Thus I'm powering down the blog.
"Mixed reaction as Vermont Yankee plant shuts down; Some see economic, energy setbacks; opponents cheer, focus on spent fuel" by Dave Gram, Associated Press December 29, 2014
VERNON, Vt. — Ellen Merkel says she gets ‘‘a little teary-eyed’’ when she thinks about the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant sending its last electrons to the regional power grid. She knows it probably will mean moving from her nice neighborhood in Vernon, where her husband works at the plant, to the South for a new job.
Frances Crowe, of Northampton, Mass., says that she will take some satisfaction that her antinuclear activism, which began before Vermont Yankee was built in the late 1960s, has had an impact. But she promised to continue to push for the highly radioactive spent fuel from the plant to be moved as soon as possible.
She's also the face of the peace movement.
Those were among the reactions in the three-state region of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts as the plant finishes powering down and prepares to disconnect from the grid, probably on Monday.
‘‘Economically it’s going to really hurt,’’ said Bob O’Donnell, co-owner of Trend Business Solutions, a small Vernon business that sells clothing and other items adorned with business logos, including that of Vermont Yankee. ‘‘It’s going to kill the tax base.’’
Just like a mill town.
Vermont Yankee, the state’s only nuclear reactor, employed more than 600 people when it announced it would close. The workforce will be cut in half after a round of layoffs and retirements Jan. 19. In 2016, the plant will see another big reduction as it prepares for a 30-year period during which time its radiation will cool. The plant is not expected to be dismantled until the 2040s or later.
New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. bought Vermont Yankee in 2002 from a group of New England utilities that had owned the plant since it opened in 1972. In August 2013, Entergy announced it would close the plant because it was no longer economical to operate.
‘‘This has been a bad investment for us,’’ said Barrett Green, an Entergy finance executive who recommended both that Entergy buy the plant and later that it be closed.
The company was betting on a carbon tax, or some other hit on fossil-fuel-fired power plants, that would make nuclear power a clear winner. Instead, Green said, nuclear plants have been hit with increasing ‘‘regulatory costs’’ like beefed-up security post-9/11 and new safeguards against extreme events like the earthquake and tsunami that struck a nuclear station in Japan in 2011.
I'm sorry that false flag lie f***ed up your profits and that Fukushima remained nameless.
A boom in construction of natural-gas-fired power plants around New England has helped make Vermont Yankee less competitive, but the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, said the real problem is a regulatory system not working to keep nuclear plants open.
Then why are costs soaring?
‘‘Other nuclear energy facilities — producing affordable electricity safely and reliably — are at risk of premature closure due to competitive electricity markets that are not working for the benefit of consumers or the long-term reliability of the electric grid,’’ said Marv Fertel, NEI president and chief executive. ‘‘It is simply unsustainable and shortsighted to continue to shut down perfectly good energy facilities and put at risk the fundamental values of our electricity system.’’
At least they won't be leaking cancer into the Connecticut River anymore.
At ISO New England, the regional power dispatch agency, spokeswoman Marcia Blomberg said, ‘‘We determined a couple of years ago that the power grid could be operated reliably without Vermont Yankee.’’
The announcement that the plant was closing came weeks after it won a round in a legal battle to keep it open. A US appeals court upheld a ruling overturning state laws that appeared aimed at closing the plant. One required a vote of support from both legislative chambers before the state Public Service Board permitted the plant to operate 20 years beyond its initial 40-year license.
The state Senate defeated the measure in 2010 and the House never acted, prompting Entergy to sue. The legislative action came amid political turmoil for the plant: Officials there were caught making false statements to lawmakers and regulators that the plant did not have the sort of underground piping that carried radioactive substances. There was also widespread suspicion among lawmakers about an Entergy plan to sell off Vermont Yankee and other northern reactors to a new, heavily leveraged spinoff company.
On top of that, a vocal cadre of well-organized and well-funded antinuclear activists in southeastern Vermont and Massachusetts took to the streets and to regulators’ hearing rooms in a bid to shut the plant down. They also had the ear of Governor Peter Shumlin, who had orchestrated the vote in the Senate against the plant’s continued operation.
Entergy officials have said the shutdown decision was purely a matter of economics.
I don't care; I'm just glad it is shutting down after having lived in its shadow for so long.
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Related: Globe Cleans Up Nuclear Fuel at Vermont Yankee
All that is left is to turn out the lights:
"Vermont Yankee nuclear plant shutdown complete; Plant’s closing leaves new England with 4 nuclear facilities" by Jack Newsham, Globe Correspondent December 29, 2014
At 1:04 p.m. Monday, the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant shut down for good, and the power system in New England didn’t even blink.
Power plants elsewhere in New England cranked up to replace the electricity from the 600-megawatt nuclear station in Southern Vermont.
Also, transmission lines in the area had been upgraded to move power around better, and energy efficiency has improved.
Marcia Blomberg, a spokeswoman for the operator of the regional power system, ISO New England, said that it had studied the area powered by Vermont Yankee in 2012 and concluded it could withstand the loss of the power plant.
Vermont Yankee’s nuclear reactor has been in “coastdown” mode for several months, and the electricity it supplied to the regional grid had gradually decreased. On Monday morning, it was operating at 74 percent capacity before it was shut down to zero over the course of several hours.
“It’s a bittersweet day,” said Marty Cohn, a spokesman for Entergy Corp., which owns Vermont Yankee. “Everyone on the plant is focused on the job at hand, but they know that this is the last time, that this plant will not be returning.”
The power plant had been on shaky ground since 2010, when lawmakers in Vermont tried to close it down. Although Vermont Yankee was licensed by the federal government to operate until 2032, Entergy announced in 2013 that it would close the plant for financial reasons.
Barrett Green, an Entergy executive who is leading the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee, said that major changes in energy markets made the plant’s continued operation too costly. Although New England’s reliance on limited supplies of natural gas for electricity production has led to spiking electricity prices this winter, Green said the company was not making its plans based on short-term market movements.
That's not why. It is so we approve a pipeline.
“We look at the long run,” Green said. “The price of natural gas, because of the shale developments, has fundamentally changed the outlook for the energy infrastructure of the US. The movement toward carbon constraints has not been as effective or as fast as we had expected.”
Related: Expert: U.S. Has Leveraged Economy On Shale Oil, Which Saudis May Be About To Crash
Also see: The US Just Opened Its Shale Oil Floodgates To The World By A Tiny Bit
At least benchmark US crude rose yesterday.
In 2013, New England’s five nuclear reactors provided about a third of the region’s electricity; at full capacity Vermont Yankee alone could power about half a million homes.
With Vermont Yankee out of the picture, the four remaining operating nuclear reactors in New England are Millstone 2 and 3 in Waterford, Conn., Pilgrim Station in Plymouth, and Seabrook Station in Seabrook, N.H.
Local residents were divided on the Vermont plant, which at the peak employed about 600 people from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. About half of the plant’s workers will have been laid off or relocated by January 2015, and a long-term plan calls for a smaller staff to secure and temporarily dispose of the plant’s radioactive fuel.
Blomberg added that power plants in the region could supply a total of 32,000 megawatts of electricity.
Winter tends to be a lower-demand period for electricity in New England, with the peak period in the summer. Demand for power on Monday, for example, was estimated to be around 18,000 megawatts.
Really? Even with all the heat needed due to winter?
And if that is true, why are prices going up?
Still, Blomberg warned that the New England power system is in no position to lose more plants.
“Going forward, we are concerned about the impact of [losing] non-natural-gas-fired generation in the region,” she said.
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They will regret it!
Time to go solar:
"Despite the program’s failures, the department projects a profit of between $5 billion and $6 billion over the next 20 to 25 years."
At least the power pushing the agenda is limitle$$.
Have they no $hame?
So where we gonna store all the gas?
"Vineyards fight plan to store gas in N.Y. cave; Industries clash at Finger Lakes" by Jesse McKinley, New York Times December 26, 2014
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Over the last two decades, vintners in the Finger Lakes region of New York state have slowly, and successfully, pursued a goal that could fairly be described as robust, with a lively finish: to transform their region into a mecca for world-class wines and invite an influx of thirsty oenotourists.
Long before the local labels went upscale, however, the Finger Lakes were known for another earthy, if not so refined, industry: underground gas storage.
Now, those two legacies have collided over a long-simmering project that would store tens of millions of gallons of liquefied petroleum gas, and up to 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas, in subterranean salt caverns thousands of feet below the shores of Seneca Lake.
Those who oppose the plan describe it as an existential threat to years of carefully cultivated vineyard development in the Finger Lakes, just as the area is beginning to bloom.
“Do we want to be known for world-class wine grapes, farm-fresh food and great hospitality?” said Will Ouweleen, an owner of Eagle Crest Vineyards on Hemlock Lake, near the region’s western edge. “Or do you want to be the gas-storage hub of the Northeast?”
I thought the wine tasted funny.
The project inched closer to reality last month, when the state Department of Environmental Conservation scheduled a Feb. 12 issues conference, a proceeding on issues of fact and standing in the permit process.
State approval is necessary for the portion of the project that involves liquid propane and butane. The expansion of methane-gas storage received approval from federal energy officials in October.
Since then, dozens of protesters have been arrested near the natural gas storage site, near Watkins Glen, where rolling hills fall into deep glacial lakes. Protest signs have become nearly as common as grape trellises.
And more than 50 local winemakers — joined by several vintners from acclaimed wineries in California, France and Germany — have spoken out against the project, saying the community’s future is tied to the land, not to the gaping holes deep beneath it.
“It’s not like other businesses,” said Doug Hazlitt, whose family has been growing grapes here since 1852. “We can’t pick up our vines and move to another state.”
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Related:
In upstate New York, wine vs. drilling
As deadline looms, farmer-wineries still await fix promised by legislators
Wine connoisseurs, vineyards eagerly await new direct shipping rules
Just came in:
"New York governor will move to ban fracking in state" Associated Press December 17, 2014
ALBANY, N.Y. — Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration will move to prohibit fracking in New York State, citing unresolved health issues and dubious economic benefits of the widely used gas-drilling technique.
Environmental Commissioner Joe Martens said Wednesday that he was recommending a ban, and Cuomo said he would defer to Martens and Acting Health Commissioner Howard Zucker in making the decision.
Zucker and Martens summarized the findings of their environmental and health reviews. They concluded that shale gas development using high-volume hydraulic fracturing carried unacceptable risks that have not been sufficiently studied.
Martens said the Department of Environmental Conservation will put out a final environmental impact statement next year, and after that he will issue an order prohibiting fracking.
The drilling boom in the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation underlying southern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, was made possible by fracking, or high-volume hydraulic fracturing, which releases gas from rock by injecting wells with treated water at high pressure.
The technique has generated tens of billions of dollars and reduced energy bills and fuel imports. But it has brought concerns and sparked protests over air and water pollution, earthquakes, property devaluation, truck traffic, and health impacts.
***********
Zucker said he had identified significant public health risks and ‘‘red flag’’ health issues that require long-term studies before fracking can be called safe. He likened fracking to secondhand smoke, which was not fully understood as a health risk until many years of scientific study had been done....
Another Massachusetts neighbor, Vermont, became the first state to ban fracking in 2012. Although the drilling technique is legal in the Commonwealth, a bill pending for more than a year before the House Ways and Means Committee would ban the practice, and at least one town, Pelham, has banned natural gas drilling. But there has been little interest from gas companies in drilling in Massachusetts. Although geologists say there may be gas trapped in the shale below the Connecticut River valley in Western Massachusetts, it would probably not be profitable to drill for it.
See: Western Mass. viewed as territory for fracking
They will be coming here someday, but it will be over my dead body.
Cuomo said the debate over fracking was the most emotional he has had to deal with as governor. He said the issue led to some heated encounters with people on both sides of the debate. Within 30 seconds of talking about fracking with opponents, tempers typically flared, Cuomo said.
‘‘They’re not listening and they’re not hearing and they’re yelling,’’ he said. ‘‘You speak to the pro-frackers, same thing.’’
Zucker said after studying all the analysis, for him it came down to one question: Would he want to live in a community that allows fracking? ‘‘My answer is no’’ he said....
The Exxon oil guy agrees!
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At least there are always casinos.
