Curtailment by any other name -- would be ordinary

Time for an opinionated blog post about framing and word usage.   Today's weasel-word: curtailment.

Lowell Mountain Curtailment

Wind Turbines in New Zealand

During the recent heat wave, Lowell Mountain wind farm was "curtailed" by ISO-NE, the grid operator.  In other words, although there was wind available, ISO-NE did not allow Lowell Mountain to send its power to the grid.

After this event, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin sent a complaining letter to ISO-NE. Fossil plants were putting power on the grid but the wind farm had to stop operating temporarily.  Shumlin asked ISO: Doesn't the grid operator understand the importance of Vermont's move to renewables? Note: Andrew Stein has an article about Shumlin's letter at Vermont Digger.  There are close to 100 comments.

Many people realize that the grid operator had good reasons not to dispatch the wind power during the heat wave.  For example, you might want to read the Burlington Free Press editorial: Not Ready for Prime Time. ( The idea is that renewables are not ready for prime time.) The Burlington Free Press is generally in favor of renewable energy.

Curtailment Means Dispatch

In the meantime--- What the heck is curtailment? It means that wind was available, but the grid operator did not allow the wind farm to put power on the grid.  In other words, the wind farm was not "dispatched."  Dispatch is the fate of most plants on the grid.

The rules for dispatch include physical imperatives:

• matching load
• not over-loading transmission lines
• taking into account how quickly various plants can come on-line.

Secondary rules for dispatch include economics and other non-physical issues:

• dispatching the least expensive plants first
• giving renewables a favored position in the line-up.

To keep the grid in balance, the physical imperatives take precedence.

However, the non-physical issues are also part of dispatch.  For example, coal is now more expensive than natural gas.  Five years ago, our local coal plant, Merrimack Station,  ran 75% of the time. Today it runs about 30% of the time. Merrimack Station is no longer one of the least expensive power plants.  It's almost a peaking plant, nowadays.  (Jeremy Blackman, Concord Monitor, Extreme Weather a Testament to Bow's Plant Relevance?)

Yes, even coal plants only run when dispatched.

Wind Turbines and the Weasel Word

Wind turbines have been high on the list for  dispatch, because they are renewables. However, dispatching renewables is a secondary issue, not a physical imperative. Despite this fact, in my opinion, the turbine owners have developed a serious case of entitlement.   If the wind turbine doesn't get dispatched, someone is going to hear about it from the Governor.

What an attitude!  This attitude isn't good for the future, either.  The Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan says that 90% of all our energy is supposed to come from renewables.  Does this mean that people will use the power whenever the renewables can send it?  Perhaps we will have alarms in our house: "It's 2 a.m. and the turbines are spinning.  Time to do your wash and bake some goodies." Or are the wind turbines willing to be dispatched, just like a power plant?

In my opinion, the first thing we can do to encourage the wind farm owners to understand their place on the grid is---we can stop using the weasel word, curtailment.  We can call the situation what it is. "Due to inadequate transmission capabilities in the area of Lowell Mountain, the wind turbines were not dispatched."

There.  Doesn't that sound better?

Vermont a more "dazzling" nuclear power producer than a solar producer: Guest post by Guy Page

Vermont is a more "dazzling" nuclear power producer than a solar producer
By Guy Page

Vermont produces about one nuclear kilowatt per capita, compared to 34 watts solar

The Dazzling Solar Story

Rooftop Solar  Middlebury College VT

According to a new study by Environment America, Vermont is now a member of the “Dazzling Dozen,” the 12 states with the highest per-capita use of solar power. The Vermont Public Interest Research Group July 23 used the study to call for even more subsidized PV power generation. News about the study, including the Vermont Energy Partnership’s perspective, may be seen in the July 24 Burlington Free Press.

The big, untold story is that Vermont produces more nuclear power as a percentage of overall production than any other state in the country.  In fact, as detailed below, we produce eight times as much nuclear power as we do all non-hydro renewables, including solar power. In order to reduce carbon emissions and to have reliable, cost competitive power it will be important to keep and expand nuclear power while we also expand the use of renewables like solar. This is not only the view of the Vermont Energy Partnership; it is the view of U.S. Energy Secretary Dr. Ernest Moniz and President Obama.

Now-- the calculations

According to the U.S. Census, Vermont’s 2012 population is 626,000.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, nuclear power accounted for about three-fourths of the electricity generated within Vermont in 2011, a higher share than any other State.

Electrical output is best measured in megawatt-hours (MWh). According to the current US EIA state energy profile, Vermont produces a total of 516,000 MWh; of this, 356,000 MWh (69%) is nuclear power, all of it from Vermont Yankee, of course. By comparison, all non-hydro renewable generation together totals 42,000 MWh (8%), most of it wind.

Therefore, using MWh as a yardstick: 0.56 MWh (568,690 watt/hours) per Vermonter from Vermont Yankee alone; from all non-hydro renewables combined, .07 (67,092 watt/hours) per Vermonter.

Rather than using MWh as yardstick, however, the solar study you cite uses capacity figures. Vermont Yankee has a rated capacity of 620 megawatts. That is 620,000,000 watts. Vermont Yankee therefore has a per capita capacity of about 1000 watts – roughly a kilowatt, or about 29 times the 34 watt per capita capacity of Vermont solar power cited in the study. It is important to note that in Vermont, solar power operates at about 10-15% capacity, while most nuclear power plants are 24/7/365 “base load” plants operating at about 90% capacity.

Comparing Power Sources

1000 watts per capita for Vermont Yankee compared to 34 watts for solar power. .56 MWh per capita for Vermont Yankee, compared to .07 MWh for all non-hydro renewables – that is a truly “dazzling” comparison. It is fair to note, however, that solar and nuclear power share enviable similarities. Both are considered “carbon-free” by the U.S. EIA. Numerous studies show that their “lifecycle” carbon dioxide output per kilowatt is virtually identical. Another positive similarity: both can be produced in Vermont, thus reaping benefits of jobs and state revenue.

The Partnership evaluates every potential power source through the prism of "safe, clean, affordable, reliable." Solar admirably fits the first two criteria. As to reliability: it can help the grid as a hot summer day power "peak" provider, although I'm not sold that this benefit justifies the expense. But affordable in its current, fixed-price, "if you can make it the utilities have to buy it" standard-offer form? No.

Solar in Context

Incentives are justified by the likely economic and environmental benefit. Therefore incentives for solar hot water heaters, which "replace" oil or electric powered units at a relatively low cost, would seem to make sense. However, Vermont must do better than promulgate as "energy policy" the practice of forcing ratepayers to pay guaranteed high rates for an increasing number of 2.2 MW, 10 year solar power contracts. Standard offer supporters say the price of solar power production will eventually fall. Vermont would do better to wait, or at best move cautiously, until this hope becomes a reality. If the goal is to be carbon-free, accessing more existing, low-carbon base load power sources (notably nuclear and hydro) would be a suitable policy goal.  

In Germany, Spain, and even in the Northeast Kingdom, Vermont town of Hardwick, ratepayers are complaining that they are being forced to subsidize the guaranteed high rates of solar power production. When the government gets into the business of picking energy production winners and losers, even for the best of reasons, affordability all too often becomes the first loser.

And finally, solar power boosters have no sound answer to the problem of intermittency. The modern-day power grid can't sustain more than 20% (give or take) intermittent power without risk of blackout, brownout, fires and damage. Even now, Green Mountain Power, Vermont’s largest utility, is unable to sell all of its Lowell Wind power due to "curtailment" by ISO-New England. The planned fix - a synchronous condenser - is likely to improve, but not completely solve, this vexing problem. The technology for intermittent into baseload just isn't "there" yet, but we are acting as if it is, or soon will be. This is not prudent.

Guy Page

In short, solar power has its place, and that place may grow more prominent in the future. But current state policy underestimates the inherent economic and transmission shortcomings of solar power.

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This guest post is written by Guy Page, Communications director of Vermont Energy Partnership (VTEP) . Page is a frequent guest blogger on this blog. His most recent post announced a new VTEP report: Review of the Vermont Energy Plan: VTEP Review.

All of Vermont Wins When Vermont Yankee Operates

Vermont Yankee in March, 2012

When Vermont Yankee was built, its 40-year Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license was standard for new plants at that time. Although a new 20-year license was granted last year, the original license expires March 21. That day has become a rallying cry for plant opponents, who insist the plant must "shut down safely."

Many opponents speak as if it will be a personal defeat if the plant operates for a day past the 21st. They don't actually claim that on the 22nd, the plant will have safety problems that it didn't have on the 21st. Instead, whether the plant operates past the 21st has become a matter of "who wins...me or them?"

Safety is essential. To discredit Vermont Yankee, opponents make three standard safety-related claims. This article will answer these claims with facts, not win-lose rhetorical statements. The claims are:

1) Vermont Yankee is an old plant.

2) It could have an accident like Fukushima.

3) It puts nuclear waste on the banks of the Connecticut River.

1) Age and Vermont Yankee

Vermont Yankee is a steam-electric plant. It heats water to raise steam to turn turbines and make electricity. Coal plants are also steam-electric plants. Requirements for maintaining plant integrity are similar for nuclear and for coal. The median age of operating coal plants in this country is 46 years, and thirty coal plants have been running for more than 60 years.

I was a corrosion specialist in my working life. There are corrosion issues special to nuclear plants, and there are corrosion issues special to coal plants. These problems are different, but one is not worse than the other. If anything, coal plants have the harder time with corrosion, scaling, and other operating problems because they have to move so much material (coal) through the plant.

The power uprate made several years ago helps contribute to Vermont Yankee's reliability and safety. Opponents imagine that the power uprate is merely a matter of pushing an old plant too hard. Actually, the NRC only grants uprates when significant improvements have been made to the plant. At Vermont Yankee, Entergy in the last decade has installed $400 million dollars worth of new equipment. Much of this equipment was required for the power uprate.

In the nuclear industry, it is conventional wisdom that a power uprate is a good way to prepare for a license extension review. The plant replaces key equipment for the uprate, and the new equipment helps the plant achieve its license extension.

2) It could have an accident like Fukushima

On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. Schools collapsed, villages were swept out to sea, and an estimated 20,000 people died.

Five nuclear stations containing fifteen reactors were affected by the tsunami. All the reactors survived the earthquake, but transmission lines failed and diesel generators were flooded. At one site, three reactors lost power for too long, resulting in fuel damage, hydrogen explosions and radiation release. In accordance with emergency plans, population evacuations began almost immediately.

Japan is an industrial powerhouse and technically astute country. The question arises: Could it happen here? Shortly after Fukushima, a prominent anti-nuclear activist worried that a meltdown could happen to Vermont Yankee if a big hurricane came to the Connecticut River Valley.

A few months later, Hurricane Irene flooded whole towns and washed out roads in Vermont. Vermont Yankee still made power at full capacity. Nuclear plants are among the sturdiest structures on the planet. Vermont Yankee is designed for a 500-year-flood, 360 mph tornado winds, and severe earthquakes. Worldwide, plants have operated through hurricanes, floods and tornados, as well as earthquakes.

To operate safely, a nuclear plant needs adequate cooling water and electricity. Vermont Yankee has resilient cooling systems, appropriate for its site. The plant draws water from Vernon Pond and also stores millions of gallons on-site. It has several types of electrical backup. Its diesel generators are above the 500-year-flood level, and it also has a direct power line to Vernon Dam. River water can be pumped directly into the reactor, if necessary. Vermont Yankee is well-engineered for its location.

3) Nuclear Waste on the Banks of the Connecticut River

The storage of spent nuclear fuel is another hot-button for nuclear opponents. They delight in saying how some of this material has a half life of thousands, millions, or billions of years. They speak of the half-life in terms that imply it is terrifying that something will be radioactive for so long.

Actually, as a general rule, the longer the half-life, the less dangerous the material.

Let's look at what a "long half-life" means. Say I had a hundred atoms of an isotope with a ten-minute half-life. By the definition of “half-life”, fifty of those atoms would release radioactivity in a ten-minute period. That would be a comparatively high radioactivity release in a short time.

Now imagine I have a hundred atoms of an isotope with a ten year half life. Again by the definition of half-life, fifty atoms would release radioactivity over a period of ten years. In other words, every few months, one atom would release some radioactivity, and a few months later, another atom would. The isotope with a ten-year half-life is far less radioactive than the isotope with the ten-minute half-life.

The low radiation level of long-half-life elements is the reason we can walk in the hills, despite the presence of radioactive elements in the native rocks. These elements have long half-lives. An isotope with a million year half-life is not a very radioactive isotope!

In the near term, the dry casks can hold the fuel in great safety for hundreds of years. In the long term, "radioactive for millions of years" is a scary sound-byte but...it does not indicate high levels of danger, now or in the future.

On March 22

When the plant operates on March 22, some plant opponents will feel they have "lost.” The plant, however, will operate as safely as it had on March 21. Plant opponents may feel that they have “lost” but Vermont will have won a future of abundant power and jobs in the southern part of the state. Safely.

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This article was one of a group published by the Burlington Free Press on March 18, shortly before the Vermont Yankee "license-expiration" date of March 21, 2012. You can read the article in the Free Press here. If you do, be sure to read the comments! The article was also reprinted in other local newspapers, such at The Commons.

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Photos include the Capitol Power Plant in Washington D.C, a coal-burning plant that was built in 1910 and continued to burn all coal until 2009, when environmental protests caused a switch to partial natural-gas firing. It is there as an example of how long power plants can operate, if people want them to operate.

Another picture is Hurricane Irene, from Wikipedia, and an image of happy people at Granite Gorge. Granite contains elements that are radioactive, with very long half-lives. Despite this radioactivity, New Hampshire has nick-named itself the Granite State and promotes tourism to the mountains. As it should! If you don't get a chance to visit Vermont, visit New Hampshire!

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 96 at ANS Nuclear Cafe

The 96th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers is up at ANS Nuclear Cafe. The Carnival includes posts about Fukuhima, Vermont Yankee, attitudes toward nuclear energy, and more. Worth reading!

I also recommend Howard Shaffer's excellent article about the Vermont Yankee issues in front of the Public Service Board, which is posted at ANS Nuclear Cafe. And I recommend my own op-ed at Burlington Free Press, about Vermont Yankee and safety.

I am on vacation this week, and will be posting irregularly, if at all. Have a fun week! I plan to!!

In Vermont, Our Word is Our Bond, So We Don't Honor Contracts

The Memorandum of Understanding

I began blogging on January 1, 2010. With my first substantive post, on January 3, 2010, I began discussing and linking to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The MOU is a key document in the story of Vermont Yankee. Only nine pages long, the MOU describes the terms of purchase when Entergy bought Vermont Yankee in 2002. It includes the cost of power, the decommissioning fund, decommissioning options, and other issues about the purchase. The MOU was signed by Entergy (the buyer), utility representatives (the sellers), and the State of Vermont, in the person of the Commissioner of the Department of Public Service. As far as I can tell, it is as binding as any other document the state has ever signed.

Shumlin doesn't like it. The MOU includes the option to use SAFSTOR (delayed decommissioning) for the plant. Well, fine, Shumlin doesn't have to like it. However, Shumlin goes further: he repudiates it as a binding document because "Here in Vermont, Your Word is Your Bond." He doesn't feel the SAFSTOR option was discussed enough in committee. Therefore, in his opinion, the contract does not have to be honored. In Shumlin's opinion, SAFSTOR was a matter of Entergy "sneaking" some words in among "thousands of pages" of documents.

In the video clip above, you can hear Shumlin answer Terri Hallenbeck, a veteran reporter for the Burlington Free Press. Shumlin said that SAFSTOR wasn't discussed enough in the committee. At around 2 minutes and 40 seconds into the video above, Hallenbeck asks Shumlin why the discussions in the committee rooms would matter more than the document the state signed. Shumlin's answer: "You working for Entergy today?"

There is almost nothing I can do to comment on such an outrageous statement. A reporter's question means she is working for Entergy. If you question me, you are against me!

Okay. So Shumlin is being outrageous. He is in a world of his own. If a person asks a question, and the question indicates that reality doesn't always fit Shumlin's plans---that person is in league with his enemies.

Nineteen Eighty Four

What makes this interchange so Orwellian ("War is Peace" from 1984) is Shumlin's constant use of the phrase "In Vermont, Our Word Is Our Bond" while he explains that the contract is not something he plans to honor. A contract isn't a contract, a contract is whatever Shumlin thought the contract was.

"Our Word Is Our Bond." I find this far more frightening than if Shumlin said: "Yeah, it's in the contract, but Vermont is going to do its best to break that thing down. I don't like it, and Vermont has lawyers on staff. We'll bust it." That would at least acknowledge the existence and validity of a signed contract.

War is Peace. Signed contracts are the work of sneaky people from Louisiana. Vermonters don't have to honor such things, because in Vermont, Your Word Is Your Bond. War is Peace.

Acknowledgements:

I need to thank two excellent reporters for the information in this post. First, Anne Galloway of Vermont Digger who posted the YouTube above in her article on Shumlin's press conference. Terri Hallenbeck of Burlington Free Press for her incisive follow-up blog post which includes links to the history of other power plants in New England that have had delayed decommissioning. I also want to thank Howard Shaffer, whose short comment on the Hallenbeck article gave me the crucial idea for this post. I believe that the other reporter whose voice you hear on the video is John Dillon of VPR.

The Big Brother Image from Wikimedia commons is not exactly right for this post, but I can't find a DoubleThink Image. I can't even imagine what a DoubleThink image would look like. Or perhaps the video is the illustration?

Tritium Again

What can I say. Vermont Yankee is making it hard for people who defend it. I still consider Vermont Yankee to be a good plant, and worth relicensing, but this tritium leak is troubling. Governor Douglas is talking about "breach of trust." Public Service Board Commissioner O'Brien practically called the company a bunch of liars. The Burlington Free Press reported:

O'Brien said he didn't see how the misinformation could be described as miscommunication. "What they clearly communicated to us is not true," he said. "There was not a miscommunication here."

So, were the potluck people right? Did Entergy lie to us?

The potluck people were expressing both the facts (Entergy said there were no underground pipes carrying tritium) and their belief system (nuclear people tell lies all the time, you can count on them to lie to us again).

I will start by expressing my own belief system. Something went wrong, and it was pretty big, but the engineers did not lie under oath.

I can't prove that, of course, but it is what I believe. Starting from there, what explanation do I have for all this? Two possibilities.

First possibility is that the spokespeople were asked ambiguous questions. It has been reported that Entergy said one thing to one group of regulators and another thing to a different group. This could happen very easily if the two groups asked slightly different questions.

Engineers tend to give very specific answers. Sometimes they take the time to spend half an hour helping you qualify your question, and sometimes they just answer it. The latter is dangerous because they are making a set of assumptions about your question, and those assumptions may not have much to do with what you asked. And a few months later, with a different group, they may make a different set of assumptions, due to a slightly different question.

That's a "communications" possibility.

My second possibility is more technical. I decided to look at other plants that had tritium leaks. Specifically, I read about Oyster Creek. In late August, Oyster Creek discovered that it had a tritium leak from a pipe within the condenser building. This was not an underground pipe. Tritium was leaking through through the concrete walls of the building.

The preliminary report from the NRC suggests the leakage is passing through the condenser building wall, which is about 4 feet thick. Staff at Oyster Creek have excavated around the wall and found leakage coming from that area. This suggests that the leak is located inside the wall, Sheehan said.
The aluminum pipe is surrounded by a sleeve, so plant personnel would be able to make repairs to the pipe without excavating the wall, according to Sheehan.

If Entergy was asked about tritium leaks before August of this year, they would not have had this information about Oyster Creek. They would only have been looking at heavy-duty, water-carrying underground piping as a possible source of tritium. It is quite possible that the Vermont Yankee tritium leak also has nothing to do with underground piping. I don't know.

I hope they find the leak soon. In this hope, pro-Vermont Yankee and anti-Vermont Yankee people are united.