Yankee evacuation sign. Courtesy photo
A group of activists this week began an effort to raise public awareness about the area within a 10-mile radius of Vermont Yankee – the plant’s official Emergency Planning Zone – in the lead-up to two politically charged events later this month.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public hearing in Brattleboro on June 22. The next day U.S. District Court will hear arguments regarding Entergy’s injunction request to prevent the state of Vermont from shutting down the plant in March 2012 when the company’s license to operate the plant expires. Entergy is suing the state of Vermont over the Legislature’s refusal to extend the corporation’s license to operate the plant an additional 20 years. The Louisiana-based corporation must place an order for uranium fuel by July 7 in order to continue operating the plant through the winter.
Early Tuesday morning, Jito Coleman and around 20 other volunteers placed signs reading “Vermont Yankee Evacuation Zone” along main roadways at the point where they crossed into the Emergency Planning Zone — 10 miles from Vermont Yankee.
Coleman said the nuclear meltdown of four nuclear reactors at the Daiichi Fukushima plant in Japan that occurred in the aftermath of an earthquake and tsunami in March demonstrated the vulnerability of the nuclear systems and the potential impacts of nuclear power plant emissions on surrounding communities. Residents within 20 kilometers of the Daichii plant were given $16,000 each and told not to return for six to nine months.
“We wanted to alert people in Vermont, [New Hampshire, and Massachusetts], well maybe this could happen to us,” said Coleman.
Vermont Yankee, located in Vernon on the banks of the Connecticut River, is a Mark 1 General Electric reactor – the same type that failed in Japan. A report from Institute Policy Studies showed that Vermont Yankee is storing three times nearly the amount of spent fuel stored at Fukushima’s Unit 4 reactor, which caught fire, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Entergy officials say the odds of a similarly catastrophic geologic and climactic circumstances occurring in Vermont are highly unlikely.
Guy Page, communications director for Vermont Energy Partnership, said in an email that he has not seen the activists’ signs. He had no comment except to say that “Vermont Yankee was assessed in depth for several years by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission before it granted a 20-year license extension earlier this year.”
Coleman says the group purchased around 300 of the custom-printed signs and put up 100 on Tuesday morning. Many more, he said, would be put up today, as property owners supporting the cause will put them up in their yards. These signs may be seen well over 10 miles from Vermont Yankee; the group is offering them to anyone who would choose to evacuate their home in the event of a disaster at Vermont Yankee, even if they don’t live in the 315-square-mile Emergency Planning Zone.
The group of activists, of which Coleman does not consider himself leader – “We’re all equal in this,” he said – is still without a name. Coleman said a small sub-group pooled their resources to have the signs printed and they will ask for donations as the signs are distributed. In an attempt to represent their ideals and not their personalities, the group chose to use Facebook as their primary organizing tool.
“Part of the reason of using Facebook and the media,” Coleman said, “is that it’s less about us.” He said the group is not concerned with remaining anonymous, they “just don’t want the thing to be about names.”
According to Coleman, the group doesn’t feel the potential problem of a nuclear disaster at Vermont Yankee gets enough attention from the media, and is trying to draw attention to the issue before two events later this month.
On June 22, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting at Brattleboro High School to discuss their annual assessment for Vermont Yankee. Coleman says the group “[wants] to make a lot of noise at that meeting.”
The next day, a hearing is scheduled in the lawsuit between Entergy, the parent corporation for Vermont Yankee, and the state of Vermont. Coleman says the group hopes to make sure that the judges deciding the case know how the people feel about Vermont Yankee.
“The context of how the lawsuit is going to be decided is us, the people,” said Coleman.
Permalink |
I seem to recall that our NRC recommended to Japan that the evacuation zone be increased from 10 to 50 square miles.
Perhaps we should get a lot more signs made up.
Permalink |
Wake up America! The nuclear industry has no clue as to how they would handle a disaster and the NRC is wearing blinders. The NRC has already relaxed the fire safety standards for nuclear plants. Also VY (Entergy) has a terrible safety record with ongoing leaks.
We deserve some safety in our state and our neighbors do too!
Permalink |
Regarding this statement:
“The Louisiana-based corporation must place an order for uranium fuel by July 7 in order to continue operating the plant through the winter.”
As understand it, they may continue to operate until the expiration of their license in July 2012, only at a slightly lower (and less profitable) level, with the currently installed fuel.
Permalink |
Responding to Bud Haas. VY’s license expires in March of 2012. There is a regularly scheduled outage planned for October, during which, if there were no threat of closure next year, 1/3 of the fuel rods would be replaced with new fuel. Entergy claimed in its original briefs that this new fuel would need to be ordered by July 7, but in footnote 14 of their reply to the AG’s brief, on page 17, Entergy now says that the date has been extended “to July 22 or 23, 2011.”
Permalink |
VY is upgraded to put out 20% more than the original specs. Cooling towers,radiation leaks, If God forbid my home is contaminated I lose every thing ! Homeowners Will NOT cover losses!!!VY will go out of busness and Our lives are destroyed!!!If Entergy REALLY wants a licence extention get insurance to cover homeowners !!!Can’t buy it aa’y. Well decommisioning makes a lot of sense.I don’t like my potential losses with no gain. God Bless America! Thank You, Michael
Permalink |
Check with the Vermont State Insurance Commissioner for the reason you can’t get homeowners’ insurance for a nuclear accident.
Permalink |
Reports on aging nuclear power plant always mention that they do not have a clear understanding of how nuclear degradation effects reactor systems and sub-systems: the reactor pressure vessel, plumbing, buried pipes, concrete foundations, anchors etc. The reports are extremely candid and to this day the IAEA is still studying the loss of mechanical properties and related “phenomenons”. Researchers use, among other techniques, decommissioned power plants to study the aging process. A popular test is a simple charpy izod instrumented impact test to study hydrogen embrittlement of metal components usually the reactor pressure vessel. This simple instrumented charpy impact test, although somewhat informative, would not pass the laugh test for the aviation industry. To give you some perspective on long term materials testing I was at E. I. Dupont testing laboratories in 1973 when they were trying to get PVC approved by the construction industry for plumbing. They had a room dedicated to row and rows of pressurized PVC pipe that were undergoing continuous testing, at that point they had been under constant pressure for over ten year. I ask their lab manager how long they would continue testing these pipes, he said for another ten years. I have yet to find a similar long term testing scenario for nuclear power sub-systems and components.
There are no, I repeat no nuclear experts on aging nuclear power plants they are making it up as they go along. By their own admission they do not clearly understand aging dynamics let alone nuclear plants that have run 20% beyond their design capacity. The NRC and their industry use the term “uprate,” this word does not exist in the English language and must stop being used. Oh, for the record, one of a number of areas that these reports on aging sight as problematic are underground pipes. The degradation of underground pipe is well documented, however, the management of Entergy denied that they even had underground pipes. This is beyond belief.
The quote below is from a 1993 report, page iii.
Aging Nuclear Power Plants: Managing Plant Life and Decommissioning
September 1993
OTA-E-575, Office of Technology Assessment
NTIS order #PB94-107588
GPO stock #052-003-01342-8
“After many years of intensive efforts by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear power industry, no insurmountable industry-wide safety challenges related to
plant aging have been identified. There are some notable uncertainties for the longer term,however, that require ongoing research and experience to address. More immediately, many nuclear power plants already face severe economic pressures in the increasingly competitive electric power industry. Regarding decommissioning, experience with
decommissioning small reactors and with major maintenance activities at large plants suggests that the task can be performed with existing technologies. However, several issues such as waste disposal and site cleanup standards remain unresolved.”
On page 1 from the same report please see quote below about plant decommissions.
The past few years brought unexpected developments for
nuclear plant lives and decommissioning. Since 1989, six nuclear power plants have been retired early, well before the expiration of their NRC operating licenses. Owners of several other plants are investigating the economics of early retirement as well. The owners of the frost large commercial nuclear power plants planned for decommissioning anticipate costs much greater than estimates made only a few years earlier. And after a several year effort, the two lead plants in a program to demonstrate the NRC’s
plant license renewal process halted or indefinitely deferred their plans to file an application-in one case as part of an early retirement decision. While work continues to develop and eventually demonstrate a regulatory process for license renewal,it will be several years before the first application is filed and acted on. Absent license renewal, about 3 dozen operating nuclear power plants will have to retire in the next 20 years.
Fast forward to 2000
This is a quote from a Brookhaven National Laboratory Report entitled: Assessment of Age-Related Degradation of Structures and Passive Components for U.S. Nuclear Power Plants, published in August 2000. Please see quote below, which can be found on page 1 of the report.
“Structures generally have substantial safety margins when properly designed and constructed. However, the available margins for degraded structures are not well known. In addition, age-related degradation may affect dynamic properties, structural response, structural resistance/capacity, failure mode, and location of failure initiation. A better understanding of the effect of aging degradation on structures and passive components is needed to ensure that the licensing basis (CLB) is maintained under all load conditions.” In the Appendix of structural problems for various reactors there is a note about a crack in the Vermont Yankee structure listed as NA. What do you think happened to the crack when the reactor was run at 120%. Preventative maintenance is only mentioned once in the entire Appendix and I am still not sure what N.A. means. Does N.A. mean not applicable, not available? It was not cleare in the report, at least to me anyway.
The Vermont Nuclear Power plant must be decommissioned now. Once it has been decommissioned we will see the extent of the damage.