Vermont Yankee Powers Down While Vermont Protestors Flock Down to New York City to Protest Climate Change

Empire State Building

In New York City

In the Brattleboro Commons, the article about the Climate March in New York is titled The last opportunity to keep the climate cool?  According to that article, 1400 Vermonters are headed to New York  for the march. They are traveling in fifteen buses (some sponsored by Ben and Jerry's) and many cars. The marchers hope to convince our leaders to do-something about the climate.

(Note: Ben and Jerry's is a major opponent of Vermont Yankee, although the company needs prodigious amounts of power to make and distribute their product.  See my post on the Ironies of Ice Cream. )

In Vermont

Meanwhile, back in Vermont, Vermont Yankee is powering down for the last time.  As this article in WWLP writes in a headline: Vermont Yankee provided about 70% of the electricity generated in Vermont.  Replacement power is sure to come from fossil sources, though ISO-NE lists "alternatives, hydro and fossil replacement."  Local businesses are already hurting, as some  Vermont Yankee employees begin to move away.





Hypocrisy Rides Again

Poster from EcoWatch

Most of these marchers are in organizations that were eager to shut down nuclear energy. Let's  think about two leaders of the march:  Harvey Wasserman and Bill McKibben.

You can see the Wasserman  poster at the right. His group has a rallying cry: "Don't Nuke the Climate!" (I have updated the poster with the much-better parody poster, below!)

McKibben and I had quite an exchange at this blog post: Carbon Dioxide and Nuclear Energy.  (Check the comments section.) McKibben founded an organization against global warming, but he has been steadily opposed to Vermont Yankee's operation.

Thank you to Urs Bolt for this image

So, why do I call it hypocrisy? Maybe they really think that nuclear energy "nukes" the climate?  If they do, they simply have refused to look into the facts. Willful ignorance is a form of hypocrisy, in my opinion.

A few facts, please

First: The UN. With a few moments worth of investigation, the anti-nuke "Climate Worriers" could find out that nuclear power creates far less greenhouse gases than almost all other forms of energy.  If you look at the Wikipedia article on life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, you will see that the UN agency IPCC studied life-cycle emissions from many forms of energy.

According to IPCC:

• nuclear averaged 12 gCO2/kWh, 
• rooftop solar was 41 grams.
• combined cycle natural gas was 490 grams.  

Note that the IPCC is the agency that also tracks atmospheric carbon dioxide and warns us about global warming.

And yet, some people can claim the IPCC is truthful  about global warming  but dedicated liars about nuclear energy.  Well, whatever! The movie Pandora's Promise has a really good bit about this.  Comic relief! Watch the movie!

Next: Vermont Law School. But meanwhile, if people think they can't trust the IPCC, maybe they can trust Benjamin Sovacool, a leader at Vermont Law School and a dedicated foe of all nuclear energy? (Really, he's written anti-nuclear books). And Sovacool also did a life-cycle carbon dioxide footprint for various sorts of energy. I have no doubt that he did his level best to make nuclear look bad.

Sovacool's numbers are in the Wikipedia article. Sovacool calculated these life-cycle numbers:

• solar PV at 33 g CO2/kWh
• nuclear at 66 grams ("various reactor types") 
• natural gas combined cycle at 443 grams.  

Well, I guess Sovacool kind of bashed nuclear, huh?  But this doesn't  exactly show "Nuking the Climate," does it? I am sure he tried, though, gotta give him credit for trying...

It Really Rides. Hypocrisy Rides Again

According to the Vermont Agency for Natural Resources, as of a few years ago, 46% of Vermont's greenhouse gas emissions came from transportation, and 4% came from electricity generation. ( See page 22 of this pdf from the Agency.)

So what's with all these people getting into gasoline-fired vehicles and heading on down to New York City?  Aren't they GASSING the climate! Of course they are.

They are riding the climate to death!

And I suspect they feel very virtuous about it, too.

---
End note: Someone asked me  about the carbon dioxide footprint of this march. I don't know, but I welcome comments that would try to calculate it.

Vermont Loses Lawsuit Against NRC about Water Quality Permit

The Intervenors (and Vermont) Sue the NRC and Lose

The New England Coalition (NEC) is an intervenor that has fought Vermont Yankee since before the plant opened.  About a year ago, NEC brought a lawsuit against the NRC.  NEC claimed  that the NRC should not have granted Vermont Yankee a license extension because the plant did not have an up-to-date water quality permit issued by the state. They claimed that Vermont Yankee's NRC license was invalid, and had to be rescinded.

Late last month, NEC lost the lawsuit.  The U.S Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. ruled against NEC and for the NRC.  You can read the ruling here.

Liz Miller
DPS Commissioner

Oops!  Did I say NEC lost the suit?  What I meant was that the Vermont Department of Public Service  (DPS) and NEC lost the suit, because Vermont joined the suit.  DPS joined the suit big-time.  Liz Miller, the DPS Commissioner, argued the case before the Court.

The State's Case and My Opinion

I found the state's case quite odd. I wrote an blog post last year -- A State of Confusion: The Suit about the Water Quality Permit.  As I said at the time: the state is the one that issues water quality permits.  If the plant's water quality permit was not up to the state's requirements, the state should have insisted that the plant do something about this.  Instead, the state sued the NRC, saying the NRC should not have issued the license extension.

In other words, Vermont claimed that Vermont hadn't cared about the water quality permit status, but the NRC should have cared.  My guess was this argument wouldn't convince a court.

It didn't.

The Court's Opinion

The court ruling was related to what I had expected, but different.  The appeals court ruled that the state had an obligation to bring up this contention before the NRC during the hearing, not wait until the license was granted and come in with an "oh, by the way" lawsuit.  To quote the ruling:

“.. petitioners here were required under agency regulations to afford the full Commission an opportunity to pass on the section 401 issue before seeking judicial review. And they had repeated opportunities to do so...[they] sat silent for two and one-half years thereafter, raising their... objection only after the Commission issued the license renewal in March 2011.”

The Opponents' Opinions

Many of the opponents cried bitter tears that the NRC had escaped on a procedural technicality.

According to VPR, a NEC spokesman, Chris Killen, said: "The New England Coalition, and all Vermonters, have now been deprived of the right that was guaranteed to them by Congress, to have a say in how this plant affects clean water." According to the same article, Shumlin's spokesman  John Being said "We're disappointed that the court declined to address our substantive water quality argument and instead ruled, based upon kind of a technical issue, a procedural issue,"

Pat Parentau
Vermont Law School

However, in the same VPR article, Pat Parentau of Vermont Law School said the court ruled on a fundamental point of administrative law.

"Where there's a clear process to raise an issue, before the commission - that‘s the key - before the commission itself - that you can't miss that opportunity and expect the circuit court to hear your argument," he said.

Pat Parentau would like to see Vermont Yankee shut down, but he knows this ruling was not procedural nit-picking.

The Next Step

Of course, Vermont claims it is considering an appeal to the Supreme Court.  Vermont always wants to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. (Take It To the Limit.)  However, most people admit that this ruling is the final ruling. The Supreme Court won't hear the case. The Supreme Court rarely reviews rulings that are made on the basis of administrative law.  So the next step is---this ruling will stand.

It's funny how often Vermont gets tripped up by the Constitution or by customary administrative law requirements, or other stuff like that. It's almost as if our administration doesn't think things through. (sarcasm alert)

Oh By The Way

Let's talk "substantive issues" here for a moment.

First issue.  Vermont Water Quality Reviews are On-Going: The Agency of Natural Resources (ANR)  has been working on a water quality permit with Vermont Yankee since 2006.  To quote a Brattleboro Reformer article on the lawsuit: ANR is still in the process of determining whether Yankee should receive a permit to discharge non-radioactive cooling water -- at up to 100 degrees -- into the Connecticut River. That process has been going on since 2006 and is not expected to be resolved anytime too soon.  In other words, what the heck was this Vermont lawsuit about?

Second issue. Why Is the Department of Public Service doing this?  The Department of Public Service is supposed to be protecting the rate-payer in hearings before the Public Service Board, not running down to Washington to join intervenor lawsuits.  However, as I said in my blog post: Gaz Metro Deal Goes Forward. Ratepayers Stiffed. the DPS is not defending the ratepayer.  The DPS is just another one of the ducks that Governor Shumlin gets in order.

A New Blog at Vermont Law School

The Announcement

Two days ago, Vermont Law School (VLS) announced they were starting a blog about the Vermont Yankee law suit. The announcement was quickly picked up by the Burlington Free Press, and you can read the Law School blog here. I have also added it to my blog roll.

As a blogger, I would call it a weak blog. That is not a comment on the views expressed but on the shallowness of the blogging. There' s one blog post by Pat Parentau, there's a reprint of a Vermont Public Radio interview with Entergy's lawyer, Cheryl Hanna, and there are links to several posts by Donald Kreis. These posts previously appeared in Vermont Digger: the most recent of these posts is An Inconvenient Truth: Entergy Might Win.

I feel as if someone at VLS said: "You know, we should be blogging about that lawsuit. We've been advising the legislature about it forever, so we should really get out there with a blog." So they threw some old posts together, and presto, a blog!

Radio Mistakes

So far, the VLS blog doesn't have much value-added, but that may improve. Pat Parentau's post is new content, at least. I find Parentau's arguments a bit muddy. However, I am also prejudiced by the fact that he made so many mistakes on a radio show recently.

Parentau was on WCFR on May 5, along with some friends of mine such as John McClaughry. On that show, Parentau claimed that several things had "disillusioned" Vermonters and caused Vermont to pass Act 160. (Act 160 took power from the Public Service Board and gave it to the legislature.)

According to Parentau, three things that caused the legislature to pass Act 160 were:

• the cooling tower collapse (2007),
• the tritium leak (2010)
• the "lies" about the underground pipes (2009).

However, Act 160 was passed in 2006, before any of these things happened!

I have a hard time taking a person seriously when he has the event sequence completely backwards. I couldn't believe my ears, and had to check with other people who were listening to the radio program. Did Parentau really say those things? The other people said that they heard what I had heard. However, I hope that WCFR posts a tape or transcript of the show so I can check further.

The VLS Blog Could Be Good

VLS started a blog. It isn't very good. So why do I care?

The problem is that the lawsuit situation in Vermont is getting out of hand. Lawsuits are breeding like rabbits--the kind of rabbits that live where there aren't enough natural predators. I want to blog about the lawsuits, but I am feeling overwhelmed by the number of legal actions (and by the fact that I'm a not a lawyer, I'm a chemist). Here's a list of existing lawsuits as I understand them now.

• The main Entergy lawsuit against Vermont
• The Entergy request for injunction, so that Vermont does not take action while the main lawsuit is pending
• Vermont's answer to the request for injunction.
• Massachusetts joining the main lawsuit on the side of Vermont.
• Various groups (VPIRG, NEC, CLF) attempting to enter the main Entergy lawsuit on the side of Vermont (as intervenors) and being turned down by the court.
• The same groups filing Amicus Curiae briefs.
• A separate lawsuit claiming that Entergy didn't apply for a water quality permit. This lawsuit is against Entergy, brought by another state agency in Vermont.
• Various groups bringing actions against the NRC, saying that they shouldn't have given Entergy a license extension because of the supposed lack of water permit, or Fukushima, or something. I lose track of these anti-NRC actions very easily. They come so fast and furious around here.

There's more. The Attorney General of Vermont is preparing some kind of suit about the piping. Just a bit late, hey? Also, I think the state passed a Bill of Attainder against Entergy and I want to blog about that.

I would welcome a respectable blog by lawyers about the Vermont Yankee legal situation, even though the VLS lawyers are on the other side of the fence. What I see is something quite different. The VLS blog is a "we should be blogging, right?" blog, practically devoid of content, except for reprints of old articles.

Oh well. I think it is going to be up to me to blog about all these rabbits--I mean, all these lawsuits. I hope the VLS blog can become useful, but so far...well, not really.

Photo of Oakes Hall at Vermont Law School from Wikipedia

Rabbits overrunning the University of Victoria campus, from Wikipedia

Smiling Sharks at the State House

A guest post by Howard Shaffer III. He reports on a visit to the Vermont Law School and several visits to the Vermont State House where (surprise surprise) the people who are asked to testify are devoted to closing Vermont Yankee.



SMILING SHARKS IN THE VERMONT STATEHOUSE

Late January events

On January 27th, the Joint Natural Resources and Energy Committees (House and Senate committees) met to hear testimony . The Vermont Energy Education office was the first one to present their information. The Energy Education mission is to look at all sources of energy, and to teach about advantages and disadvantages. Though there are many forms of energy used in this country (for heat, transportation, etc) the presenters only talked about electric power; how it is generated and how it can be conserved. Oddly, they never mentioned steam power generation of any kind. They spoke only of wind and solar.

The next speakers were Beyond Nuclear speakers Kevin Kamps, and Lorriane Rekmans. The announcement describes Ms. Rekmans as follows:

Lorraine Rekmans grew up in the Serpent River First Nation community from Elliot Lake, Ontario. Her community has experienced increased cancers, and devastating environmental damage from exposure as a result of uranium mining.

In Montpelier, Rekmans tried to persuade us that bad uranium mining practices in Canada fifty years ago, adversely affecting indigenous peoples, are somehow a fault of Vermont Yankee. Also, shutting down the plant will correct these mining practices. Or else it was an emotional ploy. I heard Mr. Kamps again, this time with Paul Gunter, the next night in Norwich at a Sierra Club meeting.

Still in Montpelier, though, after the Joint hearing, I briefly attended a Senate Finance Committee hearing where the Department of Public Service reviewed all the issues under consideration. VY was not mentioned. I moved on to the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee where the Gundersens were describing the trail of submissions related to VY's underground piping. The conclusion was the Legislature was misled.

The committee recessed to attend the governor's press conference, where Governor Douglas said VY had lost the trust of the people over the buried piping issue. The Committee then reconvened to hear the rest of the testimony, and do a Q&A. It wasn't pretty. The Chair, Rep. Klein said he is an anti nuke. (No surprise there, since an article containing some biography said he was raised near Indian Point and his parents were suspicious of nuclear.) H He also said that the Legislature is doing the regulator's job (emphasis added) and once a vote is taken the Legislature will be out of the loop.

Early February

On the evening of February 9, there was a meeting about Vermont Yankee at Vermont Law School. The Gundersens were on a panel with Jim Moore of VPIRG and Prof. Don Kreis of the Law School. Mr. Moore had been asked to review some of the Vermont Legislative history of VY and he reviewed it.

The Gundersens discussed the situation at VY and also made a remark that made the NRC sound special and not subject to Congressional oversight. I questioned that. In response to my question about the NRC being like the other regualatory agencies, Mrs. G. said that the Commissioners were in the pocket of the industry.

Prof. Kreis reviewed more of the legal history. During the Q&A he criticized Mrs. G. for disparaging the NRC Commissioner's integrity. He said such smearing is not helpful to the process, having been a Regulator himself.

As part of the legal history review of the VY situation, Prof Kreis said that it is an OPEN QUESTION whether or not the Vermont Legislature can do what is being attempted - block VY's consideration by the Public Service Board for an extension to its Certificate of Public Good., thus keeping the plant from continuing to operate beyond the end of the current certificate, which expires on the same day as the current NRC license. In conversation with him after the program, I raised the issue of the famous Supreme Court case under Justice Marshall in 1810. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that a following Legislature can't pass a law negating contracts with the State which were approved by a preceding Legislature. He said the Law School has a contract with the Legislature to provide advice on these matters, and could not say more. I said I understood. The moderator of the Q&A period, Prof Mears said all the lawyers expect the VY issue to wind up in court.

On February 10, I was back in Montpelier for a session of the the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee. They had chosen to have Mr. Ray Shadis, a well-known antinuclear activist testify by phone on the nuclear fuel cycle. I learned that all mining problems are a reason to shut down VY and that thorium is fissionable!!

Next on the agenda was a Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee hearing. I have attended many different committee hearings over the past years while tracking and learning about the Vermont Yankee and energy issues. This hearing was moved from the committee's small room to a larger hearing room. On deck were Arnie and Maggie Gundersen to enlighten all about the VY situation. WCAX-TV was set up to tape the entire testimony, which was linked to a Burlington Free Press article that day. See an earlier post on this blog to watch the testimony. Better than that, read a good review of the testimony at Is Arnie Gundersen Devious or Dumb.

Before the hearing on February 10 with the Gundersens, I spoke to one of VY's Lobbyists, from a Montpelier firm. I said it looked to me like sharks circling in the water, but he has probably seen it before. He said yes, but never this bad. The sharks were smiling too.

Tritium and Liars

I told myself I wouldn't use the L-word, Liar, to describe people who don't like nuclear energy. I hear it often enough from them, heaven knows. "Liar" is one of the first things said, under most circumstances.

For example, at the anti-VY walker potluck I attended, someone made an announcement that tritium (really, tritiated water) has been found by a test well near Vermont Yankee. Yankee dug those wells to look for tritium, since it has been a problem at other plants. As you can see from this newspaper article, Yankee found a very small amount of tritium. Bill Irwin is the head of the Vermont Public Health department radiological unit. A quote: "The level discovered in the well wouldn’t cause any appreciable dose if it were to be consumed, said Irwin."

The level discovered in the well is less than the EPA limit for drinking water. Vermont Yankee is getting busy looking for its source.

Now of course, at the potluck, I expected the Walkers to be jubilant about the discovery of tritium, and they were. More ammo for their side. However, what I didn't expect was the chorus of "So, they lied to us again! They lied to us about tritium. They said there couldn't be any tritium and look, they lied." The L-word was being thrown around fast and furiously.

Now, I think it is very unlikely that a company would drill test wells to detect something and simultaneously say there is no possibility that there is any of that substance for miles around. More likely, Vermont Yankee said that they felt it was very unlikely that they would find tritium. That wasn't a lie. They hadn't found any yet, for Pete's sake, in any of their wells. For decades.

Quick to accuse, do the walkers themselves tell lies? Between us, Howard Shaffer and I have been to three events of the anti-Vermont Yankee walkers.

1) A debate with a nuclear expert. The expert was actually a comic actor. This was never announced.

2) A potluck, supposedly including talks by experts about conservation in the home. No experts arrived and conservation was barely discussed.

3) A potluck with a "panel of experts" at Vermont Law School. My friend Howard was the only expert there. No other experts attended.

Okay. I'm not going to use the L-word about the walkers. But I'm thinking it.

Where Were the Experts?

Howard Shaffer, a nuclear engineer and former congressional fellow, is our guest blogger today. Howard met with the Anti-VY walkers at Vermont Law School. The official walk website lists this event as Potluck followed by discussion including presentations by experts.Vermont Law School, program with discussion group Here is Howard's report.

The Anti-VY walkers began their walk on January 2. On the day I met them in Royalton, they had covered five miles in temperatures in the teens. They were hanging out in the Yates common room at Vermont Law School, during school vacation, when I got there at 5:30. Potluck was at 6. I have been to the Law School many times since I returned to this area in 2002. I have an essay in their Journal of Environmental Law. The school is known as the leading school in the country for environmental law.

There were about 40 people there, not all Walkers. I asked about how they were faring. They said they were OK, and they thanked me for asking. The organizer from Citizens Awareness Network (CAN) asked why I was there. I told him that I had been doing Public Outreach for nuclear for over 30 years. A student from Keene State College talked to me. One of her relatives works at Sikorsky, as does one of my sons. She talked about the replacement life of helicopter parts, and extended this to not relicensing Vermont Yankee. She was the typical “fire hose” talker, hardly letting a word in edgewise, and raising every issue, from corporate salary, indigenous peoples rights, and waste, to cost and how shutting down VY will promote renewables.

The website advertised a presentation by experts, but there were none. Everyone sat in circle and introduced themselves. There were a few students from the Law School, including one who came to study Environmental Law and shut down VY. I said I was a PE in nuclear engineering in Vermont. I had come to VY 40 years ago this coming summer as a Startup Engineer after submarine service. I have been doing Outreach for 30 years. After introductions the floor was opened to statements, moderated by one of the organizers.

Concerns were the usual: fear of radiation, the waste, and the VY plant somehow blocking alternative energy supplies. There was the usual quoting of the regulations that “No amount of radiation is safe.” Hattie Nestel said that uranium starts emitting when it is dug up and above ground. An emotional man said that the plant routinely emits radiation and if VY is shut down, then since Yankee at Rowe, MA, Connecticut Yankee, and Maine Yankee have been shut, there would be a 100 mile area in which an organic farm could be located. One person said the plant doesn’t make any money, which is why Entergy wants to puts its merchant plants into a company called Enexus that would only own six merchant nukes. Another said that VY is a cash cow. (No one mentioned the contradiction.) One law student asked where the power would come from if the plant is shut down.

The meeting ended at around 8:00 so that the Walkers could get their house assignments for overnight. One walker from Massachusetts works with special needs children. Her uncle was a physicist and her brothers are engineers. She hugged me. Another thanked me for coming. Others told me how brave I was for coming to the meeting. I replied that I knew they didn't hit people.

Prologue to a Fake Debate

When discussing Vermont Yankee, it is always hard to know where to start, and how much to assume that people know. I will begin with some basics. The Vermont Yankee plant was owned by a consortium of utilities, and in 2002 it was sold to Entergy. At that point, various agreements were set up in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which is worth a couple of blog posts on its own.

When Vermont Yankee's original license runs out in 2012, it requires the approval of the Vermont Legislature before the Public Service Board can issue a Certificate of Public Good for a renewed operating permit. This legislative involvement is highly unusual. License extension usually requires an NRC ruling and approval by the state PUC or Public Service Board, but legislatures don't get involved. To meet the 2012 license expiration date, the legislature must vote this year or next to approve or not approve the license extension.

The fact that the legislature has to approve a license extension is seen by many as a referendum on nuclear. Anti-s from all over the country have flooded into Vermont. I met a man from the Citizen's Awareness Network who had been dispatched here from the Great Plains. He was fighting a coal plant for them. Greenpeace has opened an office in Vermont, specifically targeting Vermont Yankee. And don't get me wrong, these people are well-funded. I don't know where they get their funding, but their funding sources are clearly national, and right now, they have focused their attention on Vermont.

And now, on with our story.

Currently there is a walk from Brattleboro to Montpelier to shut down Vermont Yankee. The protesters plan to arrive in Montpelier with a petition to the legislature, etc. As part of the walk, there was supposed to be a potluck and debate about the plant in Putney on Saturday night. A "debate" means that someone was defending Yankee, so I was very interested in attending and supporting that person. According to the web announcement at the time, a man named William Newcomb, of NUCORPAC (Nuclear Corporation PAC) was supposed to be the pro-nuclear debater. He was to debate Deb Katz, of Citizens Awareness Network. When I looked at the anti-VY walk site, however, it claimed that Ms. Katz was debating "Will Nukem".

I couldn't figure this out. Who was William Newcomb? Nobody I knew had ever heard of him. And were the organizers making fun of the poor man's name by calling him "Will Nukem"? Also, Nucor is a steel company: there is no nuclear NUCORPAC.

I emailed the organizers, and they emailed back quickly and politely. They explained that "Will Nukem," is a comic role played by our actor friend Court Dorsey. (taken from one of the emails I received.) They assured me that it would still be an interesting and informative debate. I suggested that announcing it as a debate was misleading, since the pro-nuclear debater was a comic actor, but nothing was changed. The "debate" was widely announced and open to the public.

I resolved to go and hear this. Howard Shaffer and I decided to drive down to Putney together.

A word about Howard Shaffer III. He was a Submarine Engineer Officer, is a P.E. in Vermont and New Hampshire, was Startup Engineer at Vermont Yankee, and was a Congressional Fellow in 2001. He is in NEI's third party expert program and is a nuclear power advocate. Howard wrote an excellent commentary on nuclear energy for the Vermont Law School Journal. Howard and I often go to hearings and other VY-related events together.

It was a dark and stormy night (well, snow was threatening) when Howard and I got into the car to drive to Putney and hear the debate with Will Nukem. Tune into the next post to read about the debate.