Editor’s note: This oped is by John Warshow who owns three hydroelectric dams in Vermont and has been involved in alternative energy projects for 30 years.
Imagine if you will that a new business is proposing to locate in Vermont. The business has some unique characteristics, and therefore the legislature has the authority to approve or disapprove the proposal to operate their business here.
This business will produce a common and useful commodity, and it has stated plans to ship 75% of its product out of state. The remaining 25% will be made available to Vermonters but at a price 50% higher than the current market price for this commodity. The 25% of the commodity being produced and made available to Vermont is equal to about 20% of Vermont’s needs for this product. If the legislature should reject this proposal, there are numerous alternative supply sources readily available to meet our state’s needs.
The product will be made at an existing manufacturing plant using an obsolete 50-year-old technology and 40-year-old used equipment. It is expected that the commodity can be produced at this Vermont location for 20 more years. The owners plan to operate the equipment at 120% of the original operating capacity.
The business expects to employ about 600 people; about 200 will live in Vermont. It will be one of the larger property taxpayers in the state. However, if the business is not approved by the legislature, an equal number of jobs will be created to dismantle the existing facility.
The product will be made at an existing manufacturing plant using an obsolete 50-year-old technology and 40-year-old used equipment.”
There are a few other matters to consider.
There is a small chance that that there could be an accident during the manufacturing process which would result in highly toxic invisible poisons being released into the air and spread for many, many miles around the facility, perhaps further, depending on weather conditions and the severity of the accident. Such a contaminated area could be rendered uninhabitable for decades.
This risk is so real that a federally mandated emergency evacuation zone and plan is required, and all Vermont residents and businesses will have to consent to a federally imposed limitation of liability granted to the plant’s owners, such that should such an accident occur, the manufacturing plant’s owners might only be liable for 5 cents on each dollar’s worth of damage. You cannot purchase any insurance to cover your losses.
There are also some unique issues surrounding the waste products produced by the manufacturing process; the waste is extremely toxic and will remain so for the next 10,000 generations. The federal government has been promising for 50 years to take this waste somewhere for permanent storage, however engineering and political problems have stood in the way, and the federal government now says it will be another 75 years until it has a solution. In the meantime, the highly toxic garbage will have to remain on site in Vermont.
Another consideration is that the federal government requires the owners of these types of facilities to set aside funds to dismantle the structure and clean up the site when manufacturing of the product ceases. The owner estimates this will cost about $500 million, but experts in this field say it will cost $1billion, based on the cost of dismantling similar facilities. The owner has $450 million available today.
The owners of this business are in the process of a financial restructuring which would eliminate almost all of the equity in the facility and leave it with a huge debt load; a very similar transaction to the financing schemes underlying the financial crises our country has been experiencing for the past two years.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, these types of manufacturing plants and their on-site waste storage facilities have been recognized by the Department of Homeland Security as terrorist targets and therefore these facilities require a heavily armed security force be present 24 hours a day, 7 days week, 365 days a year.
Well I’m sure you have figured out that we are talking about Entergy, Vermont Yankee and electricity, and that this is no imaginary story. But for the fact that Yankee is here today, there is essentially no support for a nuclear power plant in Vermont. It seems to me, to be incongruous logic that has brought us to even consider Yankee’s continued operation.
John Warshow has been involved in the electric power industry in Vermont for over 30 years. He was a founding director of the Vermont Independent Power Producers Association 26 years ago. He developed, owns and operates three hydroelectric dams totaling 8.6 Mw of capacity. He was recently involved in the development of a 20Mw windfarm in Clinton County New York, as well as, in the development and operation of Washington Electric Cooperative’s 8Mw landfill gas to energy project in Coventry, Vermont. He has overseen the investment of $ 32 million dollars worth of electric energy infrastructure in the state.
