I did not see the printed item on the website:
"Vermont Yankee: Shutdown to cost $1.24 billion" by DAVE GRAM, Associated Press, Oct. 17, 2014
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Officials with the soon-to-close Vermont Yankee nuclear plant said Friday it could cost up to $1.24 billion to decommission the reactor, and that they currently have about half that much in a fund dedicated to paying for that work.
The figure was contained in a "site assessment study" drafted by officials at the Vernon plant, which will cease operations at the end of this year.
Bill Mohl, president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities, a subsidiary of Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Corp., said the tally is based on federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules allowing a reactor owner to mothball the plant for up to 60 years to allow radioactive components to become less so and to allow the fund to grow.
But Mohl also said Entergy hopes not to take that long to dismantle Vermont Yankee and restore the site. Rather than getting the job done in 2075, as would be allowed by the NRC, Mohl said Entergy hopes to start the work, expected to take about a decade, in the 2030s or 2040s, depending on how fast the fund grows.
A key to achieving that goal is a plan for Entergy to lend itself money to store the highly radioactive spent fuel from Vermont Yankee, and then pay itself back from an expected settlement of a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy, which has failed to meet a long-standing promise to take possession of spent nuclear fuel and ship it to a national storage site.
Mohl cautioned that dollar figures and dates are based on assumptions about investment growth. For example, he said, the NRC assumes that if prudently invested, decommissioning funds will grow about 2 percent faster each year than the costs of decommissioning reactors.
"When you actually can begin this process is based on a wide range of outcomes, cost estimates and how they increase over time and how your funds grow over time," Mohl said. He added that the Vermont Yankee decommissioning fund had grown from about $427 million in January 2010 to about $642 million as of Sept. 20.
Nuclear critics, meanwhile, questioned the propriety of using decommissioning funds to pay for spent fuel management, something that federal law originally contemplated as separate from decommissioning. One also warned that costs might appear unexpectedly.
Mohl said the plant tried to account for every known risk.
Forget the irresponsibility and the lies, you will regret the shutdown.
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Also see: Power plants seek to extend life of nuclear reactors
So when does Vermont Yankee start back up?
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Vermont governor and GOP opponent find fodder in state’s economy" by Wilson Ring | Associated Press October 26, 2014
MONTPELIER — Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, says the Vermont economy has created thousands of jobs during his almost four years in office. GOP challenger Scott Milne and, more broadly, Republican interest groups say the state’s economy has suffered under his leadership.
Vermont has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and businesses are hiring, Shumlin said. Critics counter that rate is going up and the low rate is because thousands of Vermonters are not looking for work. The poverty rate is up, too, and median income is falling.
So is Vermont’s economy getting better or worse?
It is mixed, said Middlebury College economics professor Peter Matthews.
‘‘There’s not a lot in the Vermont data that you’re not seeing nationally,’’ Matthews said.
Typically during a recession, people leave the work force after becoming discouraged. As the economy improves, they will be drawn back into the labor force and employment rates go up, he said.
‘‘In Vermont, we haven’t really seen that for prime-age workers. We’ve seen increases in the number of jobs for younger workers and we’ve actually seen them for older workers,’’ Matthews said. ‘‘We haven’t seen dramatic increases in employment for prime-age workers. That’s a bit of a puzzle. It’s a very exaggerated version of a broader national trend.’’
Blah, blah, blah. And while the experts and politicians try to figure it all out the 1% keep scooping up the loot.
Part of Shumlin’s basic campaign pitch is how far the economy has come during his time as governor recovering from the Great Recession. He points to the low unemployment rate and says 9,000 jobs have been created during his time in office, but he’s quick to acknowledge that many Vermonters continue to struggle and more needs to be done.
Shumlin’s political opponents look at other bits of economic data to show his time has not made the state better. A television ad by the Republican State Leadership Committee, a group promoting Republican candidates, says Vermont has 3,000 fewer workers, and it rattles off the names of a number of businesses that have closed.
Matthews said that during an election season, many imagine that governors and state legislatures are capable of reversing entrenched national trends.
‘‘Sometimes there are trends and puzzles out there that don’t admit obvious explanations,’’ Matthews said. ‘‘ There are Vermont workers, especially at the upper end of the income distribution, who are doing well . . . and there are Vermont workers at the lower end of the distribution who are doing worse.’’
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Related:
"Amid a shift in strategy, IBM reports weak earnings" by Steve Lohr | New York Times October 21, 2014
NEW YORK — IBM is struggling financially as it moves away from older businesses such as hardware and invests heavily in new fields that promise growth and higher profits in the future. But the company’s third-quarter results, reported Monday, show that transition is more difficult than expected....
The overall results were blurred by another step IBM revealed Monday, shedding its chip-manufacturing operations in a deal with Globalfoundries. With the charge for the chip sell-off, IBM reported net income of $18 million. The move is the sort of move investors expect and often applaud, yet the stock price was down.
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In Vermont, state and business leaders expressed relief after learning that Globalfoundries is taking over IBM’s microchip plant in Essex Junction, near Burlington. The plant employs about 4,000 people.
‘‘This is an opportunity for Vermont. It’s an opportunity for us to reaffirm our place in the world as a semiconductor manufacturer and research-and-development state,’’ Governor Peter Shumlin said.
The deal ended months of uncertainty about the future of the plant, one of Vermont’s largest employers.
Chief executive Sanjay Jha said in a conference call Monday that Globalfoundries has no plans for layoffs in Vermont....
Doesn't mean there will not be; just means they have no plans yet.
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Also see: Democratic Woes in West Virginia
