Some Thoughts on Decommissioning and Carpetbaggers

Vermont Yankee Decommissioning

I think Vermont Yankee will continue to operate, but the opponents are having a great deal of fun planning the decommissioning. There was a big meeting in Brattleboro late last month, with all sorts of speeches and excitement from the opponents. Howard Shaffer attended and blogged about it at the ANS Nuclear Cafe this week. Quoting that blog:

They demanded a “Citizens Oversight Panel” to allow them to dig in to the process, and in the words of one of the panelists, Ray Shadis, to “advocate.” It turns out that this means agitate for unrealistically low post cleanup exposure standards. They achieved this in the past by getting state standards to be lower than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission standard. This has had the effect of making decommissionings much more expensive. They boasted that, regarding the decommissionings of Maine Yankee and Yankee, the owners had to go back to the ratepayers for more money, which will be in the ratepayers’ bills for years.

I think it is only fair to note that Ray Shadis commented on this post:

I regret that I may have left you with the impression that environmental and safety enhancements we advocated at Maine Yankee drove up big costs. That was not the case.

Since I am quoting Ray, I will also quote something else. Howard emailed me that Ray made this statement at the meeting. I trust Howard to be an accurate reporter.

"We had them by the short hairs because we were intervenors." Ray Shadis

Those Workers

Howard also picked up a handout from the Vermont Citizen's Action Network and Citizen's Awareness Network, two related organizations. This handout about decommissioning was distributed at the meeting. Here's a quote:

Although waiting the proposed twenty years cuts costs and lowers worker exposure, Entergy shouldn't be trusted. Its systemic mismanagement and dishonesty makes delaying cleanup too dangerous. (emphasis added by blogger)

Apparently, in their view, increasing worker exposure is not "dangerous." Something else (delaying?) is dangerous to someone (intervenors?). Workers are a kind of untermenschenen whose safety does not matter.

Well, I could go on. For example, there's a whole anti-Yankee program to get towns in other states involved. I'm not going to review that effort in this post.

The Green Fields of Vernon?

An important part of the anti-Vermont Yankee agenda is to have decommissioning done to "greenfield" standards, instead of traditional NRC standards. In greenfield standards, the site basically becomes a park, with little trace of its industrial past. In traditional decontamination, most of the site can be released for other uses within a few years. In other words, new industrial facilities can be built there. After all, the site probably has switch yards, areas for water cooling of various processes, etc. It would be a great site for another industry.

The actual citizens of Vernon, many of whom work at the plant, have applied for a grant to study options if the plant closes. According to the Brattleboro Reformer, they plan to:

look into scenarios without the plant on-line, such as analyzing tax incentives for new industries, potential redevelopment of the site and reviewing how other towns dealt with closing of a nuclear plant.

The people in Vernon would rather have a new plant on-site than a park. They won't have this option if the intervenors once again grab the short hairs.

Carpet Baggers

This whole thing made me think a bit about who the intervenors are. Shadis is a regular commuter from his home in Maine. Katz lives in Massachusetts. People come in from all over to fight against Vermont Yankee. From the testimony of their own brochures, these people don't give a hoot about the health of people who work at the plant. They don't think that the people in Vernon are citizens who might choose to make land-use decisions for their own town.

My advice to the intervenors. If you want a park where the plant is located in Vernon, get the idea onto the Warning for the Vernon Town Meeting. That's the traditional Vermont thing to do.

Oh, you can't do that because you don't live in Vernon? Aw shucks. Lemme tell you about how we do things in Vermont. It's not Massachusetts or Louisiana, you know.

Image of dry cask storage from NRC student information area.

A Debate with a Comedian

A man dressed in a suit, and Deb Katz, dressed more casually, took the stage. A moderator introduced William Newcomb from NuCorPAC (he was never referred to by his real name) and Deb Katz from Citizens Awareness Network. The moderator asked the questions and thanked people politely, as if this was a real debate.

At first, I got more and more angry, but then I settled down. After ten minutes, anyone would understand that "Will Nukem" was not from the nuclear industry. He was actually very funny, good theater. His answer to "what should we do with the waste" included not worrying about it since it will flow down the river to Massachusetts ("You people in southern Vermont have done enough. Let Massachusetts do its part") and putting it on trucks to spend a week in every township in Vermont ("Spread the burden. You have done enough, But don't send it to Montpelier. We gotta stay on good terms with Montpelier."). At the end of the debate, he literally danced off the stage, singing "Nuke is Green" and clapping his hands. You gotta hand it to a good actor.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Deb Katz was not as good an actor. She had the world by the tail: a hand-picked comedian to oppose her, a very receptive audience. This apparently encouraged her to make remarks that I considered nonsensical. For example, she said: There are people missing from our homes, from around our tables. People who will never come back. We must make sure this stops. ( or maybe...make sure this does not continue...my notes are only my notes).

It sounded for all the world like she thought death itself would stop if Vermont Yankee goes out of service. Death would stop, the gene pool would be safe forever? That's a pretty powerful nuclear plant, bringing "Death into the World and all our woe." Whoops, that quote from Milton was about Adam's fall, not Vermont Yankee!

Katz also said that "you shouldn't let them scare you about global warming. If Vermont Yankee is out of service, it won't make a bit of difference about global warming." It made me nostalgic to hear James Moore of VPIRG, who admits that closing VY will lead to using more fossil fuels "for a few years." In Moore's oft-stated opinion:"Relicensing Vermont Yankee would be a twenty-year solution to a three-year problem". At least, he admits a possible problem.

I was also surprised that Deb Katz was potty-mouthed. This was a public forum and at least parts of it were recorded. Yet she raised giggles and applause from the audience several times by referring to the nuclear industry as having "wet dreams." She also said that Entergy planned to "shtup us again." ("Shtup " is a very coarse Yiddish word). Finally, she got quite a hand with the statement that "don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining." Well, I guess all applause is good applause.

After the meeting, one of the organizers asked us if we had enjoyed ourselves. We both said it had been very entertaining. I said that I had been a little surprised that, at the end, they had not introduced the man who played Will Nukem, but instead had him be "Will Nukem" the whole time. They should have told the name of the actor, at least at the end. The organizer admitted that had confused some people, and they probably should have done something at the end to introduce him. It didn't seem like a big deal to him, however.

I wonder if there were some people at the meeting who thought that Nukem was a real industry representative. In the question period, almost all the questions were addressed to Nukem, not Katz.

I am often somewhat depressed on the drive home from these events. This one was no exception. I will try to have more upbeat posts in the future.

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.