my blog back in January: Janus Forum Debate. However, I have never posted the video of that debate.

Why didn't I post the video? Well, it took a while for UVM to send me the video, and it took a while for me to ask Cavan Stone, physics grad student and Energy Education Project part-time intern, to mount the video on YouTube. Also, there are so many things to blog about, it's hard to keep up.

I am pleased that the Energy Education Project has a YouTube channel, thanks to Cavan Stone. Sign up as a subscriber!

Practical Matters

The video is almost two hours long, which is daunting. If you want to skip around, here's the debate structure:

Introductions
I speak for 20 minutes
Gundersen speaks for 20 minutes.
Gundersen answers my presentation, for 10 minutes.
I answer Gundersen's presentation, for 10 minutes.

We are now somewhere past the one-hour mark. The rest of the time is questions from the audience.

79th Carnival of Nuclear Bloggers at ANS Nuclear Cafe

2011-11-20T10:44:00.008-05:00

The 79th Carnival of Nuclear Bloggers is now posted at ANS Nuclear Cafe. Dan Yurman has put together a fascinating Carnival.

Let's start with Nuclear Green's contribution: a three- part interview with Sherrell Greene, a recently retired ORNL reactor researcher. Greene describes several types of new reactors, including several molten salt reactors, and point to the problems of "business as usual" in the nuclear industry. We need to develop new types of reactors!

In a similar vein, Brian Wang of Next Big Future describes new types of uranium/thorium fuel under development, and third generation reactors on order in China.

In several cheerful notes, both Gail Marcus and I enjoy a pro-nuclear cartoon from a Vermont newspaper. (Yes, you read that right. Pro-nuclear and Vermont newspaper appeared in the same sentence.) Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat explains how the next generation of nuclear engineers will have been raised on computer games---and that's a good thing.

The International Scene

Gail Marcus of Nuke Power Talk describes the positive effects of Russia's interest in joining the international Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). In 2006, Marcus headed an NEA delegation to Moscow to sign preliminary papers about cooperation, and that effort is bearing fruit. Good going, Marcus and NEA!

Meanwhile, Rod Adams of Atomic Insights reports the good news that reporters are now allowed to visit Fukushima Daiichi. This shows great progress in the clean-up. Rod also reports that USA Today managed to turn this into a bad-news time-to-worry story.

Steve Aplin of Canadian Energy Issues wonders why the Occupy protesters in Ottawa are using gasoline powered diesel generators. Pretty dirty electricity. They could connect batteries to the clean Ottawa grid instead. Three quarters of the grid's power comes from non-emitting sources of nuclear and hydro.

At ANS Nuclear Cafe, Dan Yurman reviews the issues and consequences of the anti-nuclear protests in India. Let's see. The national government is pro-nuclear, some of the provincial governments are anti-nuclear, and nobody told the people in the area of one plant that the siren-test-evacuation drill was a test. So local citizens were terrified as they heard sirens and saw people streaming from the plant grounds. India is a complicated place, goodness knows, but the nuclear start-up could also be far better organized. Excellent post on an important subject.

News and views and updates from all over! Come to the Carnival!

World Wide Web and Vermont Yankee Links

2011-11-19T14:26:00.010-05:00

I am one of the Page Owners of the Save Vermont Yankee Facebook Page. It is visible just to the right, on this blog. If you are on Facebook, please Like us! You can Like us without even leaving the Yes Vermont Yankee blog site.

On the Facebook Page, we often post web links that are interesting or amusing or relevant to energy issues in Vermont. Very few of these links ever make it to a Yes Vermont Yankee blog post. I am trying an experiment today. I am going to post a few of the links that were placed on the FB Page last week.

If readers like this, I will try to post some links most weekends. Let me know what you think.

Vermont Yankee and Vermont History: Letter in the Reformer. Our economy is in the toilet. Last time this happened in Vermont, about fifty years ago, we climbed out of recession by voting to build Vermont Yankee.

Germany faces sticker shock as renewables replace nuclear. A dozen coal-fired plants will also be built. Environment News Service.

An attempt to read the Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan. Letter in True North Reports. The letter-writer struggles along, reading the report, but can't make any progress on figuring out how much all those renewables will cost.

States and States Rights in Vermont. VPR interview with McQuiston. Killington couldn't secede from Vermont, and Vermont can't regulate nuclear safety. Timothy McQuiston is editor of Vermont Business Magazine.

Vermonters should embrace the true meaning of tolerance. A letter in True North Reports. Prejudice is alive and well in Southern Vermont. Vermont Yankee employees are the target. (In case you think this is just one person's opinion, I recommend one of my posts from about a year and a half ago: Three Views of the Outage. Vermont Yankee children have dropped out of activities because other children tell them that their fathers are trying to kill everyone.)

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The earth as seen from Apollo 17. Wikipedia I'm linking to the World Wide Web, so I show the world. I thought of sausage links as a graphic, but this is prettier.

Decommissioning: Facts versus Fantasy

2011-11-18T09:00:00.008-05:00

In general, I make the optimistic (and I believe correct) assumption that Vermont Yankee will continue to operate until 2032. However, opponents like to talk about the "jobs bonanza" of decommissioning. This blog post looks at the facts of decommissioning. It is updated from a post I did about three months ago at True North Reports.

Governor Shumlin's View of Decommissioning

A company has two main choices for decommissioning a nuclear plant.

Prompt decommissioning: starting the decommissioning project as soon as the plant is closed.
SafStor: keeping the plant intact for many years, until decommissioning is more convenient.

In the video below, posted by Vermont Digger from Shumlin's press conference on August 11, Shumlin explains that SafStor (delayed decommissioning) wasn't part of the Vermont Yankee purchase agreement, no matter what papers the state signed, and no matter what words somehow sneaked into those signed papers.

As reported in True North Reports, Shumlin said that decommissioning the plant quickly means:

The jobs gap doesn’t really happen for about 16 years,” he said. “Five to six years for the plant to cool down, gotta keep all the systems running, that requires a number of employees, several hundred. And ten years of decommissioning. So the jobs cliff, despite what they tell you in those 30 second advertisements, is not as significant as long as they keep their promise on decommissioning the plant whenever it shuts down.

Unfortunately, the facts do not agree with Shumlin's optimistic statements.

There is a jobs cliff.

The Reality of SafStor

Shumlin does not believe that Entergy has the right to put Vermont Yankee in SafStor. You can see this in this in the video clip above, and I also described Shumlin's misconception about SafStor in my post In Vermont Our Word is Our Bond, So We Don't Honor Contracts. But Entergy can legally use SafStor, whether Shumlin believes it or not. What will happen if they choose to use it?

Many nuclear plants have been put in SafStor. Usually, an older reactor at a site is put in Safstor while newer reactors at the site continue to operate. At Indian Point, for example, the small Unit 1 reactor (274 MW) has been in SafStor since 1974. Meanwhile, Unit 2 and 3 reactors, around 1000 MW each, continue to operate.

However, stand-alone plants are also placed in SafStor. For example, the Zion plants in Illinois have been in SafStor since 1998 and they are now beginning decommissioning. In the case of Vermont Yankee, the plant would be put in SafStor while the decommissioning fund (now around $490 million dollars) grew to a larger amount. Meanwhile, the radiation at the plant would decrease, leading to a less expensive clean-up.

Shumlin is correct about one thing, however. SafStor does not require many staff people. The site must have security, the fuel pool must be maintained and monitored, and the rest of the system has scheduled inspections. SafStor generally requires a staff of around 100 people, instead of the 650 at Vermont Yankee now. With SafStor, around 80% of the staff at VY would be laid off within a year of shutdown. No further staff would be needed until decommissioning began, which could be many decades in the future.

Prompt Decommissioning

Clearly, SafStor is a "jobs cliff", and Entergy can choose to use it. But what if Entergy chooses prompt decommissioning? This is the option Shumlin wants Entergy to chose, if the plant is shut down.

Shumlin says that it would take "five or six years for the plant to cool down" while hundreds of employees monitor it. Shumlin's tale is cheerful but wrong. With prompt decommissioning, the staff at the plant is laid off as soon as possible.

Wayne Norton was President of Yankee Atomic during the prompt decommissioning of three nuclear plants: Maine Yankee, Yankee Rowe, and Connecticut Yankee. At an industry forum on decommissioning in 2006, Norton presented a paper on lessons learned from the decommissioning experience. Norton considers the need for rapid layoffs to be an important lesson:

The biggest controllable cost in decommissioning is manpower... However, the plants that have been slow to efficiently accomplish...downsizing [the workforce] have had higher decommissioning costs....Severance packages, early retirement, and worker transition services helped workers make the transition. The major downsizing occurred over about a three month period.

Norton's statements are supported by an Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) report on the decommissioning of Maine Yankee. Decommissioning began in 1997, with an on-site staff of approximately 600 people. By the end of 1997, the staff was down to 300 people, and by the end of 1998, it was down to 135 people. In 1999, the staff shrunk to 85 people

In Either Scenario, the Employees are Gone

With SafStor, most plant people lose their jobs within six months. With prompt decommissioning, it takes two years to downsize to a skeleton staff. Shumlin says decommissioning includes hundreds of people keeping their jobs for many years, but that is not the case.

In the case of prompt decommissioning, contractors are brought in for the majority of the decommissioning work. Norton describes the use of contractors:

Another advantage to early and aggressive downsizing is that it opens up opportunities to bring in workers with skill sets that are more suited to a decommissioning environment. Also, if these workers are contractors, they tend to be more accustomed to completing a given scope of work and moving on to another job.

How many contractors? The number of people in the contract work force is hard to estimate because it varies as the job goes through various phases. Decommissioning activities are done on a subcontract basis, with various groups of contractors brought in and later terminated. Decommissioning is basically a construction (de-construction) project.

Since radiological safety is important, the construction workers must follow protocols. However, the construction workers don't have the protocol-mindset of nuclear workers, and this can lead to problems. In the case of Maine Yankee, the company hired a general contractor to supervise the subcontractors, but then found so many problems that they terminated the general contractor. This has also happened at other plants.

Falling Off the Jobs Cliff

With SafStor or prompt decommissioning, there is a jobs cliff. The people at the plant are mostly gone within six months or two years. The decommissioning workers are not permanent employees, and not encouraged to think of themselves that way. Morale is often low, job security is non-existent, and well-trained people who have other options tend to leave town.

Despite Shumlin's optimistic statements about "five years, then another ten years" it's all over for the regular employees within two years. The contractors do not become permanent residents of the area. The contractors come to town and then move on quickly.

Decommissioning leads to an instant loss of jobs and community.

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An earlier version of this post appeared in True North Reports. I thank Rob Roper of True North Reports for permission to repost it here.

The picture of dry casks at Maine Yankee is from the 3yankees website about the decommissioned plants.

Update: I thank Vermont Tiger for their good words about this blog post in Yankee, What If?

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 78 at Next Big Future

2011-11-15T10:37:00.012-05:00

The 78th blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy is posted at Next Big Future. Once again, Brian Wang has assembled a great collection of thought-provoking posts.

Let's start with morals. Rod Adams of Atomic Insights described The "Moral Imperative to Build More Nuclear Power Stations" to increase prosperity for the growing world population. Meanwhile, Cool Hand Nuke reports on the Dalai Lama endorsing nuclear power at a press conference in Tokyo, directly after touring the tsunami-devastated areas of Fukushima. On the darker side of morals, Gail Marcus at Nuke Power Talk discusses a Japanese article about "sloppy inspection" of Japanese nuclear power plants, and compares Japanese practices with the better practices of the NRC. Most discouragingly, the difference between Japanese practices and U S practices have been known for years, in Japan and elsewhere. Marcus lived in Japan and worked with their regulators in the past. She knows whereof she writes.

From morals, it's a quick leap to misconceptions about nuclear and renewables. Gail Marcus summarizes a recent study showing that using wind turbines could add to global warming, because ramping up gas turbines to provide back-up power is inefficient. Using gas turbines as backup produces more carbon dioxide per kWh than using the gas turbines on a steady basis. Wind will not solve global warming problems. NEI Nuclear Notes has two posts about misleading articles and statements: "CNN's Erin Burnett Hoodwinked by Erin Brokovich," and Entergy's response to irresponsible statements by Edward Markey about strontium in fish. Steve Skutnik of Neutron Economy dismisses some misconception about nuclear as he analyzes nuclear regulation, deregulation, and John Rowe's statements in favor of natural gas.

Well, on to the good news! Economics. Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdate shows that cash is flowing into new nuclear build projects. In another piece of cheerful news, NEI Nuclear Notes describes how France is sticking with nuclear power, in this age of austerity. Brian Wang of Next Big Future lists the new builds of nuclear plants. The Carnival includes his list of nuclear plants under construction and planned, based on the EAI energy outlook and the NEI nuclear update. 65 plants, totally 65,000 MW, are currently under construction, with 127 more plants in the planning stage.

Okay, I know, I get encouraged and discouraged at the same time. Only one new build is happening in the U.S; the other 64 nuclear plants are in other countries. However, I remind myself the fact we're becoming a global back-water in nuclear (and a global leader in fossil fuel consumption) is old news. Overall, the list of new plants is very cheerful.

Finally, we turn to the personal view of nuclear for a few more cheerful posts. At Yes Vermont Yankee, Evan Twarog writes a "Teen's View of Vermont Yankee" showing how plant workers support the town with their daily work and their volunteer work. Moving to events in Japan, Wang describes advances in worker safety at Fukushima in his Next Big Future blog. The Japanese workers are being assisted with robots originally developed to help the elderly.

It's a great Carnival, and you will enjoy reading it.

Vermont Yankee on the Web: Opponent Rallies, Fishy Tales Refuted, and Good News

2011-11-10T08:51:00.011-05:00

Several news stories and blogs have covered Vermont Yankee issues recently. Here's a quick catch-up from the past few days.

The cartoon above is by Tim Newcomb and originally appeared in Seven Days. I thank Mr. Newcomb for granting permission to use it in this blog.

Opponents

At ANS Nuclear Cafe, Howard Shaffer covers the background of the opponent rally at the plant gates. The comment stream discusses the rise (and fall?) of the Clamshell Alliance.

Fishy Tales: Entergy Answers Markey's Fish Story By Quoting Shumlin

Senator Markey, a long-time foe of nuclear energy, wrote a letter to the NRC accusing them of letting Entergy get away with a lie about the "strontium fish". Here are two excellent blogs by Victoria Barq of NEI Nuclear Notes about Markey's letter (included in this blog post) and Entergy's response. Yesterday, Barq wrote a follow-up blog post about Entergy's response, including quotes from the Vermont Department of Health (no reason to believe the strontium in the fish came from the plant) and even quotes Governor Shumlin! Entergy has never detected any strontium in liquid releases or required environmental samples of groundwater, etc. Even Shumlin said we could not tell where the strontium came from! A very enjoyable post. It's great to see a solid response to unfounded, publicity-seeking attacks.

In local news, Lochbaum joined in the fray on Markey's side, and my hometown paper, the Valley News, published a very misleading Op-Ed quoting Markey and Lochbaum: Entergy "Doublespeak." Howard and I are collaborating on a letter-to-the-editor in answer.

For some background: I blogged about the facts and the fish in August. This blog also hosted a guest post by Richard Schmidt in September. His post compared mercury in fish (a real problem) with strontium at background levels.

Cartoon, Letters, and Animation in Favor of Vermont Yankee

A letter on What It Means to Be a Nuclear Worker in the Commons, a Brattleboro paper. Any nuclear workers reading this blog might want to comment on it: the one comment so far is a plant opponent.

Evan Twarog's letter (A Teen's View of Vermont Yankee, on this blog yesterday) was also published at True North Reports.

Charles Barton's Nuclear Green Revolution blog ran Robert Hargrave's Vermont Yankee Explained animation. An enjoyable six minute video.

The cartoon, by Tim Newcomb, heads this post!

A Teen's View of Vermont Yankee

2011-11-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

This letter to the editor appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer on November 4, 2011. Evan Twarog was kind enough to allow me to reprint it in this blog.

--------

A Teen’s view of Vermont Yankee

Editor of the Reformer:

Nuclear power ... Vermont Yankee ... all increasingly controversial topics today. But no matter what side of the aisle you rest on, if you live in Vermont or New Hampshire, you’ll be affected if Vermont Yankee closes. Do I know for sure what the future holds for Vermont? No, not me and certainly not anyone else. But I can take a look at the statistics to determine what is most likely best for Vermont, and so can you. We all want what is best for Vermont, but we all have misconceptions and it takes will-power to overcome them. If we all open our minds to listen to the other side of the argument, we will be in a much better position to make decisions. In order to be a true leader, you need to have the courage to do that.

My dad works at Vermont Yankee. I’m incredibly proud of him. He’s worked tirelessly to get to the position he has now. He is a shift manager, and is in charge of operations at the plant when he is on shift. He is an incredibly smart man, and he wouldn’t have moved his family to this region if he felt that VY was in any way dangerous. On top of working 12 hour days and being a terrific father, he runs the Keene Youth Lacrosse Program. Many other employees of the plant are actively involved in other organizations as well. I understand that you might have negative feelings about the plant, but just try to put yourself in my shoes. Maybe you’ll see that my dad’s not the monster the media and anti-VY groups make him and the other VY employees out to be.

I’ve always thought that good things happen to good people, but clearly life is not so simple. I’ve always given back to the community, pushed myself in school, and helped others. Every night my family wonders what we will do if VY does shut down. We have to live with the fact that if VY closes, we won’t have the life that we enjoy now. No one, let alone a kid should have to deal with that. My family’s story is only one story of more than 600.

I have done the research, and I truly believe that Vermont Yankee is not only safe, but it is a reliable and clean source of energy. It is a major employer, which our area needs desperately in these tough economic times. I am proud to be part of the VY family.

Evan Twarog,

Keene, N.H., Oct. 31

-----

Evan Twarog appears in these two pictures of the Rally in support of Vermont Yankee on October 23. He is wearing a red jacket and appears with his mother and younger brother. I thank the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant Facebook page for allowing me to use these pictures.

Wind In Vermont: The Way it Is Today

2011-11-08T10:00:00.002-05:00

Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont is in favor of replacing Vermont Yankee with out-of state and out-of-country power, and of course with renewables.The renewables part isn't going very well.

Can't Make the Wind Blow with a Just a Smile

The video below shows Peter Shumlin attempting to shake hands with people who are protesting the Lowell Mountain wind farms. Shay Totten of 7 Days Vermont included this video in his blog post Occupiers and Environmentalists Confronting Vermont Democrats. The post is worth reading.

One interesting quote from the Totten article:"When Gov. Shumlin opposed Vermont Yankee, he was doing the right thing and we supported him. But then Green Mountain Power turns around and buys power from Seabrook [Nuclear Power] and he says nothing. Why not?" said Eric Wallace-Senft of Woodbury.

Indeed, why didn't Shumlin object to buying nuclear power from New Hampshire? Probably because Governor Shumlin is learning some things about energy supply. In March 2010, Shumlin went on national TV and said that Germany got 30% of its electricity from solar. Now, a year and a half later, Shumlin may have learned the definition of baseload.

Property Rights and Protests about Wind

Meanwhile, there are wind lawsuits. The most active one is about property rights. A retired couple, Don and Shirley Nelson, are neighbors of the Lowell Mountain Wind project. They don't like the project.

The contractor for Green Mountain Power is blasting a road near Nelson's property, and wants to be sure nobody is hurt by "flyrock" (blast debris). Wind protestors are on the Nelson's property, and they refuse to move for the blasting. After all, they are on private property by invitation. Nelson's attitude is that he never gave anybody permission to spread flyrock on his property anyway. It has ended up in court (of course).

Terri Hallenbeck of Burlington Free Press has an excellent article on the situation. Green Mountain Power first told the Nelsons they would be sued for the cost of delays. The threat was a bit of a public relations nightmare, of course! Next, Green Mountain Power offered to buy their land. So far, the Nelsons have not budged.

Two quotes from Don Nelson, from the Hallenbeck article:“After 40 years of working, if you had to sell to someone who wanted to destroy what you built, would you?” asked Don Nelson, who grew up on the property and raised his family there....(Green Mountain Power sent) a letter to the Nelsons warning them that Green Mountain Power would take them to court and hold them financially responsible for the cost of any delays caused by the campers on the ridgeline. The Nelsons characterize that as a threat to force them into selling.

“I was supposed to say, ‘Please don’t give me a million-dollar lawsuit,’” Don Nelson said. “It’s not going to happen.”

Update: The Nelsons lost the first round in court, and are appealing the verdict. Terri Hallenbeck has the story at Burlington Free Press. Summary of the appeal, from the Nelson's lawyer: “The Nelsons have the right to the exclusive use and occupancy of their own land and to deny the use of their land to others, including GMP, regardless of how important the use of the Nelsons’ land may be to GMP.”

Meanwhile, my friend Willem Post has an excellent article in Energy Collective: Was Vermont's Lowell Mountain Wind Turbine Facility a Good Idea? His answer is no, considering both cost and environmental impact.

Renewables for Vermont?

When I show up somewhere with a pro-Vermont Yankee sign, and I try to convince an opponent that nuclear is safer and better than fossil, the opponent is sure to tell me that "We don't need either fossil OR nuclear. We can meet our energy needs with renewables!"

Sometimes I wonder if the opponents actually live in Vermont.

Vestas wind turbine photo from Wikipedia

Biomass In Vermont: It Won't Replace Vermont Yankee

2011-11-07T15:03:00.015-05:00

Biomass In Vermont's Future

On September 14, The Department of Public Service (DPS) released a 600 page Comprehensive Energy Plan (CEP) for Vermont. The plan was long, vague, and internally inconsistent.

Instead of tacking the whole thing, environmentalist Chris Matera studied a defined chunk: the plan's recommendations for increased use of biomass for electricity production. Matera wrote an opinion for the Bennington Banner titled Vermont's Plan Misses the Forest. He describes how burning wood for electricity causes air pollution, generates carbon dioxide, and causes deforestation. He asks: So how did increased cutting and burning of forests (called "deforestation" and "pollution" when it occurs in other countries) get re-branded as "green" energy..?."

The CEP sections on woody biomass were confusing. On some pages, the CEP seems to expect only about a 30% increase in electricity from woody biomass in the near future. On nearby pages, the CEP describes "25 x'25", a plan to produce 25% of Vermont's energy by biomass fuels by 2025.

Ignoring the Working Group

Two years ago, the state legislature convened a biomass working group. The group is supposed to report its results on biomass utilization to the legislature in 2012. It is typical of this administration that it is rushing to adopt the Comprehensive Energy Plan before receiving that report.

Is There Enough Biomass, Anyway?

Instead of trying to decipher the CEP statements on biomass, let's look at real examples of biomass plants, and what it would take to expand this type of electricity production in Vermont.

The Springfield Power LLC biomass plant in Springfield New Hampshire is visible to people who drive south on Interstate 89. It is located at exit 12A, not far from New London. The plant makes 19 MW of power, and runs most of the time, only shutting down for maintenance. It sells its power at about 5 cents per kWh, while paying around 4 cents per kWh for its wood. The Springfield plant is well-equipped with NOx and particulate control, and sells its fly ash as a garden amendment.

It also sells Renewable Energy Certificates, and therefore is profitable to run. I visited it with the Energy Safari class. Bob Hargraves wrote a very comprehensive blog post on our visit.

The Springfield plant burns 200,000 tons of wood to make 20 MW of electricity. This about 100,000 cords of wet wood (2 tons per cord).). Chuck Theall, the plant manager, says that the plant calls the grid operator daily, and promises to supply energy. The grid counts on his energy, and if the plant does not operate, it has to pay for replacement power.

Wood-burning plants are heat engines, which means they can be reliable baseload plants, like Springfield Power. The ability of a wood-burning plant to supply baseload power is in sharp contrast to solar and wind renewables, and makes expansion of wood-burning very attractive for an all-renewable energy plan.

How Much Forest Per Megawatt?

In terms of power production, the Springfield plant is tiny. Vermont Yankee makes 620 MW of power. It would require 31 Springfield Power plants to replace Vermont Yankee on the grid. How much forest would this require?

I did research on sustainable forest yields. I could not find answers in a book, so I asked local foresters: "What is the sustainable yield of firewood for an acre of Vermont forest?"

I learned that foresters hate to answer general questions about "Vermont forests" because "Every bit of forest is different." Eventually, I found an approximate consensus: One-half cord per acre is a sustainable yield for most of our forests. As a child, I learned the mantra that you could harvest a cord of wood each year from an acre of forest. Vermont foresters agree that that number was too high.

Half of the Green Mountain Forest for 20 MW

A quick calculation (100,000 cords per year, half a cord per acre) shows that the yield from 200,000 acres is required for a 20 MW plant. To give some context to this number, the entire Green Mountain National Forest is 400,000 acres, and the state of Vermont is 6,000,000 acres. It takes the equivalent of half the harvest of the Green Mountain Forest to make 20 MW of electricity. To make 31 times this amount of electricity, to replace 620 MW of Vermont Yankee with woody biomass power plants--this would mean the entire state would be devoted to raising wood to burn. Six million acres wouldn't even be quite enough.

Expanding our current wood-fired electricity production will be difficult, but not impossible. Replacing Vermont Yankee with wood-fired plants is impossible. Going "25% by 2025" for electricity through woody biomass is close to impossible, especially since power plants must compete with homes and schools for firewood.

The Bigger Picture in the Woods

In the long run, our forests are our joy. Our forests are our foliage season. Our forests eat carbon dioxide from the air, and even sustainable harvest will affect this to some extent. We can add some wood-fired electricity in Vermont, but not much. We cannot get one-fourth of our electricity from our forests. We need to be mindful of competing uses for our woodlands.

And so, we return at last what Matera said in his op-ed: So how did increased cutting and burning of forests (called "deforestation" and "pollution" when it occurs in other countries) get re-branded as "green" energy..?"

------------

Picture of Chuck Theall of Springfield Power, and Neil Daniels, retired engineer, courtesy of Bob Hargraves, from his post on the ILEAD visit to the Springfield plant.

True North Reports published a more complete version of this article. I thank Rob Roper and True North Reports for the opportunity to reprint the article on my blog.

Picture at upper left is part of the wood pile: approximately two weeks worth of logs, and logs are approximately 1/3 of the wood used. The rest of the wood is delivered as chips.

This post also grew out of an earlier Yes VY post about the biomass plant, specifically from the comment section of that post.

Co-Opting Protest: Anti-Nuclear Activism as the Opiate of the People

2011-11-06T11:10:00.000-05:00

Occupy Vermont is active in Burlington Vermont, as Occupy movements are active in many states.

As usual, however, Vermont is different. Reading the newspaper reports, it seems that Occupy Vermont is now about Shut Down Vermont Yankee. According to WPTZ, Occupy Vermont protesters marched through Burlington chanting "Vermont Yankee has got to go."

Shutting the plant down will decrease jobs in Vermont and export the jobs to New Hampshire and Quebec. Shutting the plant will achieve the exact opposite of the Occupy movement's goals. Yes, the goals are fuzzy, but there are goals. The Occupy movement wants decreased income disparity, lower unemployment and no bail-outs for the rich.

However, Occupy Vermont been co-opted to the anti-nuclear agenda. Most Occupy movements want changed banking laws, increased economic stimulus measures, and income re-distribution. In Vermont, the anti-nuclear movement provided Occupy Vermont with something easier to achieve. The anti-nuclear movement provided the Occupy movement with....a scapegoat.

The Opiate of the People

In my opinion, fear of nuclear is today's opiate of the people. Politicians don't have to worry, as long as there's a nuclear plant around. Keep people busy marching against a nuclear plant, keep the anti-nuclear rhetoric flowing...and people won't notice rising prices, rising taxes, and falling wages. People won't notice that teachers are being laid off, that unemployment is becoming endemic, that bankers get bonuses with taxpayer money...as long as they have a nuclear plant to protest!

Was Co-Option of Occupy Vermont Inevitable?

No.

Occupy Vermont didn't have to go this way. The Occupy movement has been widely criticized for having fuzzy goals. Indeed, that makes it easy for well-organized groups with clear agendas to co-opt the movement. Still, this co-option has happened in this state because anti-nuclear groups in Vermont are so well-funded and so willing to step into any gap. It didn't happen in other areas.

I am aware that what we usually hear about the Occupy movement is about violence and brutality, mostly on the West Coast. I want to compare Vermont's movement, however, with some other East Coast movements. The video below is from the Occupy Boston movement. Occupy Boston is holding a series of lectures, the Howard Zinn lectures. This video is part of that lecture series: a talk given by Vijay Prashad on October 25.

Prashad went to several East Coast Occupy sites and asked what their issues were. The goals varied by city: unemployment, hunger, student loans. (This is described in the first five minutes of the video clip.) In other words, the Occupy movement responds to local problems. I am not endorsing their solutions, but the Occupy movement does want economic betterment for ordinary people.

Right here, Vermont's middle class is embattled, with long-term unemployment, layoffs, and high heating oil prices affecting everyone. (The Burlington Free Press has an excellent article on Vermont's Shrinking Middle Class.) In our neighboring state, New Hampshire, hospitals are refusing to take Medicaid patients. Things are going badly in our corner of New England.

Meanwhile, our Occupy Vermont movement has been co-opted by the anti-nuclear groups! They want to shut down one of the premier economic engines in the state, and cause wide-spread poverty in the southern half of the state, and widespread rejoicing in Canada.

Sometimes I think Vermont can't get anything right, even protest!

We need to break the stranglehold of anti-nuclear groups on the public discourse. We need to Change Vermont for the better, not for the worse. We need to build the middle class, not destroy it.

In other words, we need Vermont Yankee to keep operating and keep employing Vermonters.

Trickle Down photo by David Shankbone, through Flickr

Energy Plan Comments: By the End of the Day Tomorrow

2011-11-03T20:36:00.007-04:00

A reminder. Comments on the Comprehensive Energy Plan for Vermont are due by 5 p.m. tomorrow.

Here's the plan.

http://www.vtenergyplan.vermont.gov/

You can use the following email address to comment on it.

PSD.energyplan2011comments@state.vt.us

An earlier blog post contains several references that might be helpful in writing your comments.

Comments on the Vermont Energy Plan

The Long and Short of It

The plan is long, but your comments can be short! Be sure to comment.

The plan's length and inconsistencies remind me of the saying: "If you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bull droppings." Luckily, other people have analysed the plan. If you take advantage of their work, you can get a reasonable comment written in short period of time.

Update: Well, it is too late to do anything about the plan, but you can listen to John McClaughry (of the Ethan Allen Institute) on VPR. You can also read the transcript. As McClaughry says: this Plan...requires state government to use its coercive powers to see that Vermont gets 90% of its energy from renewable sources by 2050

76th Carnival of Nuclear Energy at Next Big Future and the Green Bag Luncheon about Activism

2011-10-31T09:59:00.002-04:00

The 76th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Next Big Future. Brian Wang has put together a great carnival. With movies! Will Davis at Atomic Power Review has posted an enlightening set of Japanese videos on Fukushima, and Brian put several of the videos directly on the Carnival.

Another fascinating post: Rod Adams reviewed the PBS special on Chernobyl, Radioactive Wolves. His review was insightful, thoughtful and controversial. The post has over 150 comments as people argue the validity of the Linear No Threshold theory. The comments are well-thought out and occasionally acrimonious. Fun and informative.

The ANS Convention

I am at ANS Winter Meeting in Washington D.C. Many important people are here (for example, NRC Chairman Jaczko). For me, the most important people here are people I have met on-line that I am finally meeting in person. Margaret Harding. Dan Yurman. Laura Scheele. Ulli Dechter, Steve Skutnik, Jim Hopf, David Mohre, Paul Bowersox. Also, it is wonderful to see people whom I have met before but see very rarely: Fritz Schneider, Jackie Clark, Rod Adams, Gwyneth Cravens. It is a wonderful experience for me.

Howard Shaffer and I gave a luncheon talk, the Green Bag luncheon. Dan Yurman has two posts at ANS Nuclear Cafe that mention or describe our talk.

Hall Talk Monday: What Does the News Media Want From Nukes and What Works in Vermont

Hall Talk November 1: Vermont, Do You Know Where Your Electricity Comes From?

Interesting comments from people who don't live in Vermont, on the Vermont situation.

I hope to blog more about this convention in the future.

Comments on the Vermont Energy Plan. Comments due by November 4.

2011-10-29T12:33:00.016-04:00

The comment period for the Vermont Energy Plan has been extended until November 4. I will be at the American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting for the next few days, and I won't be posting very much. So...here's some help for commenting!

The Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan

You can continue to comment on the Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan through November 4. Unfortunately, the plant is so long (600 pages), so internally inconsistent, and so lacking in numbers (costs, for example) that commenting is difficult. However, in another way, it's easier. For example, you could just say it doesn't work as a plan, and it doesn't work for Vermont. The plan can be vague and you can be vague!

Okay. Being vague is a bad idea. Here are some blogs and articles that can help you define your comments.

Here's the plan.

http://www.vtenergyplan.vermont.gov/

You can use the following email address to comment.

PSD.energyplan2011comments@state.vt.us

I explore some of the problems, including the gas pipeline.

Geoffrey Norman asks: what's the rush?

http://www.vermonttiger.com/content/2011/10/death-to-moby-yank.html

John McClaughry details twenty points: what is wrong with the plan http://www.energyeai.org/eai_energy_plan_comments.pdf

McClaughry backs up his twenty points with references to more complete articles

http://www.energyeai.org/eai_energy_plan_appendix.pdf

Milton Eaton notices the lack of cost information.

http://www.vermonttiger.com/content/2011/10/energy-planeaton.html

Art Woolf: Mercantilism won't work.

http://www.vermonttiger.com/content/2011/10/energy-planning-i.html

I explain that depending on biomass for baseload would be a bad thing. As well as impossible.

http://truenorthreports.com/biomass-in-the-vermont-comprehensive-energy-plan

The Rally: Links to Descriptions

2011-10-26T15:11:00.005-04:00

The rally in support of Vermont Yankee went very well.

Here are some links to descriptions of it:

My post at ANS Nuclear Cafe.

The Rally for Vermont Yankee: At the Plant Gates During the Refueling Outage

Brattleboro Reformer article:

People Gather to Show Support for Nuclear Plant Employees

Commons article (Brattleboro paper) also reprinted in Vermont Digger:

Pro-Vermont Yankee Rally Shows Support for Plant Workers

Picture gallery at Vermont Yankee Facebook Page

Susan Smallheer had an excellent article in the Rutland Herald: Vermont Yankee Supporters Hold Rally. However, it is behind a paywall.

A Song for the Outage: These Plants Are Your Plants

2011-10-25T13:51:00.004-04:00

These Plants Are Your Plants

Finally, a sing-along! Gail H. Marcus, former president of the American Nuclear Society (among other achievements and honors) wrote These Plants Are Your Plants. She posted the lyrics on her blog, Nuke Power Talk. She has written other songs, too, like Neutron Doodle.

Marcus was inspired to write nuclear songs by the way the depression-era hydro projects were encouraged by songs. The best song was Roll on Columbia by Woody Guthrie: "Your power is turning our darkness to dawn."

These Plants are Your Plants

(sung to the tune of "This Land is Your Land," by Woodie Guthrie)

Lyrics by Gail H. Marcus

These plants are your plants

These plants are my plants

From their cooling towers

To their nuclear islands

From the U.S. Heartland

To its coastal waters

These plants were made for you and me.

As I was walking

That ribbon of highway

I saw before me

A smogless skyway

And sparkling waters

Were flowing my way

These plants are good for you and me.

The children were laughing

And people were singing

At all the wonders

The power was bringing

The lights were shining

And the bells were ringing

These atoms split for you and me.

And at the plant sites

The workers labored

To use the atom

To help their neighbors

With clean safe power

To fuel all nations

These plants bring joy to you and me.

These plants are your plants

These plants are my plants

From their cooling towers

To their nuclear islands

From Europe's vineyard

To Asia's water

These plants were made for you and me.

--------------
The Original

Warning: The verses about the hydro projects and the river locks (for navigation) are terrific. However, some of the Guthrie lyrics are very distasteful. The "wild Indian warriors"? Ouch. We forget how prejudice was part of standard speech, back in the Good Old Days.

Nuclear Bloggers Carnival and the Rally at Vermont Yankee

2011-10-24T13:51:00.014-04:00

The 75th Nuclear Bloggers Carnival is up at Atomic Power Review. Will Davis starts the Carnival with a picture from the nuclear past: what is this? I kinda guessed, but, close is no cigar...

Many of the posts are about nuclear communication, including Suzy Hobbs on a Facebook debate with celebrity Christie Brinkley. Yes, Ms. Brinkley considers herself an expert on the dangers of nuclear energy. Brian Wang wonders how wrong Armory Lovins can be, over the years, and still be considered an expert. (The jury is still out on that one). ANS Nuclear Cafe features stories of mothers in the nuclear industry. Steve Skutnik of the Neutron Economy acknowledges the fear that civilian nuclear development is a cover for more warlike intentions, but that is not how things really happen.

This is a very enjoyable Carnival!

Rally to Support Vermont Yankee, Just Outside the Plant Gates

I have spent the past two days assisting Howard Shaffer in planning the Rally at the Plant. Fifty people came to show their support for Vermont Yankee. We came at shift change. As cars went by, we held signs, waved, and encouraged the people who are working the refueling outage. They get a lot of negative feedback, what with the anti-nuclear puppet shows and all. We wanted to be sure to give them some positive feedback. After all, they supply our power!

I will blog about this more in future days. but for now, I will just link to the Brattleboro Reformer article about the rally, and include one picture I swiped (with permission) from the Vermont Yankee Facebook album. The man sitting on the chair is 92 years old, and came out to support the plant. The rally included children, workers, tavern-owners, and retirees. It was a great family occasion!

More later.

Rallies and Protests at the Vermont Yankee Plant

2011-10-21T10:00:00.014-04:00

Tomorrow: A Rally For the Plant, At the Plant

Vermont Yankee is holding a refueling outage. They are moving ahead to keep that clean electricity flowing, despite the uncertainties of the court case. Many of us appreciate that, and we are holding a rally at the plant gates tomorrow afternoon, at 4:30 p.m., shift change. We want the people at the plant: regular employees, contract workers, and managers who made the decision to load fuel...to see we support them! More details in the previous post, which includes email addresses and phone numbers to reach the organizers: Howard Shaffer and me.

Retrospectives on the Morning Street Rally and the Evening Plant Rally of September 12

On the morning of September 12, the Entergy versus Shumlin/State of Vermont lawsuit began in at the Courthouse in Brattleboro. Early that morning, the Safe and Green Campaign held a vigil in front of the Court House, and several pro-nuclear groups held a rally. The pro-nuclear groups included the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute, and the Vermont Pilot Project of the American Nuclear Society. I am director of the Energy Education Project, and I blogged extensively about our rally.

The Evening Puppet Show and Protest

The morning vigil and the rally were not the only activity on September 12, however. In the evening, at 6 p.m, the Clamshell Alliance held a protest at the gates of the plant in Vernon Vermont, a few miles from Brattleboro. The protest featured a Puppet parade, radical marching band, street theater and direct action.

At first, I read nothing about that protest in the press. On the evening of September 12, all the reporters who cover Vermont Yankee were busily filing their first-day-of-the-Federal-trial stories, not racing to the plant to see yet-another-opponent-demonstration.

The Aftermath

The evening protest did eventually get covered in the press. Obliquely.

During the September 12 protest at the plant, people parked across the street from the plant at the Vernon Elementary School. As the Brattleboro Reformer wrote on September 28: The Vernon School Board is weighing a new ordinance to prevent non-school related parking on the property after receiving several complaints following a recent protest against the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Board members said Monday night that protesters, gathered at the plant’s gate just across the street from the school, were using the parking lot for unauthorized purposes.

On October 5, the protesters showed up in the press again. Susan Smallheer at the Rutland Herald (behind a paywall) wrote that (A) group of protesters, who were arrested for the first time at Vermont Yankee’s gates on Sept. 12, are due in court later this month. A call to the Vernon Police department revealed that the arrests were for trespassing on Vermont Yankee property.

Apparently, puppet shows and direct action lead to problems in the parking lot and arraignment in court. In my opinion, the parking ban will pose a bigger difficulty for the plant opponents than the trespassing charges.

Looking Forward

The Clamshell Alliance is going to be holding a rally at the plant on October 30. Here are notes from one of their recent planning meetings.

One of the points made at the Clamshell Alliance planning meeting: State of VT is an ally; don’t alienate with arrests

Oops.

Rally This Sunday in Support of Vermont Yankee

2011-10-19T21:39:00.014-04:00

Rally in Support of Nuclear Power

Supporters of Vermont Yankee to hold rally Sunday, Oct. 23 outside the plant gates

On Sunday, October 23, from 4:30 – 6:30 pm outside the front gate at Vermont Yankee, there will be a rally of support for the plant staff and the outage team.

“We need to show them that they are appreciated,” said co-organizer Meredith Angwin, director of the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute. “We will show our support for nuclear energy!”

“Why are we doing this now? Partially because of the outage: we want to support the plant and the workers. Also, the following weekend, an opponent group is holding a shut-it-down rally at the plant,” Angwin said. “We discussed holding our rally the same day to provide balance, but decided that was a bad idea. Multiple rallies held near the plant gates can raise security issues. So we are holding our rally this weekend.”

"The people working the outage will appreciate our support," said co-organizer Howard Shaffer, coordinator of the Vermont Pilot Project of the American Nuclear Society. "We are grateful to Entergy for giving us permission to be at the Governor Hunt House for the rally."

Contact:

Howard Shaffer

Vermont Pilot Project of the American Nuclear Society

hshaffer3@myfairpoint.net

603-632-5139

Meredith Angwin

Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute

Meredith@ethanallen.org

802-291-9172

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This is a press release I sent out earlier today. Last time we held a rally, we were in downtown Brattleboro near the Federal Court House. This time, we wanted our rally to be visible to people at the plant.

About the Governor Hunt House. It was built in 1789 by Governor Hunt, who was the last Lieutenant Governor of the independent Republic of Vermont. It is now near the gate to Vermont Yankee.

Photos below of the house. (From the Restoration Trades Directory Portfolio)

Songs for the Outage: Save a Millirem, and Don't Stand So Close

2011-10-19T12:58:00.010-04:00

Songs for the Outage

Vermont Yankee is in the middle of the much-discussed refueling outage: Would they or wouldn't they load fuel? Nobody knew for sure.

Vermont Yankee is loading fuel. They are doing it. Hundreds of people are working hundreds of hours. Sometimes it feels like each individual person is working hundreds of hours. I decided to honor everyone working the outage at Vermont Yankee with Songs for An Outage.

Fifty Ways to Save a Millirem

The first song: Fifty Ways to Save a Millirem, was on my blog before, on the post, Vernon, New Hampshire? (That post suggested that Vernon secede from Vermont.) Here's the song again.

Don't Stand So Close

Here's another song, Don't Stand So Close, this time by the Rad Police (as opposed to The Police). I can't make out some of the lyrics, so if someone can hear them more clearly, please send the lyrics as a comment to this blog.

Have a great Refueling, Vermont Yankee!

Energy Safari: Energy Efficient Life Sciences Building At Dartmouth

2011-10-18T09:30:00.003-04:00

An LEED Building at Dartmouth: Conserving Energy

On October 11, the ILEAD Energy Safari Class visited the new Life Sciences Building at Dartmouth, to see Energy Conservation as well as Energy Production. As usual, Robert Hargraves has an excellent blog post on our visit.

Our tour was led by Joe Broemel, senior project manager at Dartmouth, and Ken Merrow, project manager at Trumbull-Nelson, a construction company. They were knowledgeable and very patient. They had to be patient, because we asked so many questions.

The building is beautiful, and one of its most lovely features is its careful management of run-off rainwater. Roof gardens help cool the building, and a rain garden (shown above right) is part of the run-off-capture system. Captured rainwater will feed the toilet water, the Reverse Osmosis/Deionized Water system that provides lab water, and cooling tower make-up water. The run-off system is expected to save one million gallons of water a year.

Another beautiful feature is the use of daylight lighting when possible. The labs have large windows, providing daylight deep into the lab space. Adjustable lighting makes up for cloudy weather, rather than the "lights on/lights off" format of most buildings.

I thought back to some of the labs I have worked in during my life: well, they just seemed squalid in comparison!

Air Exchanges

It was a truly gorgeous, energy-efficient building, but it seemed to be such uphill work to make it efficient.

For example most energy-efficient buildings have a tight building envelope, and aim at three air exchanges per hour for ventilation. This building also has a tight envelope, but the labs require twelve air exchanges per hour for safety. That twelve-exchange figure does not include the air exhaust demands of the fume hoods: each square foot of fume hood opening requires 100 cubic feet per minute of air flow to protect the workers.

The building deals with the air-exchange problem well, with an enthalpy wheel (air-air heat exchanger) to capture much of the heat from the air the building needs to vent. The enthalpy wheel is shown at left. (I am not sure how big it is, but it seems about two stories tall.) Enthalpy wheels are a relatively new technology, capable of recapturing 80% of the heat in outflowing air. They also control humidity, and they keep the indoor atmosphere pleasantly humidified. Indoor humidity becomes important in below-zero weather, when the dry air inside a building can lead to cracked skin and nosebleeds. I think enthalpy wheels can make an important contribution to energy conservation. They are used in other buildings on the Dartmouth campus.

Being Cranky About Cost-Effectiveness

However, somehow, I was not as happy with the whole thing as I might have been. All those air exchanges, for example. The building has a very tight envelope, but inside it has has fume hoods and rapid air exchanges in the lab space. I wasn't sure that the carefully built envelope and triple glazed windows were important, considering all the air exchanges. On the other hand, the enthalpy wheel at least mitigated the exchange problem.

Let me first admit I am being completely unfair. The Life Sciences Center is wonderful. It is well designed, and will be an ornament to the Dartmouth campus for at least a century. It has a pleasantly "organic" feel due to the roof gardens, the sweeping views from the large windows, and the use of local wood in the interior design. It's really a marvel.

So, what was my problem? I guess I wish more local buildings had simple efficiency retrofits, rather than this one shining example of every possible type of energy efficiency. If I think of the building as an experiment, then I love it. It shows what can be done. If I think like an energy-committee member (which I am), I can't help but worry about cost-effectiveness.

Still, the world needs shining examples as much as it needs insulated walls in modest homes. This building certainly is such an example, and I am very grateful for Dartmouth for arranging our tour.