Vermont Yankee News
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant
Owner: Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, LLC
Capacity: 605 MW
Reactor Type: Boiling Water Reactor
Reactor Manufacturer: General Electric
Turbine Generator Manufacturer: General Electric
Architect/Engineer: Ebasco
Commercial Operation Date: 11/1972
License Expiration Date: 3/21/2012
| does the building look familiar? - compare to Fukushima   |
- the first round in federal court has gone to Entergy, the electrical power production company that does not want to shut down its Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. The state of Vermont has been seeking to close the plant when its initial 40-year federal operating license expires on March 21.
Had the court decision gone the other way and the state had prevailed, it conceivably could have ended there. That’s because the cost of maintaining a reactor and paying the plant’s staff are roughly the same whether it is running or not. If the judge, J. Garvan Murtha in Brattleboro, had sided with the state, Entergy would have faced a painful decision on whether to keep the plant on standby after March 21 while waiting for the issue to work its way through the courts.
Entergy had already rolled the dice by buying fuel in anticipation of a favorable decision...
...The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted a 20-year extension, but Vermont lawmakers had passed a law that effectively gave themselves veto power over renewal of the license. Judge Murtha ruled that federal law trumps the state’s action because “radiological safety” is solely the province of the federal government...
First Round: Entergy 1, Vermont 0 - NYTimes.com
now online: #OCCUPY #NUCLEAR
more entergy
Vermont Yankee plant owner same as for Indian Point, NY, etc.
Entergy is the second-largest nuclear generator in the United States
Entergy operates twelve nuclear units at ten plant sites
Arkansas Nuclear One Units 1 and 2 near Russellville, Ark.
Cooper in Brownville, Neb.*
James A. FitzPatrick in Oswego County, N.Y
Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Port Gibson, Miss.
Indian Point Energy Center Units 2 & 3 in Westchester County, N.Y.
Palisades in Covert, Mich.
Pilgrim Nuclear Station in Plymouth, Mass.
River Bend Station in St. Francisville, La.
Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vt.
Waterford 3 in Taft, La.
As of 2008, nuclear power in the United States is provided by 104 commercial reactors (69 pressurized water reactors and 35 boiling water reactors) licensed to operate at 65 nuclear power plants, producing a total of 806.2 TWh of electricity, which was 19.6% of the nation's total electric energy generation in 2008. The United States is the world's largest supplier of commercial nuclear power.
Nuclear power in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There are over 100 operating nuclear power plants in America and 16 non-operational power plants, and a large number of nuclear fuel and weapons facilities. The more you know about these places, the more frightened you’ll be -- and should be!
List of nuclear power plants in America
Operating or closed. Including their individual histories, locations, technical details, official contact points, and local activist groups.
January 10, 2012: Renewable energy sources -- wind, water, solar and others -- passed nuclear generation as a share of U.S. power in September, according to the Energy Information Administration.
In the EIA’s latest report on energy sources and usage in the United States, which covers the nine months ended September, the nine-month total for both renewable production and consumption were higher than those for nuclear power.
...In the equivalent periods of 2010 and 2009, nuclear power was significantly ahead of renewables. In the first nine months of 2010, for example, nuclear generation produced 6.354 quads, while renewables produced 6.068 quads.
Renewable energy passes nuclear as U.S. power source - Denver Business Journal
Palisades atomic reactor "an accident waiting to happen"
Beyond Nuclear: As reported by the St. Joe Herald-Palladium, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps -- as well as other anti-nuclear activists from Don't Waste Michigan -- called for the permanent shutdown of the long problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in southwest Michigan, on the Lake Michigan shoreline. The watchdogs spoke out at a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting about two of Palisades' five un-planned shutdowns in 2011, one of which the NRC and even Entergy Nuclear admit was of "substantial siginificance to safety."
Kevin was quoted as saying "We should not be here today, actually. The plant should have been shut down at the end of its 40-year license. This plant was a lemon to begin with. We see Palisades as an accident waiting to happen. The risks are very great. Talk is very cheap. Throw the book at this company. It's way past time to shut (it) down."
Beyond Nuclear - Home
A mountain of waste 70 years high
and no solution in sight
Beyond Nuclear - Home
Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the US: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage - IPS
The price of fixing America's nuclear vulnerabilities may be high, but the price of doing too little is incalculable.
Nearly 40 percent of the radioactivity in U.S. spent fuel is cesium-137 (4.5 billion curies) — roughly 20 times more than released from all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. U.S. spent pools hold about 15-30 times more cesium-137 than the Chernobyl accident released. For instance, the pool at the Vermont Yankee reactor, a BWR Mark I, currently holds nearly three times the amount of spent fuel stored at Dai-Ichi's crippled Unit 4 reactor. The Vermont Yankee reactor also holds about seven percent more radioactivity than the combined total in the pools at the four troubled reactors at the Fukushima site...
Retox / Vermont Yankee
For Sale: Quaint Vermont fixer-upper from the last millennium. Nestled on the bank of the Connecticut River, this antique nuclear reactor features cozy relations with federal regulators and the new governor is from just down the road!
Enjoy regular visits from local senior citizen ladies’ group, plenty of attention from everyone around, and in just a year or so, you're sure to become a part of Vermont history!
This vintage reactor comes complete with:
- array of 22 cooling towers (more or less)
- on-site transformer/fire pit
- easy access to underground pipes
- tasty pre-tritiated drinking water on site
- limited amounts of dry cask storage
- anemic decommissioning fund (nowhere to go but up!)"
TAKE ACTION:
Shut Down Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant
Greenpeace USA
• Push for No New Nukes
Nuclear power is neither safe nor clean. There is no such thing as a "safe" dose of radiation and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn't mean it's "clean."
Take action right now and tell the President that taxpayers should not take on the risk of building new nuclear plants.
If a meltdown were to occur, the accident could kill and injure tens of thousands of people, leaving large regions uninhabitable. And, more than 50 years after splitting the first atom, science has yet to devise a method for adequately handling long lived radioactive wastes.
For years nuclear plants have been leaking radioactive waste from underground pipes and radioactive waste pools into the ground water at sites across the nation.
In addition to being extremely dangerous, the continued greenwashing of nuclear power from industry-backed lobbyists diverts investments away from clean, renewable sources of energy. In contrast to nuclear power, renewable energy is both clean and safe. Technically accessible renewable energy sources are capable of producing six times more energy than current global demand.
In order to save the future of our planet, we must continue to fight the expansion of nuclear power and instead push for clean, renewable sources of energy. Over the next three years Greenpeace will continue to:
1. Debunk the myth that nuclear provides a “green” source of electricity and detail the threats posed by nuclear reactors and the radioactive wastes they produce.
2. Expose the abysmal economics of new nuclear power.
3. Advocate for the permanent closure of the old, leaky Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in 2012.
TAKE ACTION: Help put an end to the NRC's rubber stamp!
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's mandate is to protect the public, but for too long it has allowed the nuclear industry to put their profits ahead of public health and safety. The disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant is a tragic reminder of the extraordinary dangers of nuclear power.
"The NRC should heed the warnings of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Chairman, I urge you to stop re-licensing old nuclear reactors -- we cannot afford a disaster like the one in Fukuskima. Thank you for considering my views."
who makes these things, anyway? here are two corporations that make nukes: GE & Westinghouse.
UPDATE 2/9: whats up: NRC Approves Southern’s Nuclear-Plant Construction Permit, First Since ’78
GENERAL ELECTRIC - GE ENERGY
now online: #OCCUPY #NUCLEAR
these guys made some of the reactors at Fukushima (designed all of them), and Vermont Yankee, too!
...their front page currently shows a wind power station. how sweet. oh, and besides building nuke plants they like to frack, too.
GE Energy | Nuclear Energy
boiling water reactor
GE Energy says "Today, nuclear energy supplies 16% of the world's electricity, avoiding the emission of about 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year that would otherwise be generated by fossil fuel solutions, such as supercritical pulverized coal."
the argument that nuclear is a "safe and clean" alternative in the global climate crisis debate is, simply put: delusion.
nuclear power kills - it is not clean, it is not cheap, and it is immoral - anyone who says that it is safe is either lying, making money, misinformed and/or delusional.
whats up: Nuclear Safety is an Oxymoron | How will broken-melting-fuming-leaking Fukushima Daiichi weather Monster Typhoon?
WESTINGHOUSE - FIRST NEW U.S. REACTORS IN DECADES ARE IN THE PIPELINE
UPDATE 2/9: whats up: NRC Approves Southern’s Nuclear-Plant Construction Permit, First Since ’78
Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes: U.S. Nuclear manufacturers lukewarm on AP1000
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted unanimously on Dec. 22 to approve the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design for use in the United States. The action sets the stage for construction of two of these reactors at Southern's Vogtle site in Georgia and two more at Scana's V.C. Summer station in South Carolina.
As of December 2011, construction by Southern Company on two new nuclear units has begun, and they are expected to be delivering commercial power by 2016 and 2017. But, looking ahead, experts see continuing challenges that will make it very difficult for the nuclear power industry to expand beyond a small handful of reactor projects that "government agencies decide to subsidize by forcing taxpayers to assume the risk for the reactors and mandating that ratepayers pay for construction in advance".
Nuclear power in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Westinghouse Nuclear Power Plants
"The technology of Westinghouse Nuclear Power Plants is the basis for nearly 50 percent of the world's operating commercial nuclear power plants. The projects of Nuclear Power Plants are varied yet innovative, with customer-driven design and cost-efficient performance."
Westinghouse AP1000
AP1000 pressurized water reactor
"Westinghouse Electric Company once again sets a new industry standard with the AP1000 reactor. Historically, Westinghouse plant designs and technology have forged the cutting edge of worldwide nuclear technology. Today, about 50 percent of the world's 440 nuclear plants are based on Westinghouse technology.
"The AP1000 is the safest and most economical nuclear power plant available in the worldwide commercial marketplace, and is the only Generation III reactor to receive Design Certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)."
now online: #OCCUPY #NUCLEAR
NO NUKES | RE-TOOL NOW
