Town Meeting

Last night, I went to my Town Meeting. I felt at home, among friends, and not at all marginalized. The same thing happened last year at Town Meeting. This wouldn't be surprising, except that in both cases, I set up a table in the lobby and handed out pro-nuclear literature. On my table, I had a sign Yes Vermont Yankee, and two stacks of handouts from NEI: Nuclear Energy Quick Facts and tritium.

Some people weren't interested, some people took the handouts and said they were for nuclear power. Some people took the handouts and said they were for nuclear power but against Vermont Yankee because the management was lousy and people lied. Some people said they had a relative who worked in nuclear, while others said "No thank you, I know enough about THAT!" which didn't sound exactly positive. It was all very civilized.

There was one woman who was a little bit on the fringe, in my opinion. She harangued me about people "dropping like flies" in France after Chernobyl and how healthy the French lifestyle is. We ended up in a minor argument about butter. (She believes butter is good for you.) She might have felt at home at some of the meetings in Brattleboro, or at the Montshire meeting sponsored by the Sierra Club. At my Town Meeting, she was an oddity.

Enexus Again

My local representative was there. He said he had taken the tour of the wells and excavation at the plant, and he been very impressed. "Quite an operation they have there." He continued that "My concern is...."

I interrupted him, because we have HAD this conversation before, and I knew what he was going to say.

"They're not spinning off Enexus," I said. "Enexus is dead."

"Really!" He seemed taken aback. He always says: "We don't know who is going to own this plant."

"When did you hear this about Enexus?"

"This morning."

"Oh." He paused, regrouping. "They have to give us a good rate, though, and take care of decommissioning."

It was the most positive interaction I have had with him.

Being There

Well, this was my town meeting in my town, and I know a lot of people. A fellow member of the energy committee pulled me away from my table to meet the fire chief. The fire house was recently assigned to be "my" town building.

One friend came by and said he hoped he could help the schools by his vote. Another friend said she hoped she could help defeat the school budget by her vote. Another person came by and smiled and I failed to recognize him and I think may have offended him. And so forth.

At the meeting, four hundred and fifty people voted for the school budget, two hundred and fifty voted against it, but they all consider themselves mainstream people. Being pro-nuclear and pro-Vermont Yankee is also mainstream. In a recent survey of town meeting attendees, which polled around 12,000 Vermonters this spring:

More than 50 percent of Vermonters polled support the closing of Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, with 31 percent in favor of relicensing the Vernon facility and 17 percent unsure. This is a major change from last year’s results when the plant had support from 40 percent of those polled, 37 percent disapproved and 23 percent unsure.

In other words, even in the present climate, about as the same fraction of people want to relicense VY as voted against our local school budget. It is 50 to 30 against VY, while our school budget was 450 to 250. Last year, more people wanted to relicense VY (40%) than close it (37%).

The Mainstream

In other words, being for or against VY is as mainstream as being for or against a school budget. The recent vote in the Senate (26 to 4) and the fervor of the Anti Vermont Yankee Walkers or Citizen's Action Network speakers gives a different impression. My experience of town meetings reflects the polls of town meetings. I think these are more accurate reflections of the opinions of people in Vermont.

(I understand that a poll of town meeting attendees is not a well-designed poll, but such polls do indicate what politically-active people in Vermont are thinking.)

In short, pro-nuclear people are not a group at the margins of society. In my opinion, we have to take our part on the stage of these debates. We have to be there, in our towns, handing out literature, making contacts with others who support nuclear and so forth. We are not a fringe minority, and we have to stop acting as if we were.

Don't forget. I'm still running the Helen Caldicott Satire Contest. Why cars, toothpaste and paper (so far) are terribly dangerous. Get your entry in soon. Contest ends April 15. Enter early and often!

The image above is not a church, but a Vermont meeting house, built for town meetings. It's really pretty, but our town meeting took place in the high school gym. Most town meetings do.

Enexus

The Enexus issue comes up, and because I blog at Yes Vermont Yankee, everybody expects that I have an opinion on it. Of course, I do have an opinion. However, I haven't blogged about Enexus because I prefer to write about areas that utilize my background in chemistry and nuclear operations, areas in which I bring some value-added to the discussion.

My opinion on Enexus is just one person's opinion. This blog is an opinion piece.

The Background

Slightly over two years ago, Entergy announced that they planned to spin off their northern nuclear plants to a new company called Enexus. Late last month, the New York Public Service Commission turned down their request to start the new company and transfer the New York power plants to it. Basically, the New York Commissioners calculated that Enexus debt would be would be so high that that the company's bonds would be ranked "below investment grade." So the Commissioners decided not to allow this proposed company to own New York power plants.

Commissioners are supposed to ensure that utility infrastructure is owned by financially sound companies. In Vermont, the Public Service Board has had two black eyes recently in the telecomm area. Fairpoint Communications took over from Verizon, and within two years, Fairpoint went bankrupt. The same sort of thing happened with Burlington Telecomm, which is struggling to meet its debt payments. Utility commissions in the Northeast are pretty shy about debt now. Once burned, twice shy.

My Opinion

Well, I think New York State was right to turn Enexus down. Enexus was going to be a company with too much debt. As a matter of fact, when Entergy announced the proposed spin-off, I was annoyed. Isn't it going to be tough enough to get the VY license extension without THIS complication? I have stayed slightly annoyed, which is another reason I haven't blogged about it.

On the other hand, there are two ways that Enexus had some good things to offer. First, it was going to be a pure-play owner of nuclear plants. One of the most cogent arguments for nuclear is that it is better than coal. However, every utility that owns nuclear plants also owns coal plants. Therefore, no major utility makes the argument against coal. Only us lonely bloggers are willing to do daily comparisons with coal. It would have been nice to have one pure-play nuclear company out there, one willing to publicize: Nuclear Better Than Coal!

The second good thing would have been that Enexus could keep one set of books, not two. I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that if part of your company is regulated and part is not, the accounting can be nightmarish. Entergy has regulated nuclear plants in the South, and merchant nuclear plants in the North.

Difficult Accounting

I remember my own company. We had EPRI contracts, and EPRI audited our overhead rates. We were treated like a government contractor: direct, indirect, overhead, general-and-administrative. EPRI needed to know it all. How much time were we spending on direct and indirect? How much money were we spending on health insurance? Did all of this meet their guidelines?

We also had utility contracts. Utilities just asked our billing rates and paid a flat hourly rate. If the rate looked good to them, they signed the contract. They didn't care what else we were spending our time on.

Our lucrative utility contracts hurt our EPRI billing rates during the audits. It was a kind of no-win nightmare. I can see why Entergy would want to become two companies: one that accepted regulatory audits, one that didn't. Heck, there were moments that I wanted my four-person Fourth Floor Databases company to be two companies. I don't blame Entergy for trying to get the two parts of their business separate. But in this climate, and with that amount of debt, it wasn't going to work.

WIFM

Everybody listens to radio station: WIFM. What's InIt For Me. I think Entergy didn't understand that. The Enexus spin-off would have been allowed IF the Commissioners saw it as in the best interests of the ratepayers. I don't remember ever hearing an Entergy argument that went: "Your rates will go down with this spin-off. Everyone in the Northeast will be better off with this spinoff because..." Maybe it was just a failure to communicate.

But in the meantime, it handed the anti-VY people yet another weapon. Vermont Yankee is a well-run plant. It is over 500 days into a power run right now. Only well-run plants can do this sort of thing. Badly run plants break down in some manner and have to go off-line. Also, VY found and fixed the tritium leak quickly. People who hate the plant won't accept this, but it's a good plant.

VY could stay a well-run plant under Entergy or Enexus or being sold to Duke Power or....whatever. The corporate structure never struck me as a tremendously relevant issue. To me, the Enexus spin-off was just another problem that did not have to exist. Not that it was a crazy idea (pure-play nuclear, all merchant plants, no regulated plants). But it wasn't going to fly, and it hurt people's opinion of VY, and VY's chances in the Senate.

What we have here is a failure to communicate on the part of Entergy. Or perhaps, a failure have good story to communicate. A good story would have answered the question What's In It For Me about Enexus? from the ratepayer point of view.

Entergy Scraps Enexus: An Update

I put up this blog post over the weekend, and this morning, Entergy announced that it is not going ahead with Enexus. I'm glad about this decision, but I am still annoyed at the memory of all the meetings I attended where anti-nukes could say: "We don't even know who is going to own this plant! Some company that doesn't exist, some company with a lot of debt." The Enexus plan didn't make life easier for plant supporters. I never felt I could defend it. I'm happy it's over.

Don't forget. I'm still running the Helen Caldicott Satire Contest. Why cars, toothpaste and paper (so far) are terribly dangerous. Get your entry in soon. Contest ends April 15. Enter early and often!