Dead-enders have held out hope that various,last minute scenarios lurking in the background could save Vermont Yankee so that it might be granted an operating license to remain open past its stale date of 2012. Any saved-by-the-bell drama may play out in just over four months, by this April when major fuel and equipment investment decisions take place.
Fearful possibilities are raised by one national pro-nuclear blogger. Curiously ill informed about Vermont he describes governor-elect Shumlin as an “anti-nuclear arch druid” and raises the possibility that as governor opponents will “tag him with the responsibility for heart-stopping increases in the cost of electricity” and he dreams up
A first-term recall election isn’t outside of the realm of political feasibility if things get really bad with brownouts on top of higher electric bills. All this will happen on his watch if he succeeds in closing the plant in 2012. That’s just two years from now into a four-year term.
(Vermont governor’s four year term?)
Setting aside impossible recall and unlikely brownout fantasies, what kind of future are BWR plants similar to Vermont Yankee currently looking at here in the northeast?
Indian Point, Oyster River and Vermont Yankee some of the oldest nuclear power plants still operating are struggling with declining demand for electricity and falling wholesale prices.
Tritium leakage is currently a problem at these 30+ year old plants.
In New Jersey, Exelon’s Oyster River nuclear power plant recently reached a deal with the new Gov. Christie. The deal that closes the plant earlier than its twenty year license will allow the plant to continue to operate for another ten without installing cooling towers .The agreement shortens it’s life but gives it another ten years to use and discharge warm water into Barnegat Bay. Understandably some foes see the remaining ten years operation without cooling towers as problematic but the fact can’t be missed that the old plant, called a near twin of Vermont Yankee, is not worth investing in. Required upgrades exceed the value of the plant according to Exelon.
Entergy’s New York State Indian Point plants are also in the process of being required to build cooling towers. Vermont Yankee which does have cooling towers (although part of them rather famously collapsed from disrepair) has agreed to re-start pumping and removing tritiated water that leaked from the facility.
Like high-mileage used cars Exelon and Entergy have driven these old power plants for all their worth and now not worth the price of a set of new tires, disrepair and the bottom line may kill them.