The rising cost of increasingly dangerous and non-competitive nuclear powered electricity has forced yet another aging atomic reactor to permanently close in the United States. The New Orleans-based Entergy Corporation announced that it will permanently close Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in the fourth quarter of 2014. The Entergy announcement continues this year’s “domino effect” that began with the permanent closure of four operating US atomic reactors in Florida, Wisconsin and California in 2013 and the abandonment of construction projects for six more units across the country. Still more announcements for reactor closures are expected in 2013 and 2014 as the nuclear industry continues to economically implode.
Vermont Yankee is a 600 megawatt electric Fukushima-style reactor, a General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor located in southeastern Vermont. It was first licensed to operate in 1972 and received a twenty year license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the day before the Japanese nuclear catastrophe began on March 11, 2011 in spite of a broad citizen-based mobilization and the State of Vermont to deny the license extension.
Proponents of nuclear power will no doubt lament the closure of Vermont Yankee to mean an increase in fossil fuel replacements in Vermont and New England. In fact, the small 600 megawatt merchant power reactor does not sell its electricity in Vermont and can be simply retired on the combination of new renewable energy resources, improving energy efficiency standards and an existing cushion of excess electricity capacity in the region that exceeds well beyond the 12.5% to 15% reserve margin maintained through the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). The reactor can be closed without jeopardizing the region’s electricity reliability or necessarily raising carbon emissions. The broader energy future for the region and the United States can now focus on the expansion of safer and more sustainable renewable energy resources from the wind and the sun and stronger energy efficiency and conservation programs.
The public health and safety concern now focuses the next year as Entergy winds down reactor safety investments in advance of shutdown. When the reactor is finally shuttered one Entergy spokesperson has described the company plan to “mothball” the reactor for up to 60 years on the shores of the Connecticut River before fully dismantling and decommissioning the radioactive hulk. While Entergy claims to have a war chest of more than $500 million for the radioactive cleanup, waiting 60 years should raise concern over who becomes liable for what will likely run into hundreds of millions more in extensive cost overruns as the buried radioactive skeletons begin to come out of the closet.
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