Yankee Wisdom
Yogi Berra, where are you?
Without mentioning the great man’s name, Vermont’s dwindling collection of Vermont Yankee supporters have been invoking the wisdom of one of this more admirable Yankee’s most famous utterances (and one he apparently uttered, which is not true of all of them): “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
Indeed it ain’t. It might not be over for 24,000 years, roughly how long the spent nuclear fuel stored on site will remain dangerous, unless by then it is moved elsewhere.
But last week’s overwhelming vote by the State Senate against allowing the Public Service Board to relicense the nuclear power plant for another 20 years, was a powerful – if not quite fatal – blow to the plant.
To employ a metaphor the aforementioned Mr. Berra would appreciate, a baseball team that has fallen behind 26-4 (the Senate vote) at the end of eight innings can still win. It rarely does.
Today’s post is particularly designed to fulfill one of the purposes of this web site, as expounded at its outset – to compensate for the flaws in mainstream news coverage stemming not from lack of ability but from the rise of “opinions on the shape of the earth differ” journalism, in which quoting each side accurately is considered doing the job even if the words quoted are absurd.
The premise seems to be that if a reporter points out the absurdity he or she will be considered biased. It’s a foolish premise. There is no bias here on the issue; the News Guy is neither an opponent nor a booster of nuclear power. The only “bias” is for evidence and against nonsense.
Start with the oft-quoted dismissal of the Senate vote by Yankee’s most important backer, Gov. Jim Douglas.
“There was a lot of theater here yesterday, but from a legal standpoint, nothing’s changed,” Douglas told WPTZ-TV (Channel 5) News. “The law says absent an affirmative vote from the Legislature, the Public Service Board can’t move forward with relicensure. So I expect there’ll be more chapters in this drama to play out.”
Could be. As the Governor and other Yankee advocates pointed out, by next year, Yankee’s image, battered by news of tritium leaks and official misstatements, might have recovered. Besides, there are elections this November, and the lawmakers who take office next year could be less hostile to Yankee and its owner, Entergy Company.
But that would require a far greater turnover of Senate seats than seems likely. And on the basis of recent development, it’s just as likely that another misstep or another revelation would drive Yankee’s reputation even lower. Right now, the Senate’s decision appears likely to stand.
As to the consequences of shutting down the power plant in two years, actual evidence (as opposed to rhetoric) supports not taking either side one hundred percent seriously.
The gloom and doom projections are certainly overblown. There is a power surplus throughout the Northeastern United States. Your lights will go on with or without Vermont Yankee.
Might your electric bill be higher? Yes, but it was going to be higher either way. Yankee may now provide some 35 percent of Vermont’s electricity at a low price. But under its most recent contract offer, it would provide less power at a higher price. Interestingly, the utilities that buy Yankee’s power have been relatively quiet during the recent tumult. That’s because they’ve figured out how to replace the power they get from Yankee at an acceptable price.
Besides, if people are serious about controlling global warming (as to be sure many are not, though all evidence indicates that most Vermonters are) everybody is going to have to pay more for all kinds of energy so that everybody uses less. Markets work; the easiest way to reduce consumption of any commodity is to raise its price.
None of this proves that electricity might not be slightly more expensive without Yankee than with it. But “might” and “slightly” are the key words here. Either way, the increase is hardly likely to eliminate Vermont’s status as the cheapest-power state in the region. So those warning about how shutting down Yankee will chase away businesses because of high utility rates need not be taken seriously.
So what should be taken seriously? In ascending order, the following:
1—Without a nuclear power plant, more greenhouse-gas-creating fossil fuel will be burned so Vermonters can turn on their lights, run their computers, and the like. Most of that fuel will probably be natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal and oil, but not as clean as nuclear, (at least once the nuclear fuel is refined from its ore, a process that burns a great deal of fossil fuel). Eventually, wind, solar, and other “sustainable” sources will provide more power, probably at a higher cost. But (see above) higher costs are both inevitable and desirable.
2—Closing the plant will have some economic impact in and around its home base of Vernon. Even Arnold Gundersen, the consultant who has been critical of Vermont Yankee, acknowledged that if the plant stops producing power when its license expires in 2012, it will lay off some 200 nuclear engineers.
Yankee critics point out that most of those engineers live in Massachusetts or New Hampshire. True, but they come to Vernon five days a week (or more) and spend money there. Losing them will be noticeable.
But not catastrophic. Businesses and policy makers have at least two years to prepare. Furthermore, shutting down a nuclear power plant is a major undertaking, requiring hundreds of highly skilled workers for a decade or more. Vernon can prosper for the foreseeable future if it keeps its head.
3—And here’s the only real reason the Vermont Yankee matter is not really closed (all that other stuff is just why people will still jabber about it). Entergy could challenge the state’s power to block its relicensing in federal court.
The company might win. Federal law trumps state law if they conflict (See Article VI, US Constitution). But it’s complicated. Elsewhere, state regulatory agencies play a role in licensing nuclear plants, which seems not to have been challenged.
Besides, companies are often wary about using raw power to impose themselves where they are not wanted. Nobody is going to boycott electricity. Still, fighting the state in federal court could turn out to be what Yogi Berra (maybe) once called “a wrong mistake.”
Correction: Last Monday’s post said the recent Vermont poll taken by Research 2000 had a margin of error of plus-or-minus four percent. That was a typographical error of the mind. It’s five percent (as the computations in the next paragraph correctly indicated).
Correction 2: A reader noted that the picture used to illustrate Friday’s post did not seem to come directly from the US. Agriculture Department’s Food Environmental Atlas, but via a “secondary sourc.” Said reader is right. The map should be credited to the always-helpful Rural Blog from the University of Kentucky.
Tags: Arnold Gundersen, Vermont Yankee
