Marchers brave Vermont winter to call for closing of nuclear plant

On a bitterly cold day in central Vermont, 30 people walk single file along a two-lane road. Clad in parkas, wool caps and reflective vests, and clutching signs reading “Stop Vermont Yankee” and “Go Green,” their brisk strides take them toward Montpelier, the state capital.

There, after 12 straight days of walking, they will deliver a petition calling on Vermont legislators to deny a license renewal to the 38-year-old Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. Vermont is the only state in the country where legislators must approve the extension of a nuclear plant’s license to operate (though state and federal regulators must also approve it).

Most of the marchers live within the 20-mile-radius evacuation zone of the plant, which is located in Vernon, Vt. They express concerns about exposure to the daily output of low-level radiation and the potential for a catastrophic accident just miles from their homes.

“There is a historic opportunity for the legislature to close the plant in 2012,” said Bob Bady, one of the organizers of the march and a resident of Brattleboro. “We feel our job is to harness the energy of the neighbors of Vermont Yankee. There’s overwhelming sentiment to close the plant.”

Bady and his colleagues in the Safe and Green Campaign, a coalition of activists from the area around the plant, concluded that a group walk to the capital – through single-digit weather and Vermont’s famously hilly terrain – would be the best way to call attention to their concerns.

“We didn’t have several hundred thousand dollars to run an ad campaign,” he said, “so we decided to walk.”

The plant, which provides about 34 percent of Vermont’s electricity, is owned and operated by Entergy, a corporation based in Louisiana which owns 10 nuclear plants and is the second-biggest nuclear power generator in the country. The decision to extend Vermont Yankee’s license for another 20 years has already become a major issue in this year’s gubernatorial race, and it looms large on the legislative agenda.

The debate over Vermont Yankee has become caught up with broader political, economic and environmental concerns in this state of 620,000, where unemployment tops the list of pressing issues. Advocates of re-licensing, including Republican Governor Jim DouglasJim Douglas, argue that closing the plant would eliminate more than 600 jobs (about a third of them held by Vermonters) and remove an important generator of “baseload” power, leading to dramatic rate hikes for consumers.

Douglas says the issue should be left to the experts, away from the “political fray.”

“This Legislature should vote to let the Public Service Board decide the case for re-licensing,” Douglas said in his Jan. 7 State of the State address.

Supporters of Vermont Yankee also claim that nuclear generation is a “carbon-free” power source, and therefore essential to combating climate change.

Opponents, including the marchers, point to a string of recent safety problems as evidence that Vermont Yankee should be retired.

In June 2004 the main transformer caught fire, causing the reactor to shut down and leaking as much as 20 gallons of toxic transformer fuel into the Connecticut River.

In 2006 the plant received federal approval to produce 120 percent of the power it was designed to produce, generating $100 million in extra profits for Entergy, according to "The Nation" magazine. A year later there was a partial collapse of a cooling tower.

Just last week, the radioactive isotope tritium was discovered in a well near the plant. Although it was under allowable limits, plant workers are trying to identify the source of the leak.

An independent reliability view commissioned by the legislature and done by Nuclear Safety Associates in 2008 found that Vermont Yankee had one of the worst scores in the country on the industry standard Equipment Reliability Index. The review cited aging infrastructure, overworked staff and management “weaknesses” as key problems.

Other opponents of relicensing, such as James Moore of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, point out that investing scarce resources and policy efforts to shore up the aging nuclear plant will act as a disincentive to developing the clean energy infrastructure the state needs.

“Closing Vermont Yankee and moving forward with energy efficiency and local renewable energy,” Moore wrote in his 2009 report Repowering Vermont, “would cost Vermonters 47-50% less, between 2012 and 2032, than relying on Vermont Yankee at predicted market prices.” Investing in renewables such as solar, wind and biomass, and increased energy efficiency, Moore said at a recent public forum, will ultimately create more jobs than Vermont Yankee provides.

The marchers and their supporters echo this view. “I think there are more jobs in transforming the economy than in hanging onto this plant,” said Andy Davis, a music teacher in Brattleboro.

The costs of shutting down the plant are also a major concern. Based on data from decommissioning other facilities, the cost is estimated to be about $1 billion. Entergy currently has about $420 million in its fund, according to the "Barre-Montpelier Times Argus" newspaper. This gap has many Vermonters worried that the public will be left with the cost of dismantling the plant and dealing with the radioactive waste being stored in pools on the site.

Several of the marchers expressed their distrust of Entergy. Randy Kehler of Colrain, Massachusetts, noted that Mississippi attorney general John Hood sued Entergy in 2008 for misusing federal tax refunds. According to the "Jackson Free Press," Hood accused the firm of “dishonest practices worthy of Enron.”

For now, any deal to renew Vermont Yankee’s license seems to be held up by two issues that have surfaced recently: a rate hike it proposed in December that was promptly rejected as unacceptable by the two biggest public utilities in the state, and Entergy’s plan to create a spinoff company, to be called Enexus, which would own – and be liable for – Vermont Yankee and five other aging nuclear plants.

These linked moves have fueled lawmakers’ concerns that Entergy is seeking to shed its risks, and that Enexus would have insufficient funds to pay for decommissioning, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for closing the plant and dealing with its waste.

State Senate President Peter Shumlin, a Democrat who represents the area, is running for governor, and opposes the relicensing.

“Have we learned from AIG, from Lehman Brothers and Fairpoint and the rest?” he said on Vermont Public Radio. “Or are we going to continue to let Wall Street make these sweetheart deals for themselves, where they leave us back holding the bag? I'm just not willing to let Vermonters take that risk."

Although such local issues dominate the discussion over Vermont Yankee, nuclear energy’s role in the broader effort to fight climate change is often cited by people on both sides of the debate.

Some well-known environmentalists such as Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog" and author of the recent book "Whole Earth Discipline," have famously come out in support of major new investments in nuclear energy. Brand writes that many more nuclear reactors are needed to provide reliable, cost-effective baseload power, while displacing generation from carbon-intensive fuels such as coal. Brand and others criticize environmentalists for letting irrational fears about the safety of nuclear energy trump its benefits for the climate.

But Amory Lovins, an energy expert and founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, writes in a 2008 article titled "Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly?" that – questions of safety and waste storage aside - nuclear power is far less cost-effective in combating climate change than renewables such as wind and solar.

“After more than half a century of devoted effort and a half-trillion dollars of public subsidies, nuclear power still can’t make its way in the market,” he wrote, pointing out that private financing has overwhelmingly gone into renewables and efficiency in recent years, while private capital has fled from the nuclear sector.

“[E]xpanding nuclear power is uneconomic,” he continued, “is unnecessary, is not undergoing the claimed renaissance in the global marketplace (because it fails the basic test of cost-effectiveness ever more robustly), and, most importantly, will reduce and retard climate protection.”

All of these arguments will undergo a test of sorts later this year, when Vermont lawmakers vote on the license renewal. For now, debate rages on in the pages of local newspapers and on the airwaves – and on the back roads.

As the marchers approach the village of East Randolph, an older man in a pickup drives slowly past, then stops and puts the truck in reverse. He pulls up even with the protesters.

“You people are something else!” he shouts with disdain. “We need nuclear energy. There’s nuclear energy all over the world!” After a brief, tense exchange with a marcher, he pulls away.

Chad Simmons, one of the organizers of the march, and an activist with the Safe and Green Campaign, raises his eyebrows. “That’s the first time anything close to that has happened,” he said. “The response has been really positive so far.”

Vermonters aren’t the only ones with a stake in the legislature’s decision. Several of the marchers are from towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts within the evacuation zone.

“My family and I live just 10 miles southwest, over the border in Massachusetts,” Kehler said. “We like to say we get the radiation without representation, because we have no say in this.”

Still, he’s optimistic that lawmakers will listen to their concerns when they meet with them in the statehouse Jan. 13.

“We are the ones who are most at risk, most in danger, who I think should have the most right to speak out about this," Kehler said. "I am hopeful [legislators] will get the message that anyone who would walk 126 miles in January to speak to them feels strongly and should be listened to.”