Vermont Yankee Shut Down Articles

BRATTLEBORO -- While the Public Service Board may or may not have the authority to demand Entergy show cause as to why Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant should be shut down until the source of a tritium leak is found, the state's Department of Health has the power to request Entergy cease operation of the plant.
But that authority is predicated on whether Entergy has taken all the steps necessary to fix a problem that could affect the health of Vermonters who live near the plant.
"Our authority starts with a violation that would be detected because our dose limits have been exceeded," said DOH Commissioner Wendy Davis. "If that happens, we absolutely have the authority to require that the plant take appropriate action."
That action would be to investigate, to identify the problem and take corrective action, she said.
"If corrective action was not taken we would move very quickly," said Davis.
According to the state regulation on dose limits to the public, "The notice ... may include corrective actions, such as requiring further investigation of the circumstances ... or ceasing use of the source of radiation until such time as full compliance is restored ..."
If a company did not take action to come into compliance, the DOH has the authority to refer the matter to the attorney general's office, said Davis, which could begin injunction proceedings.
Whether the DOH would request that the attorney general go to court to shut down Yankee depends
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on the magnitude of the problem, said Davis.
It would have to be an imminent threat to public health, she said.
According to state statutes, the attorney general has the authority to ask a court to forbid or prohibit "such acts or practices, or for an order directing compliance."
If the court were to find in favor of the attorney general, it could issue a permanent or temporary injunction or a restraining order to force an operator such as Entergy to shut down the plant until the source of the tritium has been found and remediated.
The state statute also gives the DOH the authority to require Yankee to share any information regarding any incident, she said.
"This is the context we are operating in now," said Davis. "We are requiring them to provide all of the information, including their monitoring data."
DOH has also stepped up its own monitoring, she said, so it can independently verify the results.

N.H. legislators want more VY oversight power for state
Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- Rep. Paul Hodes, D-NH, and state Senator Molly Kelly, D-Keene, will be in Vernon Monday morning at 11 a.m. to announce a federal proposal that would give New Hampshire greater oversight over safety inspections at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Details of the proposal will be announced during the visit to the power plant.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said the NRC has spoken with Hodes and answered his questions about the contamination of groundwater with tritium at Yankee.
"Our State Liaison Officers have done the same with Senator Kelly and other state legislators in the region," he said. "We are not yet familiar with the details of the oversight proposal. However, we have Memorandums of Understanding with states in which plants are located that allow state inspectors to observe our inspection activities, sit in on our meetings with plant representatives and review plant documents."

Rebuilding trust at Yankee

Does Entergy get it?
Does Entergy really think that reassigning Vermont Yankee site vice president Jay Thayer to another position in the company is enough to restore people's trust? Even Department of Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien on Wednesday called the move "tokenism."
Does Entergy really think that Vermonters are buying the remarks of its CEO, J. Wayne Leonard, that "Vermont has a lot more to lose than we do" if the Vernon reactor closes? Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Power don't seem to think so, since both are actively seeking alternatives to VY's power, secure in the knowledge they can get cheaper electricity.
Does Entergy really think Vernon residents aren't concerned that the ongoing tritium leak at Vermont Yankee might end up eventually in their well water? These formerly staunch supporters of VY are now worried that if their wells are contaminated, their homes will be nearly impossible to sell.
To us, it appears that Entergy is more concerned with public relations than it is with actually doing something about the problems at the plant.
What Entergy doesn't get is that many Vermonters see its moves this week -- a shake-up of top management at Vermont Yankee -- for what it is: lipstick on a nuclear pig.
If Entergy wants to restore people's trust in its operations of the plant, how about a full and complete accounting of the extent of the underground
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piping? According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who serves on the Vermont Yankee Public Oversight Panel, Entergy has been consistently evasive about this topic, which is a big reason why he and his wife, Maggie Gundersen, founder of the paralegal services and expert witness research firm Fairewinds Associates of Burlington, came up with the estimate in 2008 that it would cost at least $1 billion to decommission Vermont Yankee.
If Entergy wants to restore people's trust, how about making an ironclad commitment to putting more money into the decommissioning fund, so that Vermonters won't get stuck with the costs of cleaning up VY after it closes? The fund now stands at about $400 million, and it is not enough, even under the most optimistic scenario. The tritium leaks of the past month will almost certainly drive up the cost of decommissioning.
If Entergy wants to restore people's trust, how about making an similar ironclad commitment to abide by whatever requirements that state and federal regulators make regarding the safe operation of the plant? Up until O'Brien's remarks on Wednesday, and Gov. James Douglas' call for a "time out" last week, O'Brien and Douglas had nary a discouraging word to say about VY.
But we are now past the point where cheery ad campaigns and personnel reshuffles will make a difference. And, in talking with our local lawmakers, the Vermont Legislature is past that point too.
Despite the governor's request for a delay in a decision on relicensing Vermont Yankee, we think a vote is going to come sooner, rather than later, and that the events of the last few weeks at the plant will weigh heavily on the minds of lawmakers.
If Entergy really wants to earn the trust of Vermonters, they'll have to do a lot more.

Shutting VY would have little economic impact on region
By RAYMOND SHADIS

Recently, the Reformer published a letter from Carla Heath, an Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee employee.
Heath, a former Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co. employee advises that, when it comes to the effects on local economy of closing a nuclear plant, Vermonters should "ask someone who knows," namely, Carla Heath.
Heath then tells a scary tale of economic devastation, in the Wiscasset [Maine] area; the town of Wiscasset having been host to the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Station and now reduced to a storage depot for 900 tons of waste nuclear fuel.
She is certainly entitled to express her opinion, but the Reformer's readers are entitled more than unsupported opinion. Some specifics on the Maine Yankee closing might be helpful.
Maine Yankee went on line in December 1971 and last operated in December 1996. The decision was made to proceed with decommissioning in August 1997; which was completed in early 2005.
I believe that any discussion of the potential effects of closing Vermont Yankee is not valid if it contains only computer simulations, speculation or, worse yet, as typified in Entergy propaganda and Heath's letter, hysterical rumor mongering.
Certainly, any rational assessment of what might happen when VY is closed should contain some consideration of what actually happened in other states and communities where reactors were closed.
In 2002, the New England Coalition commissioned a study of the economic consequences
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of closing Maine Yankee. I performed that study. The initial study report contains a table comparing population, average income, and so on for Windham County, Vermont and Lincoln County, Maine. There are many similarities.
The study report was provided to the NEC Board; then later to the Windham Regional Commission, the Vermont State Nuclear Engineer, and, in the uprate case (Docket 6812), to the Vermont Public Service Board.
To our knowledge, our study was the most extensive and inclusive study of the economic impact of closing Maine Yankee (or any New England nuclear plant) ever done.
In our study, we looked at every publically accessible economic indicator of which we could think: employment, wages, average income, loans, loan defaults, savings, welfare roles, home prices, housing starts and more.
NEC urged the Vermont Public Service Board to order that a similar study be independently and professionally performed for all former New England nuclear sites, prior to weighing harm versus public good in considering Vermont Yankee's request for a extended power uprate (Docket 6812) and its request for 20 more years of extended operation (Docket 7440) .
Our study found no discernable impact over five years of Maine Yankeeís closing in any economic indicator category on a statewide or tri-county region level.
On the county level, we found that Lincoln County unemployment spiked upward 0.8 percent for a few months in late 1997, but this may have been more reflective of changes at Bath Iron Works, the area's largest industrial enterprise with several thousand employees.
Maine Yankee, at its peak, employed 475. Over the term of decommissioning (1997-2005) Maine Yankee averaged approximately 300 employees. This period of transition, with relatively high employment, is typical of plants that undertake prompt decommissioning.
Under mothballing, such as Entergy proposes, the staff is promptly reduced to a handful of security and maintenance personnel and no hiring would take place for at least 20 years.
At the county level, because of Wiscasset's devaluation, surrounding Lincoln County towns were required to increase their shared support of county services. That increased share was however dwarfed by overall shared cost increases for county services.
Wiscasset's property tax rate has risen, according to the Maine Chamber 2009 Community Resource Directory to $13.65 per $100,000 of valuation; bringing it up to approximately match closure unaffected taxes in the nearby towns of Brunswick, Bath, Topsham and Arrowsic.
The price of electricity actually fell for several years and has now climbed back to approximate New England averages. Although the current electric mix contains approximately 20 percent nuclear, just as it did when Maine Yankee was operating, because of deregulation, I now have the option to buy all-Maine, all renewable electricity at a cost of approximately 15 percent above standard offer.
Maine leads New England in the development of renewables with more than 400 megawatts of wind power now operating or under construction. An additional 400 megawatts are in siting and/or licensing. Because it is located on a on a river and has switchyard and transmission lines in place (like Vernon, VT), Wiscasset is looking at an 800-plus megawatt electricity pump storage project.
I lived in the town of Wiscasset from 1967 until 1970 and in the adjacent town of Edgecomb from 1970 until the present; my home being just about 1 1 2 miles downwind of the Maine Yankee site. My wife and I own business property in nearby Newcastle. Contrary to the doom and gloom that Heath and Entergy project, we are daily witnesses to a thriving regional business setting, creative and academically competitive area schools, vigorous local road and infrastructure maintenance, and an ever-expending arts community.
Our local advocacy organization and the state carefully watchdog our unfortunate legacy of nuclear waste. Local folk rest secure knowing that we are not generating more waste and that the next nuclear reactor accident cannot happen here.
Maine is moving to become a national leader in renewable energy with state planners projecting new business vitality and job creation as a near-term result. Twelve years into the Maine Yankee shutdown and strangers still approach me on the street or at the market from time-to-time to thank me for the work that I and many others did to turn Maine away from the path of poison power.
Raymond Shadis lives in Edgecomb, Maine. He is executive director of Earth Day Commitment/ Friends of the Coast (Maine) and a consultant to New England Coalition in Brattleboro. The complete initial report on the "Economic Consequences of Closing Maine Yankee" is available on the NEC Web site at www.necnp.org.