someone got paid

Hobodeluxe: someone got paid

Ya think?
That judge was bought and paid for.
Here's a pice of news: Just because they are allowed to continue to produce power, doesn't mean anyone locally has o buy it from them. Oh, and those local transmission lines? They don't own those. Not theirs.
So they can still be shut down.

vudukungfu: Ya think?
That judge was bought and paid for.
Here's a pice of news: Just because they are allowed to continue to produce power, doesn't mean anyone locally has o buy it from them. Oh, and those local transmission lines? They don't own those. Not theirs.
So they can still be shut down.


Great idea, make it impossible for the plant owner to run the facility, because that won't encourage them to abandon it and leave Vermont to shoulder the decommission and cleanup costs.

As a Vermonter, this decision makes me a sad panda. Luckily the reactor is at the southern edge of the state, which isn't within range of me if it blows up or continues to leak radiation into the water supply for the area.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a 20-year extension on Vermont Yankee's license in March 2011.

The 2010 Senate vote came at what may have been the reactor's political nadir. Just a month earlier, it was revealed that tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, had been leaking from under the plant, and that plant officials had made misleading statements to state lawmakers and regulators indicating that Vermont Yankee did not have the sort of underground pipes that carried tritium - pipes it was later shown to have.

Why did it get recertified after the owner was caught lying about safety conditions? Somebodies going to respond that the tritium leak was minor and no danger, but if they've admitted to that, what're the odds something worse is waiting to be found?

Dear Vermonters Who are Actively Working to Shut Down Vermont Yankee,

That nuclear power plant that you hate so much and are convinced will destroy all life as we know it? It provides 73% of Vermont's power. Should the plant be shut down, what do you have in place to pick up the slack? Solar won't work in a place that has ~40 sunny days per year. None of the waterways in the state are suitable for hydro-electric. There are no geological indications that geothermal would be possible. While wind power might work, no one has even started building wind towers in the state, so you'd be looking at a few years before that would be viable even if they broke ground today. That pretty much leaves buying even more power from Canada and neighboring states...assuming they could even handle the extra load...or building some coal-fired plants in-state. Of course, the environmental effects of coal-fired plants are arguably worse than the effects of a nuclear plant, so that's not much of an option for a state as environmentally conscious as Vermont.

So, Vermonters, take your pick. Skyrocketing energy costs coupled with rolling blackouts as neighboring states & countries try to keep up with the increase in demand, clear-cut some of your vaunted forests for wind towers that will take years to build and may not even be enough when they're done, or destroy the environment a bit more with coal-fired plants.

Short version: You retards didn't really think your cunning plan through, did you?

ZAZ: Teufelaffe

The radio program I linked earlier makes the situation sound like privatization gone wrong. The plant was sold ten years ago in a deal that must have been conceived when Enron was the way of the future. After the sale Vermont Yankee was no longer a traditional public utility but a market player. Legally speaking, Vermont imports non-nuclear power and exports nuclear power rather than use locally produced nuclear power.

Except CVPS, Vermont's largest electric company, says they get their power from Vermont Yankee & Canada.

http://www.cvps.com/ProgramsServices/EnergySources.aspx (new window)

I don't really know where all of these "Vermont don't use none o' that noo-kleer power from VY" people got their bizarre idea from, but when the utility company says they get their power from VY, I think it's time to closely examine exactly who is saying otherwise.

namatad: Creoena: As a Vermonter, this decision makes me a sad panda. Luckily the reactor is at the southern edge of the state, which isn't within range of me if it blows up or continues to leak radiation into the water supply for the area.

have you thought about suicide?
seriously
you really should look into buying a couple of short guns or some rat poison.

/plus, please dont vote or drive. you are clearly too stupid to breathe

Glad to see such strong arguments. Please explain?

/maybe you are the one who needs to consider rat poison?

SphericalTime: It's the only nuclear power plant in the state. I was thinking that passing a law requiring a nuclear clean up fund that all nuclear plants in the state have to contribute millions of dollars a year to would also work.

But yeah, definitely something along those lines.

It'd promptly be shot down under the same 'federal pre-emption' clause as the safety approval issue. Federal law already requires clean up funds to be collected - and as a 40 year reactor, VY should have lots of money in it's escrow to clean it up, and that'll only increase as it continues to operate.

Some facts: It's a 620MW reactor and produces 4,703 GWh/year(~$212M worth of electricity at wholesale rates). In 2008 it produced 71.8% of the electricity used in Vermont. It has a decommissioning fund built up of $310M.

Back of napkin calc - 40 years, $310M in decommissioning trust fund, that's $7M per year contribution into the trust -to really break them with the decommissioning trust fund, you'd have to make it 'tens of millions', and even then, any money they don't spend decommissioning they get back(eventually). Oops...

Personally, here's my vote: Start getting ready to shut VY down. At the same time, there looks to be a fair bit of empty space near the plant(google maps satellite images), so use the area(perhaps employee parking?) to build a ~1GW plant, preferably of a GenIII+ design.

namatad: Creoena: namatad: Creoena: As a Vermonter, this decision makes me a sad panda. Luckily the reactor is at the southern edge of the state, which isn't within range of me if it blows up or continues to leak radiation into the water supply for the area.

have you thought about suicide?
seriously
you really should look into buying a couple of short guns or some rat poison.

/plus, please dont vote or drive. you are clearly too stupid to breathe

Glad to see such strong arguments. Please explain?

/maybe you are the one who needs to consider rat poison?

dude
the reactor is GOING TO BLOW!
PANIK!

yup
you are either a troll or so stupid you are a waste of oxygen

oh wait
you are thinking that you live in japan near the ocean and earthquakes and your reactor might have a massive failure of containment and then a massive uncontained fire and then have an explosion?

LOL

Sarcasm, have you ever heard of it? Dumbass.

Oh noes, I'm gonna move out of state! Get my own island far far away cause we're gonna get hit by a tsunami! Reactor's gonna blow up! It survived Irene and that's about as bad as we'd get around here. No, the bigger issue is leaks and lies by Entergy (for example, when they said the leaks in 2010 were from pipes that don't exist).

I think we need to get one thing clear: if it's south of St. J or west of Jay Peak, it's not really in Vermont anyway. I'm not sure why Vermont would try shutting down a power plant in Massachusetts.

Teufelaffe: That nuclear power plant that you hate so much and are convinced will destroy all life as we know it? It provides 73% of Vermont's power.

You know what's cute. You think that's a big deal.

Vermont's maximum generating capacity, when every last source of power is operating? 1,117 MW

WA State's current wind generating capacity is 2,357 MW, with another 5,931 MW of projects queued up in the coming years. We went from 0 MW of wind in 2000. Even when factoring in a low 30% capacity factor, it's more than enough to cover the annual needs of your state. Wind power in this state, alone, provided 33 billion kWh last year.

Other fun facts about WA, we have an additional 22,718 MW of hydropower, yet our state's peak demand is only about 9,000 MW. We export ~50-75% of our State's energy to more expensive markets, and our ratepayers directly reap the benefit by allowing other, less prepared States subsidize our production and consumption.

MrSteve007: WA State's current wind generating capacity is 2,357 MW, with another 5,931 MW of projects queued up in the coming years. We went from 0 MW of wind in 2000. Even when factoring in a low 30% capacity factor, it's more than enough to cover the annual needs of your state. Wind power in this state, alone, provided 33 billion kWh last year.

*Checks Wiki* Yep, 33 TWh/year, though it says you only have 1.9 GW working. It also mentions 3.7 GW as 'potential capacity', so I'm not sure what definitions they're using or where they're getting the numbers from, seeing as how to get 33 TWh you'd need 3.8 GW working at 99% capacity factor. (1 watt of generation, at 100% capacity factor, should produce 8.76 kwh/year, or 1 GW = 8.76 TWh). NO power source gets 99%. Wind should be more like 20-40%.

Off to Wiki's source: 4.6% of power is generated by wind. 2.4 MW online. Actual power generation isn't mentioned. Vermont is .2% w/6.2 MW.

More research: EIA.gov says that Washington produced 5,338 GWh in 2011, giving the wind there a capacity factor of 25%.*

On thing to realize is that these are two very different states with different sizes, locations, and geography. Basically, what works for Washington might not work for Vermont.

Vermont Yankee is small for a nuclear plant today, at only 620MW, but manages to produce 4,703 GWh/year, an 87% capacity factor, and that single small nuclear plant manages to produce 88% of all the installed wind in the far larger Washington State.

*I guess I'm going to have to modify that wiki page, because obviously the 33GWh/year figure is off base.

We export ~50-75% of our State's energy to more expensive markets, and our ratepayers directly reap the benefit by allowing other, less prepared States subsidize our production and consumption.

Yes, you're lucky. I understand you sell a lot of your power to California, making them subsidize your additional generation abilities. It's okay, it's not like states should even attempt to be self dependent - if it's more efficient to generate power the next state over and ship it, then it's more efficient.

Still, it's good to have a distributed grid, as it's harder to disrupt, programmed properly.