Editor’s note: This commentary is by Schuyler Gould, who is a member of Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance and a board member of New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution. He is a retired building contractor living in Barre.
[G]eorge Clain, former president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local at Vermont Yankee, continues the equivocation of the nuclear power industry which prompted my original commentary.
First of all, there is no “Hate Yankee” movement. There is in fact a growing movement of concerned and dedicated citizens everywhere asking the obvious question, “Is nuclear power really worth it?”
It can be difficult to understand the issues. As the industry struggles mightily to maintain its viability in today’s economic climate, it is coincidently stepping up its disinformation campaign. This is the issue I address.
My leaky cellar is in no way, shape or form a reference point for Vermont Yankee’s leaky cellar. Entergy’s policies on the disposal of tritiated water from closed systems at the plant in no way address or ameliorate the problem of tritiated groundwater(we can discuss the toxicity of tritium some other time). Being concerned about the long-term consequences of a nuclear power plant, and its legacy in the larger community, does not disqualify one from also being concerned about global warming and the iron grip too few corporations have on world energy policy.
Entergy is not doing anyone any favors by “self-funding” the transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage. First of all, as was made clear, “self-funding” is a misnomer. The lines of credit Entergy touts every chance it gets are a funding mechanism. Entergy is assuming zero financial responsibility for the actual funding of the transfer — the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund assume all of it, every penny, including interest.
Further, leaving the spent fuel in the pool is more expensive, and wildly more dangerous, than moving it to dry cask storage. There is no justification for leaving it in the pool, though once again we are being told Entergy is doing us all a favor by doing so. I do find your reference to the tribulations of a reactor community in Massachusetts in this regard at least a tad ironic. They are battling none other than Entergy Corp., your friend and benefactor.
But working for a nuclear power plant does not command one to be supportive of an industry whose operations ultimately threaten the very fabric of life on this planet.
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Characterizing the plant as being “shut down,” and therefore not worthy of concern, is also misleading. True, the reactor is no longer producing power. But there remains the plant’s entire 42 years production of arguably the most toxic substances on the planet to be dealt with. Is it hateful to argue for the most robust storage available, particularly when all parties agree that the timeframe for the Department of Energy’s taking possession of the waste remains entirely open? It could be there for a century or more. The dry casks Entergy is currently using and proposes for the remainder of the waste in the spent fuel pool are guaranteed for 25 years.
No one has any quarrel with the workers at Vermont Yankee. And we all certainly want all nuclear power plants to be operated as safely and as efficiently as possible. We applaud the efforts of unions advocating for workers’ rights to safe working conditions and a solid livable wage. But working for a nuclear power plant does not command one to be supportive of an industry whose operations ultimately threaten the very fabric of life on this planet.
Witness Three Mile Island. Witness Chernobyl. Witness Fukushima. The most polluted places on earth are nuclear facilities with no prospects for remediation. Forgotten is the ongoing legacy of uranium mining worldwide, which abandons mostly indigenous communities with unlivable (i.e., cancer rates as high as 30 percent) environments. Ignored in such pronouncements as yours is a regulatory agency (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) virtually independent of judicial review and which is for all practical purposes “captured” by the industry it regulates.
And what are we going to do with the godforsaken waste? Dump it in the ocean like Russia and the Italian Mafia? This country’s only approved high level waste storage facility, designed to be good for 10,000 years, as if that’s long enough, is now out of operation. When will it reopen? According to its website, “… only when it is safe to do so.”
Blaming DOE for its failure to deliver on its promises to build a national repository only highlights how intractable is the problem of now hundreds of thousands of tons of high level nuclear waste in this country alone. Talk about passing the buck. On the face of it, one might be a little circumspect about advocating for the production of yet more of this waste.
Lurking in the background, it is too horrible to even contemplate, is the threat of terrorist attack. Yes, these facilities are vulnerable to terrorist attack, it is only a matter of time before the unthinkable happens. Witness recent events in Belgium and statements by our own Department of Defense. Do we really want the thousands of these plants in every corner of the globe that the industry is lobbying for?
It won’t come to that, of course. Entergy didn’t close Vermont Yankee out of the goodness of its heart. But for massive governmental subsidies at every stage of development, operation and retirement of these plants, not to mention that pesky waste problem, nuclear power was never economically viable. Now, despite all that, it can’t even compete with new solar which continues its downward spiral — in price.
It is true that Vermont Yankee, by industry standards, has an excellent safety record. Hats off to its workers for that. But the long-term effects so far on its host community will never be known because no one thought it a good idea to measure them. The industry has a particular resistance to such studies on even a basic level.
As they say, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” And it may not be over for a very, very long time. We here right now will never know how this all plays out, but I suspect, unless this nation decides to diligently pursue an exit from its dependence on nuclear power, it will not be a happy ending.