Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance

According to the AP article below, an automatic shutdown of the VT Yankee reactor was initiated during routine testing of the steam valves today.

An independent safety assesment of the reactor is clearly imperative due to the continuing mechanical failures at the plant.

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant Shuts Down Automatically Amid Test

August 30, 2007: 05:12 PM EST

VERNON, Vt. (AP)–The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant went off-line Thursday after an automatic shutdown. Plant officials said the shutdown occurred at 3:12 p.m. EDT during routine testing of steam valves. Plant technicians are trying to determine the cause of the automatic shutdown. Officials said the plant remains in a safe and stable condition and will be restarted after engineers complete a thorough evaluation of the shutdown. Prior to the shutdown, the plant had been operating at a 62% power level to allow repairs on one of the plants two cooling towers.

A Cooling Tower Collapse Raises Concerns about a New License for the Aging Vermont Yankee Reactor

After key components of a Vermont Yankee cooling tower fell to the ground Tuesday, members of Safe Power Vermont are saying “no” to renewing Entergy’s license to operate for another 20 years.

Safe Power Vermont - a coalition of experienced citizen, environmental, legal, and anti-nuclear organizations committed to closing the nuclear power plant - said that while alarming, the collapse of the cooling tower is not surprising.

“Vermont Yankee is running at 120% of its designed capacity. This surge in power combined with its already ailing infrastructure leaves Vermont Yankee incredibly vulnerable to dangerous accidents just like this one,” said Deb Katz, Executive Director of Citizens Awareness Network.

Advocates questioned the clean bill of health that the cooling tower recently received from Entergy’s experts. They called into question Vermont Yankee’s claims that the 35 five year old reactor is not experiencing serious aging strain that jeopardizes the plant’s future. “Vermont Yankee telling us that the plant is running like new is like a hair dresser telling you that you look twenty years younger, its nice to hear but far from the truth,” said James Moore, Clean Energy Advocate for VPIRG.

The plant’s history of defects and accidents is not insignificant. Just in the past decade, Vermont Yankee has documented 76 cracks in its steam dryer, three fires in its transformer station, a dangerously overcrowded spent fuel pool for radioactive waste and now a cooling tower collapse. Despite this, Entergy is aggressively looking to extend the plant’s license to operate for an additional 20 years.

Advocates also noted that Vermont Yankee benefited from the recent expiration of a rate payer protection plan. This fact will leave Green Mountain Power, Central Vermont Public Service, and Vermont rate payers with higher bills in the future.

“Any further reliance on Vermont Yankee will pass on both a financial, as well as safety risk to future generations. Vermont Yankee was built to run 40 years and at 35 it is already testing father time, the plant must close in 2012,”said Ed Anthes of Nuclear Free Vermont.

In accordance with Act 160, the Vermont legislature has the power to prevent Vermont Yankee from running past its 2012 lifespan. Safe Power Vermont says the coalition will continue to work for the facility’s closure to prevent a seemingly inevitable accident of catastrophic proportions.

For Immediate Release: August 22, 2007

For More Information:

James Moore, 223-5221
Deb Katz, 413- 339- 5781
Chris Williams: 802- 767- 4276

NUCLEAR POWER AND CLIMATE CHANGE:
WHY NUKES CAN’T SAVE THE PLANET

TOO MANY REACTORS; NOT ENOUGH CARBON REDUCTIONS
Major studies (from MIT, Commission on Energy Policy, and International Atomic Energy Agency, for example) agree that about 1,500-2,000 large new atomic reactors would have to be built for nuclear power to make any meaningful dent in greenhouse emissions. Operation of that many new reactors (currently about 440 exist worldwide) would cause known uranium reserves to run out in just a few decades and force mining of lower-grade uranium, which itself would lead to higher greenhouse emissions. If used entirely as new capacity, in the place of sustainable technologies like wind power, solar power, energy efficiency, etc., carbon emissions actually would increase.

TOO MUCH MONEY
Construction of 1,500 new reactors would cost trillions of dollars (U.S. reactors going online in the 1980s and 90s averaged about $4 billion apiece). Energy efficiency improvements, for example, are seven times more effective at reducing greenhouse gases, per dollar spent, than nuclear power. Yearly costs per 1000 kg avoided CO2 emissions are $68.9 for wind and $132.5 for nuclear power.

TOO MUCH TIME
Construction of 1,500 new reactors means opening a new reactor about once every two weeks, beginning today, for the next 60 years—an impossible schedule. Addressing the climate crisis cannot wait for nuclear power.

TOO MUCH WASTE
Operation of 1,500 or more new reactors would create the need for a new Yucca Mountain-sized radioactive waste dump somewhere in the world every 3-4 years. Yucca Mountain has been under study for nearly 20 years, has been vigorously opposed by the State of Nevada for just as long, and remains at least a decade from completion.

For this reason, the U.S. and other countries are attempting to increase reprocessing of nuclear
fuel as a waste management tool—a dangerous and failed technology that increases worldwide nuclear proliferation risks.

TOO LITTLE SAFETY
Odds of a major nuclear accident are on the order of 1 in 10,000 reactor-years. Operation of some 2,000 reactors (1500 new plus 440 existing) could result in a Chernobyl-scale nuclear accident as frequently as every five years—a price the world is not likely to be willing to pay.

TOO MUCH PLUTONIUM
Operation of 1,500 or more new reactors would require a dozen or more new uranium enrichment plants, and would result in the production of thousands of tons of plutonium (each reactor produces about 500 pounds of plutonium per year), posing untenable nuclear proliferation threats.

NUKES EMIT CARBON TOO!
While atomic reactors themselves are not major emitters of greenhouse gases, the nuclear fuel chain produces significant greenhouse emissions. Besides reactor operation, the chain includes uranium mining, milling, processing, enrichment,
fuel fabrication, and long-term radioactive waste storage, all of which are essential components of nuclear power. The uranium enrichment plant at Paducah, Kentucky, for example, is the largest U.S. emitter of ozone-destroying ChloroFluoroCarbons (CFCs)—banned by the Montreal Protocol (the Paducah plant was grandfathered by this treaty).

CAN’T TAKE US TO THE MALL
Nuclear power, which can only produce electricity, does not address emissions from automobiles and other components of the transportation sector —probably the largest source of carbon emissions.