Bernstein: Vermont legislators should vote no on relicensing Yankee

Editor’s note: This opinion is by Barry Bernstein, president of the Washington Electric Cooperative Board of Directors and a partner in Better World Energy LLC. He lives in East Calais.

Over the past few months, Vermonters’ confidence in the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant has been totally shaken.

Entergy, the Louisiana-based energy giant that owns Yankee, has provided misleading and inaccurate information about the existence of leaking underground pipes carrying radioactive material under oath, to our state regulators and legislature and to their consultants.  Each day seems to bring more bad news most recently that radioactive Tritium is leaking into the Connecticut River.   Yet, this company is seeking federal and state approval to operate the 40 year old, obsolete plant for another 20 years and to run it at 120% of original design capacity.

On January 27, 2010 the Washington Electric Cooperative Board of Directors unanimously approved a resolution calling on Vermont legislators to vote “no” on relicensing VY, and to do so early in this session.

WEC is the fifth largest electric utility in Vermont.  Our Coop has a long history of speaking out publicly on energy issues that affect our member-owners and ratepayers state-wide.

Over the past three decades, WEC has taken public positions:

·         Urging the purchase of the 567 megawatt Connecticut River Dams by the state, unfortunately the Douglas Administration did not heed the proposal which had bi-partisan backing in the Legislature;

·          Against the deregulation and restructuring of Vermont’s utilities a popular idea at the time that wrecked havoc with the industry around the country; we were fortunate that citizen opposition and leaders in the Vermont House stopped it.

·         Raising the alarm about uneconomic Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant contracts held by Vermont municipal and cooperative utilities which were later opposed by the state and invalidated by the Vermont Supreme Court

Founded in 1939, by Central Vermont farmers and their rural neighbors, to bring electricity to the back road areas where they lived, WEC now serves more than 10,500 business and residential member/owner customers in 41 Vermont towns in four counties.  We were part of the original utility consortium that built and opened VY in 1972. In 2002 WEC sold our minority interest and stopped receiving power from Yankee. We instead moved forward on our goal to rely on power from more dependable, economic and renewable in-state sources. To accomplish that purpose we continued to invest in energy efficiency in our members’ homes and businesses, built our Coventry Landfill gas-to-electric generating plant and signed a power contract with First Wind’s Sheffield Project.  These investments added to renewable supplies that we were already receiving from our Wrightsville hydro plant, Hydro Quebec and from Vermont Small Power Producers (VEPPI).

The WEC Board’s resolution outlined a number of reasons for opposing VY’s license extension:

·         It’s time to retire this aging and poorly designed plant;

·         There is no plan in place for disposing of Yankee’s high level nuclear radioactive waste, except long-term storage on site.

·         Entergy has a poor track record in maintaining and operating the plant.

·         The proposal to spin-off plant ownership to a debt-saddled shell corporation Enexus.

·         Insufficient funding for decommissioning; further compounded by contamination from leaking underground pipes.  Based on experience with other closed reactors decommissioning will probably cost $500 million more than projected and ratepayers will pick-up a substantial part of the larger tab.

Getting Vermont out of this mess requires strong leadership.  People from all walks of life in the state are ready for action, whether they are farmers or machinists, teachers or heathcare workers, carpenters or engineers, whether pro- or anti- nuclear, Republican, Democrat or Progressive.  Vermonters expect to see our politicians, state regulators and others in government work on our behalf on this issue.

The decision on whether or not to relicense Vermont Yankee is one of the most important energy policy decisions that the state will ever make.  This is a pivotal moment.  Vermont lawmakers have the opportunity and more importantly the responsibility to give clear direction for state utilities and regulators to actively plan an efficient transition to a safe, sustainable and reliable energy future for Vermont.  A “no” vote this session on Yankee relicensing will help to accomplish that objective.

I urge all Vermonters to pick up the phone and call their local representatives and state senators and tell them to do the right thing – VOTE “NO” on relicensing Vermont Yankee.