BRATTLEBORO — It's time we recognized all the benefits that we are getting from Vermont Yankee.
First, there is the electricity, right? Didn't VY produce two-thirds of Vermont's electricity? Well...VY might have produced it, but they didn't provide it! Vermont Yankee is a merchant plant, selling electricity to the highest bidder, and it certainly didn't all go to Vermont.
Why am I speaking in the past tense? Because since March 22, Vermont hasn't been buying any power from Vermont Yankee. Don't believe me? Call the Vermont Department of Public Service and ask them.
What about all the electricity that goes out onto the grid from Vermont Yankee?
Won't there be rolling blackouts if it is shut down? Rolling blackouts, my sweet rumpus! Typically, 4,000 extra megawatts is available on the grid. Vermont Yankee produces one-sixth of the excess available electricity. That's why the plant can shut down for a whole month when workers change the spent fuel rods. Don't believe me? Watch the figures on the ISO New England daily reports. That organization regulates electricity sales. I've seen as much as 10,000 megawatts on the grid with no buyer.
So... let's take a look at what else we get from Vermont Yankee.
Google: “Vermont Yankee annual radioactive effluent reports.” Then get on the nrc.gov website.
Here's what we got from Vermont Yankee in 2011:
Released into the atmosphere in the form of gaseous effluents as particulates: radioactive iodine-131, known to cause thyroid cancer (see recent letter to post office boxholders from the Vermont Department of Health); tritium, shown through epidemiological research to be correlated with Down's syndrome; carbon-14, which causes leukemia.
Trucked out as waste sludge, spent resin, and irradiated parts: cesium-137, known to cause breast cancer, cobalt-60, associated with liver cancer; strontium-89 and -90, associated with leukemia.
For a complete list, see the reports at nrc.gov.
Here is what I don't understand. Our governor, Peter Shumlin, who got elected on his anti-nuclear policy, has not yet shut down Vermont Yankee.
All it would take is to close off the Bellows Falls dam for a day or two each week. This strategy would drain the Connecticut river all the way to the Vernon Dam and cut off the necessary coolant so that VY would have to shut down repeatedly.
It can be done. We don't have a contract to provide water to Vermont Yankee.