Unilateral Nukular Disarmament, Commodities-style

[CountDeMoney]

Vermont Yankee Plant to Close Next Year as the Nuclear Industry Retrenches
By MATTHEW L. WALD

The Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor, one of the oldest nuclear plants in the country and the subject of heated battles over the decades, will close late next year, the company that owns it announced on Tuesday, less than two weeks after winning a protracted legal fight against the State of Vermont to keep it open.

The company, Entergy, said a long depression in natural gas prices had pushed the wholesale price of electricity so low that it was losing money on the reactor, which is on the Connecticut River in Vernon just north of the Massachusetts border.

So far this year, owners have announced the retirements of five reactors, with the low price of gas being cited as a factor in all of the cases. Three of the five have substantial mechanical problems.

But Vermont Yankee and one in Wisconsin, Kewaunee, represent a more significant trend because they have no major physical needs beyond the typical requirements for continuing capital investments. Vermont Yankee did face some expenses for improvements prompted by the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns in Japan in March 2011, but these do not appear to have been decisive.

The latest closing would leave the United States with 99 operating reactors, presuming no others are shut before the fourth quarter of next year, when Vermont Yankee is to close. Four reactors in Georgia and South Carolina are under construction, and the Tennessee Valley Authority is finishing a fifth in Tennessee. But the industry is in a period of rapid decline.

"This was an agonizing decision and an extremely tough call for us," said Leo Denault, Entergy's chairman and chief executive, in a statement.

The Vermont plant has 630 permanent workers and employs a large number of contractors. In a midday press conference, Peter Shumlin, Vermont's governor, said "my heart goes out to the hardworking employees and their families" but nonetheless said: "This is the right decision for Vermont, and it's the right decision for Vermont's energy future."

Mr. Shumlin said he and the governors of neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where some of the workers live, "have all pledged to work together as a team with Entergy to ensure that those who are losing their jobs have a great economic future right here in our region."

Entergy, based in Louisiana, had fought hard against a seven-year effort by the state to force the reactor to close in 2012 at the end of its initial 40-year operating license. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled this month, upholding a lower court decision that found states were "pre-empted" from regulating safety. Oral arguments in that case were made early this year, when Entergy apparently still hoped for an economic turnaround.

The Vermont Legislature had tried to shut the plant by denying Entergy a state certificate required for all power plants.

Leslie Sullivan Sachs, the project manager for the Safe and Green Campaign, a three-state coalition dedicated to shutting down Vermont Yankee and promoting alternatives to nuclear power, said after the announcement, "it's a very good day."

Entergy may have been motivated mostly by the desire to set a precedent favorable to a much larger nuclear complex, Indian Point, in Westchester County in New York, which the state is seeking to force to close.

Indian Point and Vermont Yankee — along with another reactor in New York, the James A. FitzPatrick plant on Lake Ontario, and reactors in Massachusetts and Michigan — were bought by Entergy as the utility industry restructured and the local companies that built them divested themselves to concentrate on transmission and retail delivery.

Entergy also owns the Pilgrim reactor in Plymouth, Mass., which is of similar vintage and design to Vermont Yankee. But it is about 10 percent larger so its economics are somewhat better, Bill Mohl, the president of the Entergy division that manages wholesale power sales, said in an interview.

With the price of energy relatively low, what Vermont Yankee needed to be profitable was higher payments from customers for its capacity, Mr. Mohl said. In New England, electricity is priced two ways: in kilowatt-hours, the unit familiar to homeowners, who typically buy hundreds of kilowatt-hours a month; and in megawatts, or the ability to produce. That market, too, is depressed.

Tearing down the old reactor will require many years and hundreds of millions of dollars. Using an option approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Entergy intends to seal the plant and leave it for years, while some of the radioactivity dies down and a trust fund established for its decommissioning — now with about $582 million on hand — grows.

James F. X. Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, said that the fund exceeded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's minimum requirement, but that the cost of the decommissioning had not yet been established. Vermont has a pact with Texas that will allow the low-level radioactive waste from Vermont Yankee, mostly contaminated steel and concrete, to be buried in a repository in Texas on the New Mexico border.

Vermont Yankee is by far the largest generator in the state, but a variety of other power sources are available, including imports from Quebec.

[Ed Anger]

Energy from Quebec doesn't fit our English outlets. It is 110Crepe.

[Ed Anger]

I apologize for the previous joke, it was awful.

I blame the Neurontin.

[garbon]

I apologize for the previous joke, it was awful.

I blame the Neurontin.

[garbon]

Right, seeds, they should have just said sick it losers.

[Tonitrus]

So environmental activists help steer a nuclear plant to shutting down, with the help of fracking...and those same activists probably oppose fracking as well.

And when fracking starts to be shut down, nuclear energy will probably make a comeback? 

Sounds like an environmentalist feedback loop.

[CountDeMoney]

Right, seeds, they should have just said sick it losers.

That's already built into the severance agreement language.  It's boilerplate.

[CountDeMoney]

So environmental activists help steer a nuclear plant to shutting down, with the help of fracking...and those same activists probably oppose fracking as well.

And when fracking starts to be shut down, nuclear energy will probably make a comeback? 

Sounds like an environmentalist feedback loop.

Thing is, the anti-nuke environmentalist lobby has always been easy enough to ward off, even in the worse times for nuclear power and in the greenest states;  but you pile on the energy market forces on top of it with our bullshit commodity model, it's got no allies in business or politics.  Goddamned shame.

[garbon]

Right, seeds, they should have just said sick it losers.

That's already built into the severance agreement language.  It's boilerplate.

Why did kindle change suck to sick?

[Sheilbh]

Thing is, the anti-nuke environmentalist lobby has always been easy enough to ward off, even in the worse times for nuclear power and in the greenest states;  but you pile on the energy market forces on top of it with our bullshit commodity model, it's got no allies in business or politics.  Goddamned shame.

That's why the country with most nuclear is France. It needs dirigisme