Living Well after Vermont Yankee

ANS Nuclear Cafe on Living Well After Vermont Yankee

This morning I have a post about people who work at Vermont Yankee at ANS Nuclear Cafe.

 What are the next step for them?  I discuss older workers, younger workers, nuclear-specific workers and people with generalized skills.  The post is optimistic (without being saccharine).  I specifically mention the everyday pain nuclear opponents inflicted on Vermont Yankee workers.  The situation of Vermont Yankee workers is not covered in any of the mass media.

I hope you will read my post and comment on it.

http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2014/03/06/moving-forward-and-living-well/

Say it with music

Two songs that express my feelings.

Farewell to the Monty describes the pain of a coal mine closing. My father-in-law was a coal miner. (He had left the mines and gotten other jobs before I met him.)  Farewell to the Monty is from an album of industrial folk music The Iron Muse.




The second song is very close to my heart.  LeChaim, from Fiddler on the Roof.  

Life has a way of confusing us, blessing and bruising us: Drink LeChaim, to Life! 


 


Enjoy the music.  I hope you read the post, Moving Forward and Living Well, at ANS Nuclear Cafe.  I hope you comment on it.

Meeting Success Story in Chattanooga

The meeting

The NRC meeting about MOX fuel was a success story for nuclear advocates "showing up."  Many ANS members (including students) came to the meeting, wearing colorful ANS shirts.  Many students and ANS members testified. No anti-nuclear zombies showed up. Maybe the zombies knew there would be pro-nuclear people at the meeting.

The press coverage noted the pro-nuclear presence, though it was still slanted anti-nuclear, in my opinion.  But pro-nuclear people were there, and the press had to cover their statements.  Here's the Times Free Press article on the meeting.

Visibility

Great shirts for visibility!

Plus, Suzy Hobbs Baker supervised the making of some great signs.  One anti-nuclear speaker called the students "cheerleaders" and requested "solutions" instead.  Actually, of course, the students are the future, and the future solutions.

Living in the Past with the Electrician

But you can't expect your average anti-nuclear person to understand that the students are the future.  They are still talking about the electrician who used a candle at Brown's Ferry 37 years ago.

Ah well. They need something to talk about. The fact that MOX fuel has been used all over the world for 30 years is NOT what they want to talk about.  So...back to that electrician!

Showing Up.

It works. 

It has never been more important.



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Laura Scheele of ANS (ANS Nuclear Cafe blog) Steve Skutnik of University of Tennessee (Neutron Economy blog) , and Suzy Hobbs Baker (Popatomic Studios) did an immense amount of work to make this meeting a success for the nuclear side.  We owe them all a big thank-you!

Links to other blogs about this meeting can be found at my previous post  MOX and hearings in Chattanooga.

Trojan Cows and Grid Facts: Op-Ed

Non-Trojan Cow

The Cow

On July 1, a group of people opposed to the continued operation of Vermont Yankee protested at the nuclear power plant’s gates. One prop they used to dramatize their belief that there are better energy options than nuclear power was a hollow “Trojan Cow” they pulled to the demonstration. Some protesters pulled mock solar panels out of the cow, while others held whirligigs representing wind turbines. The cow sculpture even included a representation of manure, representing “cow power” energy produced from farm methane. The theme was clear: Vermont Yankee will be replaced with renewables.

Well, that is simply not true, at least in the foreseeable future. Closing Vermont Yankee will not bring a burst of renewables to market to replace its power.

Grid Power

Closing Vermont Yankee would mean buying more power from the New England grid to make up for Vermont Yankee’s supply. Grid power is approximately 58 percent fossil fuel, 28 percent nuclear and 12 percent hydro plus renewables. Wind, solar and farm methane together account for less than 1 percent of the power generated in New England.

What would closing Vermont Yankee mean? More solar power on the grid? No. With or without Vermont Yankee, renewables are expensive, and they are not coming on line quickly.

On the other hand, fossil fuel plants are abundant suppliers to the New England grid, supplying the majority of grid power. Many fossil fuel plants operate only part-time. The part-time plants run when they are needed to satisfy the power requirements on hot summer days or cold winter evenings. They also operate when nuclear plants are down for refueling.

The New England Grid responds to nuclear refueling
From Vermont Dept Public Service  presentation

If Vermont Yankee closed, existing fossil fuel plants would compensate by running longer hours and making more power. If the Vermont Yankee protesters had wanted to stage a more accurate dramatization, they would have pulled a model of a gas or coal plant from their Trojan Cow’s belly, not a cardboard solar panel.

Renewables: Too Slow, and Too Expensive

Or perhaps the demonstrators were claiming that shutting down nuclear plants will bring more rapid development of renewable energy, even if we’re forced to use more fossil fuels for a “short while.”

Well, a “short while” is likely to be very long.

For example, the Vermont state energy plan calls for the state to meet 90 percent of its total energy needs from renewable sources by 2050. That’s an ambitious goal considering that Vermont does not meet its current renewable energy goals and has no prospects of meeting them in the near future. The Vermont energy plan established a goal of having the state use 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2017. Even using optimistic assumptions about project completion, the state will attain only the 16 percent mark in by that date. In 2009, the state had 13 percent of its electricity from renewables (mostly in-state hydro). A growth of 3 percentage points over eight years ( 13 to 16%, 2009 to 2017) is not very impressive.

Perhaps the rate of growth of renewables is accelerating? Not really. Last year, the Vermont Legislature voted against having an aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard for Vermont. Such a standard might raise the percentage of renewables in Vermont, but it would also raise Vermont electricity rates to unacceptable levels. Renewable growth is slow in neighboring states for similar reasons. In short, closing Vermont Yankee would have the regional result of requiring more fossil fuel to supply the New England grid.

Vermont Is An Island?

Within Vermont, many anti-nuclear activists don’t seem to care much about the regional issue. They often say that the power from Vermont Yankee doesn’t matter to Vermont, because “Vermont is no longer using any Vermont Yankee power.”

Not true. In March of this year, the power contracts between Vermont utilities and Vermont Yankee ended. Vermont utilities no longer buy Vermont Yankee power. However people in Vermont are still using Vermont Yankee power.

That sounds weird, but realize that buying power and using power are different, because power from different sources blends together on the grid. The supply on the grid depends on the power plants, transmission lines and end-users. These don’t change when contracts change.

Buying and Paying

Who pays for the power is a different matter altogether: Payment depends on agreements made between plants and utilities and regulators. The day after Vermont Yankee stopped selling power to Vermont utilities, Vermont consumers used the same actual power mix as they had used the day before. However, on that day, Vermont consumers began paying for power in a different manner. Among other changes, Vermont consumers began paying for Seabrook power, according to a contract between Green Mountain Power and Seabrook. This did not mean that Seabrook power suddenly began streaming into local power lines.

Once again, we have to take into account the regional nature of the grid. Power contracts determine payment methods, but contracts don’t determine power routing and use — that is determined by plant availability and geography.

Power blends together on the grid. If a plant goes off-line, other plants take up the slack. When nuclear plants go off-line, fossil fuel plants step up and produce replacement power.

(Note: Howard Shaffer wrote an excellent description of the grid at his recent guest post: Where's the Magic Switch?)

Deception 

Protesters used a Trojan Cow to suggest that if Vermont Yankee closed, renewables would take its place. Perhaps the use of a Trojan animal was more apt than the demonstrators intended. After all, the original Trojan horse was designed to deceive. In this case, the people that the demonstrators are deceiving about the consequences of closing Vermont Yankee start with...themselves.

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This is a slightly edited version of an op-ed I wrote for my local paper, the Valley  News.  I wrote this op-ed about the July 1 "Trojan Cow" protest at Vermont Yankee. It appeared in the Valley News on Sunday, July 29, but the Valley News puts very little of its content on-line.   I felt this op-ed fit in well with Howard Shaffer's recent blog post about the grid: Where's the Magic Switch.

You can watch a three-minute video of the demonstration on YouTube.

Vermont Yankee Protest: Low turn-out and low intellgence

The protest at Vermont Yankee yesterday was advertised ahead of time as going to have 1500 people and 300 arrests. To me, it looks like there were about 200 people, though the Brattleboro Reformer said there were 300.  Forty were arrested. Here's a video of the protest.

I generally don't share opponent videos, but this one made me angry. The theme of the protest was a cow..MOOOve on, Entergy!  That was the theme.  The protestors simulated cow sounds with shofars.  Some people blew shofars, while others chanted "Mooo." That's disgusting.

The blasts of the shofar are sacred in Jewish worship, and the sound has been sacred for thousands of years.   Simulating a cow at a protest with a shofar--it's too much.  There's cute, and there's nasty.  This was nasty.

When the attendance is low, I guess they do what they can to make a stink.

This rally stunk.

 

Update:  I appreciate Jeff Schmidt's comment below.  The people perhaps did not mean to be sacrilegious and disrespectful.  Perhaps they simply thought: "wow, these things make a cool sound like a bleating cow or something."  In other words, what I thought was nasty might have been simply dumb and uninformed.

I am willing to accept that as a possible explanation, though I consider it unlikely.  I mean, if you buy a shofar, someone probably tells you about it. You don't buy a shofar and wonder "what is this thing?"

At any rate, I thank Schmidt for his comment.   Schmidt is also quite right that the low turnout is the important part of the story.  However, if they hadn't been so disrespectful (or possibly dumb) about my religion,  I wouldn't have blogged about their rally.  Unfortunately, my blogging about it  probably just teaches them to be more disrespectful about religion next time, to get more publicity.

AP Retraction: No Iodine Pills, No Radiation Poisoning at Brattleboro High School

"Iodine Pills" at Brattleboro High School
On Saturday April 14, there was a rally against Vermont Yankee in downtown Brattleboro.  AP had a story about it which was widely reprinted. Among other places, the story appeared in the Burlington Free Press.  The article was titled Vermont Yankee protest draws quadruple-digit crowd.

The AP story included this astounding statement:
Putney resident Nancy Olsen, 65, a teacher, said she stumbled upon the rally and stopped to see what people had to say. Overall, she said, she has mixed feelings about the plant remaining open.


“When the school distributed iodine pills to the teachers it was a little bit of a shock, because I hadn’t really thought about it that much,” she said, referring to the pills that were handed out at Brattleboro Union High School during last year’s tritium leak to counteract the radiation poisoning. 


What-what-what-what?? ( That was my reaction.)  Pills were handed out at Brattleboro High School?  Only to the teachers?  KI for tritium? "The radiation poisoning?" And the tritium leak was 2010, not last year, though that seems a rather trivial point, considering everything else.

Calling the High School

After I read this, I called Brattleboro Union High School to find out more about it.  Olsen is a teacher at the high school, and they offered to connect me to her.  However, I figured I already knew what she had said, and did not ask to be connected.  I wanted to know if and when such pills were distributed: therefore, I wanted to speak to the principal.

I spoke to people, but I didn't do a very good investigation. I am not blaming anyone for not resolving the issue.  Everybody was very nice. Everybody also seemed very eager to refer me to someone else to talk to. Before I was done, I had spoken with someone in the prinicipal's office, someone in the school district office, and one of the school nurses. I was also encouraged to speak to the Vermont Department of Health, but I didn't follow up.  In general, the people I spoke to didn't know about any KI distribution, but nobody said: "It certainly did NOT happen."

I folded my mini-investigation. Before I folded, I spoke to some Brattleboro friends about my adventures. I have no idea if my friends followed up the investigation.

Retraction

Something happened.  I don't know who did what, but something happened that encouraged the AP to write a correction, which is now running in various papers. Here's the correction:

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) — In a story about the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, The Associated Press erroneously reported several details about a tritium leak from the plant. The tritium did not cause radiation poisoning and posed no harm to the public, according to state health officials. The leak took place over a couple of months in late 2009 and early 2010, not last year. Also, the Vermont Health Department distributes potassium iodide — not iodine— pills in case of a leak of a different type of radiation and did not distribute pills for the tritium leak.

It was good to see this correction.

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My own coverage of the rally is in two parts: Three Views of the April 14 Rally, and We start with Vermont Yankee.  Later, we shut down capitalism.

We start with Vermont Yankee. Later, we shut down capitalism

In my recent post Three Views of the April 14 Opponent Rally,  I quoted a friend's email to me:

This one sign, held high and very visible at the rally, says it all, or very nearly:
Shut down VT Yankee 
Shut down all nukes 
Shut down capitalism. 

The first comment  on my post asked if I had a picture of the sign.  Of course I didn't, but I found one!  You can see the gazebo in this picture, too.  The speakers addressed the crowd from that gazebo.

If you go back to my blog post and watch the video, or if you follow its links to other coverage of the rally, you will not see this sign. Regular media did not take pictures of it, as far as I can tell.



 

Three Views of the April 14 Opponent Rally

On Saturday April 14, opponents of Vermont Yankee held a rally on Brattleboro Green.  Here are three views of the rally: Before, during and after.


First: Before the Rally
Opponent leaders were quite optimistic about attendance at the rally.  State Bigwigs were expected.  Governor Shumlin, Attorney General Sorrell, and Senator Sanders were all scheduled to speak at the rally. As a Rutland Herald article stated: "'We are expecting well over 1,000 people,' said DeWalt, while other activists sent out emails Thursday urging people to 'pack the Commons' with upwards of 5,000 people."  (Article by Susan Smallheer of the Rutland Herald, published on April 13 and unfortunately behind a paywall),

Rally organizers said that the Saturday date, the peaceful plans (no arrests), the important speakers, the better weather (than the March 22 rally) and the band--all would lead to a very full and successful rally.

Second: The Rally Itself
About a thousand people came, and this short video by WCAX gives a good view of the rally, including parts of Shumlin, Sanders and Sorrell's speeches.

In one memorable moment, Sanders said that the people who work at Yankee will still have jobs, tearing it down.  (The comments on this video clip run heavily against the statements that these politicians made.)  If you want to hear all the speeches, you can follow the audio links at this Vermont Digger article.

First Hand Report: A friend of mine went to the rally, and she wrote me an email. She said I could excerpt the email for my blog, but she did not want her name used. Here's an excerpt.

Lovely sunny day and the crowd grew to perhaps 1000 by 1PM. At one point, a State Representative from Massachusetts spoke and asked for a show of hands from those who were from Massachusetts. I would say a good third of the crowd raised their hands... The sound system was of very good quality....which makes or breaks these events... (I think) the best way to describe the event, its feel and texture, is ..(to describe some bumper stickers and signs I saw) Bumper stickers: Childhood is a journey not a race. Animal rights are not special rights. Invest in weapons of mass instruction. We the people not we the corporations. All soil is sacred...another sign. This one sign, held high and very visible at the rally, says it all, or very nearly:
Shut down VT Yankee 
Shut down all nukes 
Shut down capitalism.


Third: After the Rally
The politicians made speeches, and they said things that may have been impolitic.

In the Commons, a not-for-profit newspaper in Brattleboro, an editorial encouraged Bernie Sanders to fact-check before he spoke.

Meanwhile, as Governor Shumlin is encouraging Green Mountain Power (owned by a Canadian company) to buy Central Vermont Public Service.  The legislature does not like the terms of the proposed deal, but Shumlin says the legislature should not interfere.

Since Shumlin led the charge on the legislature interfering with Vermont Yankee, Shumlin's recent statements on the subject have led to a bit of snickering, as in this Seven Days article: Populist Governor Peter Shumlin Changes His Mind on Out-of-State Energy.

My Comment: Adoring Crowds

The local politicians, all running for re-election this year, took this opportunity to speak with an adoring crowd. Later press pointed out that their statements were inaccurate and inconsistent.  It was a smaller adoring-crowd than they had hoped for, but perhaps the fervent anti-capitalist tone made up for the few numbers.

Judging by the later press, politicians should note that adoring crowds are dangerous.  You may be tempted to say things you will later regret.    It can happen.

Vermont Yankee Supporters and Opponents

In my post about the St. Patrick's Day rally at ANS Nuclear Cafe, I wrote:

Did the opponent rally work? It undoubtedly encouraged the people at the rally. But I personally think that the whole stilt-walker, masks, funny hats business doesn’t convince anyone who is not convinced already. I don’t think that undecided people, watching on TV, would want to join the opponents’ rally.

Today, I decided that pictures speak louder than words. Here's a picture of Patty O'Donnell, Ellen Merkle, and a monk from the Peace Pagoda in New York. A group of monks were on a peace-walk or maybe a peace-shuttle between power plants on the East Coast. (The monks didn't walk their whole route, though they called it a Peace Walk.) O'Donnell and Merkle live in Vernon. As the monk walked toward the plant, they saw a photo-op.

Here's a local TV report. The short video includes plant supporter Gwen Shaclumis being interviewed about Entergy. Meanwhile, the opponent rally people call Entergy a "rogue corporation." Who do you believe?

Seeing is believing...

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

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!