Vermont May Revoke Nuclear Plant License 163
mdsolar writes "Following the Vermont Senate's 26-to-4 vote not to approve a 20-year license extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, the Vermont Public Service Board will consider revoking its operating license as well. Meanwhile, the plant continues to operate without its Director of Nuclear Safety Assurance, who has been placed on administrative leave; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has merely issued a Demand for Information rather than shutting down a plant that is lacking a full complement of safety personnel. It may be that the NRC is not capable of doing what is needed with regard to Entergy, the plant owner, which is also facing prosecution by the Mississippi Attorney General."
Same submitter keeps trolling (Score:5, Informative)
If you've been following this story you'll see its always submitted with an inflammatory summary. The slashdot janitors are too lazy to read the actual story and fix the summary.
Re:Hard to Replace (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Tritium? (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water_reactor [wikipedia.org]
+ Stopped neutron.
I guess.
Re:Entergy was way out of line (Score:3, Informative)
I suspect that he was being figurative - but:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/19/nuclear-waste-landfill-threat [guardian.co.uk]
http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=12578 [edie.net]
I guess it can't leak if they just dumped it into the soil though.
No, I am not against the use of nuclear power.
Re:Entergy was way out of line (Score:2, Informative)
All those negatives, and still they have released far less radioactive material into the environment than coal power.
Re:Emergency NRC Acting Director? (Score:3, Informative)
Troll? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh, my God. Oh, God, no! (Score:3, Informative)
Of course the real answer is to recognize that coal is dirty, ban the construction of any new coal power plants and start building replacements for the ones already operating.
If we arent using coal, there is no need to mine it. And then no-one will die in the mines.
Re:Tritium? (Score:2, Informative)
The 0.015% abundance of deuterium as one of the hydrogen atoms in H20 accounts for the tritium production in BWRs and PWRs.
People panic over this, but that is only because they are idiots. The leak at Vermont Yankee exceeded federal limits by 25% (2500 pCi/ml vs 2000 pCi/ml). Most nuclear plants get around the tritium issue by filtering their primary coolant, cleaning it up (except for tritium which can't be removed), and then discharging it. Gas systems (where hydrogen is used to scavenge for oxygen and reduce corrosion in the coolant) tend to build up a little higher tritium concentrations in PWRs because it is reused (especially if you can recycle it and swap between multiple reactors). I'm not a BWR expert, so I don't know how their waste gas systems work. But I assume they have some sort of gas stripping and hydrogen addition system to catch and store any fission product gasses in charcoal filters and decay tanks as well as reusing the hydrogen to scavenge for oxygen.
Re:Oh, my God. Oh, God, no! (Score:5, Informative)
Fast forward to 2002 when Entergy took over, and nobody here is happy. They cranked the plant up to 120% of its designed output, as parts started to fail inspection. The decommissioning fund, which was based on the stock market, tanked. We won't be able to afford to decommission it until 2060 or so now. It will sit mothballed and hot until then.
All this was the lead-up for their petition to extend the operation of the plant 20 years beyond its initial license. It's scheduled to cease operation in 2012. They want to suck another 20 years of profit out of it. Of course, at 120% of the operating power, with parts still failing inspection, and without the money to decommission it. That's the framework for all the issues in the Senate. As has been well noted, they completely shot themselves in the foot with their inability to answer detailed questions about the plant to the Senate.
Vermont is a tiny state. It has the 2nd smallest population in the US. Probably a majority of towns have populations in the thousands. The biggest city is about 60k. When we vote people into state government positions, they are our friends, neighbors, and relatives. They are not some nameless face we saw on a poster. We've done business with them, drank a beer with them, shook their hand and looked them in the eye. Because of that, our state legislators do NOT screw around much. If something is going to be bad for their community, it gets shut down. If you screw over the 4,000 people in your town, you're probably going to have to move.
Because of this climate, Entergy can't get away with lying to the senate then writing a bunch of checks to cover the issues. They were asked point blank if they had any buried pipes. The answer was, "not that we know of". A year later, and buried pipes are leaking tritium into the ground water. When pressed, they answered, "Oh, well we define "buried" as encased in dirt, and carrying liquid. If it's underground, but encased in concrete, and carrying vapor, it's not considered "buried".
As I said, our legislators don't screw around. They got that sort of response from a company that we've steadily lost trust in, and the end result is that we're denying their 20 year extension to operate.
Missing parts of the story (Score:3, Informative)
I've followed this story for many years nw, as I am a lifelong resident of Vermont, and I can't say I am surprised, but a LOT of the facts about this story are not being told here, or are misrepresented. /. is the story about how Entergy is trying to spin-off a subsidiary company called Enexus, and then sell the reactor (and all liability) to that company, wiping their hands clean of all responsibility. It is widely speculated that Enexus is over-leveraged and may not be able to afford the decommisioning costs (in the hundreds of millions, before any discovery of leaked tritium). VT certainly cannot saddle these costs if Entergy/Enexus leaves the burden to us.
First it Is important to know that the VT Legislature did not and can not rule on the safety aspects of the Vernon, VT reactor. Their ONLY area of concern is the reliabilty of the plant to provide base-load energy to the state. Vermont is unique in this way... No other state legislature has any role to play in determining the future of a nuclear reactor. The VT Legislature was given the role of assessing reliabilty of the reactor as part of the terms of sale when Entergy purchased the plant about a decade ago. The decision about the safety of the plant is the purview of the Public Service Board, which I believe is the norm nationwide.
Also important but seemingly ommitted here on
Yes, the Entergy officials did make misleading statements regarding buried pipes. Whether this was intentional or out of ignorance does not matter, really, in the eyes of Vermonters who no longer put much trust in the company that owns the plant. Because of this, many legislators and the Governor who once strongly supported the 20-year relicensing have changed their minds or have greatly reduced their support for a yes vote on the relicensing matter.
The Legislature voted on the reliability of the plant, which despite it's age has continued to score well on safety (I've heard it gets an A+, but I don't see how a letter-grade applies to such a broad concern). Perhaps the legislature was ALSO allowed to rule on the reliabilty of the company who owns the plant... That would certainly drag-down the plant's reliability assessment, in their eyes.
Finally, the "1/3 of the energy in VT" statement being bandied about is misleading. The reactor does generate the equivalent of 1/3 of VT's base-load, but I believe the amount of VT's power that comes from VT Yankee is 11%, as we get our power from a very diverse power portfolio. VT Yankee sells us what we need from them, and sells the rest to other states on the "NorthEast Grid." we probably get more energy from Hydro-Quebec's massive surplus, but I don't have the figures to know for sure.
This is a very touchy subject in VT right now. Rabid pro- and anti- nuclear power opinions are everywhere... I just about refuse to discuss the matter openly with friends and acquaintances these days. I hear LOTS of FUD regarding "skyrocketing power-costs" that are "certain" to come if the reactor is nt relicensed, but it seems unlikely it will actually put us in poverty. We've enjoyed low rates (~$.041/Kwh), but Entergy/Enexus is going to increase that to ~$.06/KWh if they do get relicensure in their new contract with the state. It is said that we can expect to meet that rate for the amount of energy we'll need to replace.
In the interests of full-disclosure, I personally would like to see VT get it's energy needs met elsewhere. There are a number of growing companies in the state that have a chance to supply "green-energy" if there was a demand. When the US is lagging far behind countries like China in the science and business of green energy, it makes sense from tecnological and economic viewpoint, not just environmental. Unfortunately, I expect the unique Legislatorial decision will be overturned by deep pockets and a lawsuit, and in the end corporate interests will end up sticking our small state with a cleanup bill that will be orders of magnitude greater than any accumulated energy cost savings to date. We will have to wait and see.
Decommissioning was a major factor (Score:2, Informative)