Press Conference

Repowering Vermont?

Last summer, VPIRG issued a report Repowering Vermont, explaining how renewables will provide power after (they hope) Vermont Yankee is closed. I discussed this report to some extent in my recent post on the Legislative Consensus economic report.

The Group and The Evaluation

I belong to a group, Coalition for Energy Solutions. We are all local energy professionals: one physicist, one chemist (me), and four engineers. Some of us have active careers and companies, some are semi-retired. At any rate, we felt that this VPIRG report overstated the ease of replacing Vermont Yankee with renewables, and understated the costs. (Actually, they didn't state the costs.) We began doing research for a report on the costs and engineering feasibility of their recommendations.

It has been a long road, in which we evaluated the capacity factors of wind farms in Maine, called foresters to assess the sustainable yield of our northern forests, and tried to assess the costs and reliability of cow power. And of course, we argued with each other, and improved our estimates, and argued and improved some more. All six of us seem to be from Missouri...Show Me! We finally finished the report: well-documented, a little geeky, low on graphics, but we backed up every straight-forward number, and argued out every estimated factor. Let's put it this way: I think it's the best report out there on renewables for Vermont, and I'm not just saying that because I am one of the authors.

Launching Now!

So, now it's Showtime! We are having a press conference at the Statehouse in Montpelier to launch the report tomorrow afternoon. We all chipped in for xeroxing and we will give a copy to every legislator in Vermont tomorrow. Patty O'Donnell, the representative from Vernon, reserved the room for us. We will be introduced by Representative O'Donnell and Senator Peg Flory, a Senator who voted for Vermont Yankee.

I include the press release below. A summary of the report is on our website, and the entire report can be downloaded from that page of the site. (You don't have to register.)

A Thank You

A huge thank-you to Rod Adams of Atomic Insights for his post about this press conference.

Press Release

PRESS CONFERENCE

STATE HOUSE - Cedar Creek Room

APRIL 30

1:30 -3:00 pm

Subject: Release of Vermont Electric Power In Transition (VEPIT), an Evaluation of the feasibility of the renewable proposals in the 2009 VPIRG report, Repowering Vermont.

The VEPIT Evaluation has been prepared by the Coalition for Energy Solutions, a group of six engineers and scientists from the Upper Valley, four of them Vermonters. They are: Meredith Angwin, Wilder; Steve Fox, South Pomfret; Willem Post, Woodstock; Peter Roth, Quechee; Robert Hargraves, Hanover, NH; and Howard Shaffer, Enfield, NH.

Our Evaluation makes the same assumptions about total electric demand, total purchases from the grid, and complete use of renewables (no extensive gas-fired back-up) as Repowering Vermont. Both Repowering Vermont and our Evaluation assume that Vermont Yankee power will not be available to Vermont. Both consider only the issue of where Vermont (not New Hampshire or Massachusetts) get their energy supply. Both consider solar, biomass, wind, cow power, hydro and landfill methane.

However, our Evaluation also considers the engineering realities of cost, location, and environmental impact. Our evaluation uses appropriate capacity factors for wind, solar, and biomass availability, and documents its sources. The Evaluation uses the best cost data it could find, and documents its sources. Repowering Vermont does not state its capacity factors, and its “economic evaluation” is not traceable.

Our Evaluation separates engineering from policy. It includes some policy recommendations in an Afterword. It finds that the proposed supplies could be built if sufficient funds were available. Building all those renewables will take far longer than estimated in Repowering Vermont, because of the impacts discussed.

Our Evaluation does not discuss Vermont Yankee issues. However, the conclusions of the Evaluation, and the general opinion of the Coalition members, favor extending VY’s license while building renewables at an achievable pace.

Our Evaluation, and more information about the Coalition and its members may be viewed at:http://www.coalitionforenergysolutions.org.

For more information contact Howard Shaffer or Meredith Angwin.

Three Views of the Outage

The First View: Business is Booming in Brattleboro

Vermont Yankee is on a refueling outage, and business is booming in Brattleboro. This video shows people in Brattleboro who own small businesses, and are happy with the lively days and free-flowing money of the nuclear workers coming into town for the outage. They are happy with the plant, too.

This is a group that doesn't go to Vermont Yankee hearings in the evenings. This is a group you seldom see on TV.




(If you can't access the embedded video, you should be able to link to it here.)

The Second View: Hatred of the Plant and Its People

Not everyone in Brattleboro likes the plant or its people.

On the "Save Vermont Yankee" group page in Facebook, Entergy employee Theresa Derting had this post:

Went to a local hardware store today and bought some last-minute supplies for the outage, used my company credit card, and got sneered at by the guy taking my money. Guess who won't go back there?

(I have Ms. Dertling's permission to use this post in my blog.)

I would like to think that being sneered at because you work for Entergy is an unusual occurrence in Brattleboro, but it isn't. Brattleboro votes against Vermont Yankee. Brattleboro sent two of the most fervent anti-VY people (Rep. Sarah Edwards and Pro Temp Peter Shumlin) to the Statehouse. A constant stream of anti-VY letters-to-the-editor in the Brattleboro paper serve to infuriate or depress plant employees in Vernon. The people at the plant call the Brattleboro paper the Mis-Informer and many of them refuse to read it.

Emails

Plant employees are often treated like pariahs. My evidence comes from emails that I have received, and postings on the Save Vermont Yankee page of Facebook.

• One Entergy employee said that when the employees went to Montpelier last May, senators and representatives "seemed to be avoiding us."
• Another employee emailed me that she frequently feels like crying, because her family is from the area and she feels so many of the locals hate the employees.
• An employee of nuclear plant in the South visited VY to do some benchmarking. She emailed me that felt she didn't want to admit that she worked at the plant while she was in downtown Brattleboro. She felt very uncomfortable.

I have more examples, but in the interest of length, I will stop here.

In an earlier post, I talked about the two cultures, and people at the plant and anti-nuclear people were unlikely to see eye to eye. In the VPR article about the two cultures, people at the plant talked of their jobs, church and families. Some spoke of feeling unwelcome. In contrast, anti-nuclear people spoke of their fears that something would go wrong at the plant and hurt them. Different issues for the different groups. The article on two cultures is well worth reading.

Brattleboro is Southern Vermont

This is hard to write, because most people (at the plant, in Brattleboro) are good people and treat each other well. Yet there is a significant minority in Brattleboro who are happy to marginalize plant employees and temporary workers. Some of these people treat VY employees as non-people who have no feelings, and generally act as if the people of Brattleboro are the ruling class and the people of Vernon are.....

Hey, I'll go further. I'll say what I mean. Some anti-nuclear people in Brattleboro act as if they are the whites in the pre-integration South.

The whites in the pre-integration South were top dogs. They were defending their way of life from interlopers and frightening possibilities. The whites of the Old South were sure they were right, and they were highly self-righteous. They weren't shy about keeping the "others" in their place with interruptions and other methods of showing that the words and actions of the marginalized people didn't count for much. They were proud of these actions.

It sounds familiar.

This attitude is not universal among the anti-nuclear people in Brattleboro, and most people on both sides of the fence are basically good-hearted. But I would be lying if I said that scorn of plant workers is uncommon in Brattleboro.

The Third View: The View from Montpelier

Outages are scheduled, plant project charts are prepared, but Montpelier goes right ahead with its agenda.

If you remember, in a post about Old Tritium and New Problems, I described how the Conservation Law Foundation had persuaded (or maybe forced) the Public Service Board to open up a whole new docket about Vermont Yankee, docket 7600. This docket is not about license renewal; it's about shutting the plant down early due to the leak of tritiated water. In my February 27 post, I suggested that the leak would be found and fixed before the new docket could get underway.

I was right, but mere facts can't stop a docket. There's been all sorts of flapping around because the various intervenor consultants on that docket want to visit VY and see the holes and the remediation. They want to come, outage or no outage. The consultants can't re-arrange their schedules. Also, it is possible that the remediation work could finish during the outage and the consultants wouldn't get to see it. The consultants will visit Thursday, April 29, during the outage. The Burlington Free Press blogged about this. The Public Service Board interviewed all stakeholders and issued a Board Order. The visit will happen despite the outage.

Parking on site will be a problem, due to hundreds of extra workers. Security may also be a problem. The visitors will have to carpool from an off-site parking lot. I am sure this will work out fine, with only minimum inconvenience to the intervenors.

End Note:

Tamar Cerafici has an excellent post today about the communications issues at Vermont Yankee. My friend Tamar is a lawyer who lives in New Hampshire.

Economic Reports: De-Constructed

Green or Hybrid: The Confusing Options

Once again, I return to the three reports on the economic effects of closing Vermont Yankee.

• The legislature's consensus report
• The IBEW report
• The VPIRG report

An earlier post considered the relatively simply case of shutting or relicensing Vermont Yankee. Both the legislative report and the IBEW report had similar findings of a loss of $60 to $90 million dollars per year for economic impact on Vermont, and around $10 million dollars per year fiscal impact (taxes) on Vermont government. Both reports show the loss of 1,000 jobs per year in the state.

I pointed out, however, that the legislative report made the odd assumption that by 2040, there will be 1500 GWh per year saved through efficiency. Since Vermont only uses about 6,000 to 7,000 GWh per year, that seemed high to me.

Green and Hybrid

The earlier post considered the first two options in the report: Shut Down Vermont Yankee or Relicense Vermont Yankee. This post considers the Green and Hybrid options, options 3 and 4 of the consensus report. This is the hard part to understand.

3) Shut down VY and start an aggressive Green Energy building program (Green Scenario)

4) Relicense Vermont VY and start an aggressive Green Energy building program (Hybrid Scenario)

Background

According to the Brattleboro Reformer, the model used in the consensus report took 16 months to create, and then two economists did two separate forecasts. Then the two economists put together this report (consensus).

I believe that the analysis of the first two options (relicense and shut down) were not particularly difficult, and used standard models. I also believe that the second two options (Green and Hybrid) were contentious and political.

With teams of economists working for over a year, this blogger is aware that she can't do a particularly complete critique. So I am putting together some ideas to think about, rather than a complete analysis.

With options three and four, we have moved away from the IBEW report. The IBEW report doesn't assess a Green option, though the VPIRG report sort-of covers it (without many dollars attached.) This post is my attempt to understand the Green and Hybrid options in the legislature's report, and I will occasionally compare these options to the options in the VPIRG report.

Various aspects of the Green and Hybrid Options are discussed separately below.

Load Reduction

All options in the legislative report include load reduction through efficiency: 1658 GWh/year for the simple relicensing or shut-down scenarios, and 2591 GWh/year for the Green and Hybrid scenarios. (page 5 of the legislative report, both numbers by 2040) For comparison, according to the Vermont Department of Public Service, in 2003, Vermont Yankee supplied 2131 GWh to the state of Vermont. out of a total of 6,009 GWh.

These assumptions on reduction-through-efficiency are actually more stringent than those of the VPIRG report, which assumes that Vermont will use either 6300 or 8400 GWh per year in 2032(pages 18 and 19, Moderate and Strong Scenarios). I believe 2,000 GWh of load reduction is unrealistic. However, since the legislative report executive summary does not give a number for total load in 2040,the 2541 GWh/year reduction could be compared to a unreduced theoretical load of 12,000 GWh by 2040, for all I know.

Renewable Build-out

The legislative report lists a significant amount of renewables that the Green and Hybrid scenarios will build. Some of these include:

• 100 GWh provided by community scale wind
• 510 GWh provided by utility scale wind
• 29 GWh provided by utility scale solar PV
• 125 GWh provided by biomass (I assume this is wood, since methane is called out seperately).

This is far less aggressive a build-out than VPIRG used in Repowering Vermont. The VPIRG report calls for:

• 1463 GWh of wind from "large" wind farms (I assume utility plus community scale).
• 430 GWh from solar PV
• 1,379 GWh of wood biomass

I am quoting the lower "moderate case" VPIRG numbers, not the higher "strong case" numbers. The "strong case" assumes a major electrification of the transportation sector, and I don't think those numbers are comparable.

I think the legislative report numbers for building renewables are far more realistic than the VPIRG numbers, though think the legislature's load reduction numbers are less realistic.

Costs of Power

The legislative report and VPIRG report both waffle on this one.

VPIRG claims the renewable power mix will be around 7.3 cents per KWh, (page 15) despite the fact that the feed-in tariffs for renewables are set for twenty years at 12 to 30 cents per KWh. It appears that the VPIRG report takes credit for the avoided costs of the power that is not produced due to efficiency (page 32), but the method of factoring this into the mix is not made clear.

The legislative report about the cost of green power is quite confusing (or rather, it is quite confused). The report has these straight-forward statements about shutting down Vermont Yankee (page 9, edited for length)

Even assuming replacement power at market prices, the retail power bill is likely to be higher in the event of plant closure, resulting in additional negative economic impacts. Power bill impacts associated with the plant shutdown will further reduce employment by about 120 jobs per year....Total VY Shutdown scenario impacts, relative to the Relicense scenario, result in about 1,100 fewer jobs per year and real disposable personal income levels more than $60 million per year (in 2012 dollars) below VY Relicense levels between 2013 and 2031.

On page 10, however, the report discusses the electricity cost rises of Green Scenario in quite a different manner:

Retail power bills in the Green scenario are generally higher than most other scenarios in the initial 5+ years, but are substantially lower in the out years as consumers buy less power and competitive power source fuel prices (driven by projected fossil fuel price increases and national greenhouse gas limits), increase substantially in real terms. Even with additional negative RSA impacts through 2023, beneficial power bill impacts will eventually result in more than 1,000 jobs per year by 2040.

Okay. Let's leave those green employment impacts alone for a moment and try to parse the earlier part of this sentence.

1. Power bills are higher in the green scenario. I believe this.
2. People therefore buy less power in the green scenario. I believe this.
3. Therefore power bills come down and jobs are created. I don't believe this

In this scenario, the price of power drops but people still don't buy more power. It simply doesn't make sense. People are being priced out of using power, power prices come down from lower demand...and people still don't buy power. Somehow, this creates jobs??

In contrast, here's the standard market story:

Oranges are only available in the south, or for high prices in the north. People in the south notice this, and begin shipping more oranges north, hoping to make lots of money from their high-priced product. Since so many oranges show up in the north, the price of oranges in the north comes down. Therefore, people in the north eat more oranges. Etc.

In contrast, in this legislative analysis, the price of power comes down but people still don't buy more power. This makes no sense except for the following fact:

The entire analysis is driven by the required load reduction.

The analysis assumes that people will use 2,500 less GWh in 2040 than they use now. This isn't an output of the model. It's an input to the modeling.

In general, the graph at the head of this post (lifted from the consensus report) is the graph everyone likes, because it shows that continuing Vermont Yankee while building renewables is the best path for Vermont. The blue line of the "hybrid" scenario is clearly the best for Vermont. I like that graph also.

However, considering how the modeling was done, this jobs-in-the-green-scenario graph is more telling.


You will note that Safstor (early-stage decommissioning) adds jobs, energy efficiency adds jobs, green buildout adds jobs. All of this happens despite the high price of power. The lower price of power in later years doesn't seem to have any effect. However, anti-Vermont Yankee legislators love this graph because it proves that we don't need Vermont Yankee for jobs. If you believe it.

Modeling

A friend of mine, an excellent scientist, said that if you gave her twelve parameters, she could curve-fit an elephant. With overly-complicated models, you can easily delude yourself that you have found the right answers. (She believes in simple models whenever possible.)

The econometric model of the legislative report has many parameters and some careful thought. Unfortunately, the results don't make sense. The results basically violate simple economic principles of supply and demand.

Complex models of physical phenomena should be checked by experiment, and complex economic projections should be checked by common sense.

Despite the problems of these models, I believe that Vermont Yankee plus renewables is the correct way forward for Vermont. IBEW and the legislative model agree on the negative economic effects of a simple shut-down of the plant. I am disappointed that I cannot find the legislative model convincing about the positive effects of a green build-out.

The legislative model contains too many assumptions about efficiency, too many parameters, and perhaps too much politics. I want Vermont Yankee plus green build-out for Vermont. I wish I could have more faith in the model presented to us by the legislature.

Graphs and quotes are from the Consensus Economic and Fiscal Impact Analysis Associated with the Future of the Vermont Yankee Power Plant, Executive Summary, March 2010, prepared by Economic & Policy Resources, Inc. and Kavet, Rockler & Associates, LLC

In collaboration with Synapse Energy Economics, Inc., the Vermont Department of Public Service, Green Mountain Power Corp. and Central Vermont Public Service Corp.

The Legal Report

While I took the weekend off and left town (silly me!) the report by Morgan Lewis & Bockius was issued. Entergy had hired this law firm to do an internal investigation who-knew-what and who-said-what about underground pipes and radionuclides. The report was much discussed, even before its release. In an earlier post, I suggested that some of the report might not be released because it contained personnel matters which should not be made public.

The report was released over the weekend. A storm of commentary has followed: it is incomplete, Entergy isn't playing straight, etc.

I have to admit, I haven't read the report yet.

Until I do read the report and blog about it, I suggest two sources of information.

The Blog: Rod Adams wrote an excellent post on the report and miscommunications as weapons. His post includes links to the legislative acts that formed the oversight panels, background on the panel participants, and even some comments by one participant. A very strong and well-written post, and he got this blogger off the hook!

The Report Itself: If you want to go straight to the horse's mouth on the report, read the actual legal report here. It is over 100 pages long. You have been warned.

The graphic is an illustration of a barrister by Henry Holiday. The original is in the book The Hunting Of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll.

Materials

Welcome, Nuclear Archer!

In the past few days, the nuclear industry has a new blogger, Nuclear Archer. He is doing a great job of explaining materials science, right down to the grain boundaries in steel. My favorite quote from his most recent post:

(A) reactor is just a design until the metallurgists say if it can be built or not.

So true! He's being honest about the materials challenges, and serious about the solutions. This blog fills an important gap in the blogosphere, in my opinion. Most nuclear bloggers are systems people. This new blog concentrates on how materials work or fail. Welcome, Nuclear Archer!

Gordon Research Conferences

This may not be totally relevant, but this summer I will attend (again) the Gordon Research Conference on high temperature materials and chemistry. Since I no longer do active research in this field, I am honored to be allowed to attend the conference. I am especially excited about the nuclear sessions.

However, I will not be blogging about the conference. Gordon Research Conferences are meant for working scientists from all over the world. At these conferences, people critique ideas, trade hypotheses, and discuss experimental methodologies. Scientists can speak freely because the discussions and results are not made public. The Gordon Conferences are a ferment of ideas and international cooperation. Later, many published peer-reviewed papers result from ideas hatched at these conferences.

However, the conferences have also been called the Leisure of the Theoried Class. (That was a little joke.)

I won't be blogging in mid-July, but I will be thinking about nuclear power.

Earth Day Video, Art and Vermont

The Video

C-Span Student Cam Grand Prize Winner for 2010

Film about energy and nuclear energy by

Madison Richards, Samantha Noll, & Lauren Nixon
8th Grade
"I've Got the Power"
McKinley Middle Charter School
Racine, WI

The Art

You may have wondered about this picture on the side of the blog. On the other hand, if you clicked on it, you would have found yourself at the website of a young artist who supports nuclear. For a long time, she wouldn't share her name, because she lives in a very "liberal" very anti-nuke community. I see she has her name up there now..Suzy Hobbs!

I encourage you to view her designs or watch her slide show. You can see her sketches on the Areva blog.

The Planet and Vermont

Daily Finance lists Five Technologies That Can Save the Planet (nuclear is one of them).

A professional nuclear society did an excellent one-page description of the legislature's assessment of Vermont Yankee and renewable options. However, if you prefer, you can read the legislature's entire executive summary here.

Keeping Vermont Yankee while building renewables is the best option for Vermont and the planet.

Happy Earth Day!

Who Said?

The NRC Meeting

I attended the NRC meeting yesterday in Brattleboro, or at least, I attended most of it. I'll blog a little about it later, but you might want to watch this video for the general idea of the endless fear of tritium in the river. Of course, we had Putting Picos in Perspective from John Wheeler, and Rod Adams excellent Tritium Calculation. Dan Yurman noted that exaggeration is not a defense of the environment and I blogged with pictures of bananas. Still, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about tritium remain alive and well in Vermont.

Perhaps devious and dumb are alive and well also.

Chasing a Quote

Last week, I went to a meeting sponsored by Entergy and blogged about it. In the blog, I posted a picture of a man from NEC (New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution). He was taking a picture of a model of a reactor. I thought it was only polite to link to the NEC website when I posted the name of the organization, and so I put in a link.

Once I was on the NEC website, I read a sentence, ascribed to Arnie Gundersen, which he supposedly stated after the Senate vote against Vermont Yankee. In this sentence, Gundersen supposedly praised NEC as being an early strong organization against Vermont Yankee, and that NEC had tied Entergy's ankles together (that "ankles" business was an easy phrase for me to remember) and other organizations had later come and pushed Entergy's shoulders, knocking them over.

Now, this sentence didn't surprise me. Before Mr. Gundersen was a consultant to the legislature of Vermont, he was a consultant to NEC. This is not a secret. His belief that VY should be shut down isn't a secret either. So I just noted that there was an interesting quote from Gundersen on the NEC website, and forgot about it. In all honesty, it didn't strike me as a particularly big deal. If I had thought it was a big deal, I would have put the exact quote on my blog.

Instant Reactions

I wish I had quoted those words and posted them.

I almost immediately got an email from NEC, stating that they had checked with Gundersen, he had never said that quote, and they had taken it off their website. I was surprised, but amended my posting.

At the Brattleboro NRC meeting yesterday, NEC had set up a table with their literature. This whole thing puzzled me, and I wanted to find out more about it. I talked to the man at the NEC table. He was very uncomfortable, and merely said that they had been asked to take down the quote, that Gundersen never said it. I asked who put the words up, if Gundersen never said them. He re-iterated that they had been asked to take it down, and that is all he knew about it. He looked completely miserable when I repeated my question.

I will never be a bull-dog reporter. I let the matter drop.

Possibilities?

I have two hypotheses here.

First possibility. Gundersen never said this. Somebody not-too-honest or not-t00-bright (okay, somebody either devious or dumb) put the sentence up, ascribed it to Gundersen and hoped Gundersen would never see it. Further, the NEC organization was not organized enough to notice this had happened. However, due to my blog, Gundersen became aware of it, and the incorrect quote was removed.

I like this possibility, because as a blogger, I strive for truth and justice, and this scenario shows me righting a serious wrong! This is my favorite possibility!

Alas, there is also possibility two. Gundersen said it, didn't mind it being posted, and then became upset when a person who doesn't buy into NEC's agenda (that is...me) noticed it. I don't like this possibility, because it shows Gundersen as being pretty naive.

Lots of people who don't agree with me read my blog, and I know it. Some reporters read it. Sierra Club members read it on occasion. Several of the walkers told me they followed my blog during the walk to Montpelier. If Gundersen and NEC think that only their supporters will read what they put on the web, they are naive beyond belief. At least, naive beyond my belief. I reject this possibility entirely.

My Vote

It's possibility-one for me. I am glad I brought this misquotation to Gundersen's attention and it got corrected. I expect Gundersen to give me a word of thanks next time we meet. (Unless, of course, the truth is possibility two, in which case he will probably be steaming mad because I made this matter public. We shall see.)