A decision in the Vermont Yankee case is expected before the end of the year.  Meanwhile, CLF in its role as “friend of the court” submitted a post trial memo supporting the State of Vermont’s right to have a say about Vermont Yankee.  The brief explains that the Vermont Legislature acted well within its rights and why Entergy’s safety characterizations are faulty.

CLF Attorney Sandy Levine was a guest on the Callie Crossley show on WGBH in Boston Monday  afternoon to discuss Vermont Yankee and the future of nuclear power.

Entergy’s nuclear plants continue to have problems calling into question their ability to  be trustworthy and responsibly manage their nuclear fleet.

A problem at Vermont Yankee Sunday night reduced power to 36% and if the situation is not remedied shortly, the plant will be required to shut down completely.

At the Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York State, investigations led to 4 workers being fired, 34 disciplined, and criminal charges brought against the plant’s former radiation protection technician.  The investigations showed that employees falsified tests of safety equipment, failed to document air samples and failed to conduct leak testing, among other things.

In Michigan, the Palisades Nuclear Plant shutdown twice last week, due to a cooling system problem and also an electrical breaker fault.

This weekend Governor Cuomo stated that the Indian Point nuclear plant could easily be replaced with other power sources because “safety[is] first.”

The State of Vermont and the owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power facility squared off in Federal Court this week.  It was a three day trial.  The days were long.  The testimony was often technical.  The lawyering was skilled.  Vermont Yankee’s owners say everything is about safety and only the federal government can regulate safety so Vermont’s laws are invalid.  It is a convoluted argument.  The dots don’t connect. 

Vermont’s able lawyers went toe-to-toe with the owners every step of the way.  The State has a strong case.  Vermonters by nature are frank and direct.  Our laws say what they mean and mean what they say.   There is no decade-long grand conspiracy to hide intentions.  The Vermont Legislature acted well within its rights. 

CLF has joined the case as a “friend of the court” and has filed legal pleadings supporting the state.  We are also representing Vermont Public Interest Research Group whose representatives joined me at the hearings, and logged daily accounts of the trial. 

The trial is over.  A decision is expected before the end of the year.  Stay tuned.

Should Vermont have a say in the future of Vermont Yankee, an aging nuclear plant on the banks of the Connecticut River?  A trial to answer that question begins next week.  Vermont Yankee’s owner sued the State of Vermont in April.  Yankee’s owners want to avoid State oversight, and filed suit as a last ditch effort to keep the plant operating.     

The State has a strong case.  For years, Vermont has responsibly overseen the economic, power supply and land use impacts of Vermont Yankee – matters within traditional state authority.  Vermont Yankee’s owners ignore this long history and want the Court to find all actions by Vermont are an attempt to regulate radioactive safety – something within exclusive federal authority. 

Conservation Law Foundation provided a “friend of the court” brief explaining the history, legal background and context of the State’s actions focusing on the owner’s untrustworthiness, poor economics of continued operation, and Vermont’s interests in advancing renewable power.   

Beginning Monday, experts on power supply and regulation will explain their views.  The trial will last three days.  A decision is expected later this fall.

Hurricane Irene did not do as much damage as had been feared in New York City, but it brought much more human and environmental trauma two hundred miles or so to the north in Vermont.

The state is dealing with a second – and more damaging – round of historic flooding only a few months after Lake Champlain reached record levels in the spring. Three people were killed in the state due to the storm’s effects, and at least one more is missing.

Vermont’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure were battered as well. Several of the state’s covered bridges were damaged or washed away despite having stood for a century or more. At one point it seemed likely that water would have to be released from the Marshfield reservoir in order to save it, even at the risk of adding to flooding downstream. Although hundreds of households downstream from the dam were evacuated, the release of water did not prove necessary as floods crested.

“The scope of this disaster is unprecedented in modern Vermont history,” Vermont Transportation Secretary Brian Searles said.

On its own, the flooding of the last few days would have been a dire warning about how ill prepared the infrastructure in the state – and the region – is for sudden and violent rainfall, the kind we can expect to come along with climate change. But the devastation of tropical storm Irene was the second time this year that Vermonters have seen their wastewater treatment, stream banks, roads and bridges tested to the limits.

But despite these and other clear indications that our public infrastructure is not ready for weather that is likely to be wetter and more extreme we don’t seem to be able to cut spending on building and improving that infrastructure fast enough to satisfy national leaders.

And set aside for a moment the kind of innovative approaches we need so badly now such as green development techniques to handle polluted runoff from parking lots and roofs, better sewer projects with the capacity and technology to deal with higher water volumes and modern water management on farms. Our public spending on infrastructure projects of a more traditional kind has declined since the 1960s until now we invest half as much (as a function of GDP) as the Europeans, according to The Economist.

That historical decline in infrastructure spending has left those public projects we own in common at the weakest they have been in more than a generation, just when their strength will be needed to protect our homes, businesses and our lives. And that has happened just when we should instead be gaining the jobs and economic benefits of building the kind of modern projects needed to prevent personal, financial and environmental destruction from an increasingly violent climate we have brought on ourselves.

Water sampling confirms that pollution from the Vermont Yankee  plant is fouling the Connecticut River.  For the first time, water samples of the Connecticut River reveal that tritium, a radioactive substance from the Vermont Yankee nuclear facility, is in the river.   Previous sampling ignored Conservation Law Foundation recommendations and failed to investigate areas along the shoreline where the tritium from the plant would be expected to be found.

This finding confirms that the Vermont Yankee facility is too old to keep operating.  Beyond any legal violations, this shows the abject failure of Entergy to responsibly manage Vermont Yankee.  Entergy is first failing to avoid pollution problems and then failing to clean up the messes it makes.

The continued lackluster oversight by regulators must stop.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not allow Vermont Yankee to pollute with impunity.  Last week another radioactive fish with stontium-90 was found in the river.  This week tritium is confirmed in the Connecticut River.

Vermont Yankee should stop polluting our waters and Entergy should stop saying the plant is responsibly managed.

Why buy when you can save? Power saved through energy efficiency is widely available, clean, and costs approximately one half to one third the cost of buying electricity from a power plant. During a nine-month workshop process with regulators, utilities and businesses, CLF recommended Vermont invest in far greater efficiency to aggressively tackle high-energy bills, curb pollution and climate change, and provide a more secure energy future. While Vermont regulators acknowledged that greater efficiency pays for itself and avoids more expensive power purchases and transmission upgrades, they ultimately approved only a small increase for efficiency efforts.

The Board’s order is disappointing. A limited number of businesses opposed increasing efficiency. This opposition is short-sighted. The most successful businesses are also the most efficient. They represent opportunities for growing our economy and keeping jobs in Vermont and pollution out of Vermont. With more energy efficiency, we can support and grow our economy instead of throwing our energy dollars out the window. Efficiency investments provide savings through financial incentives for equipment, lighting, renovation, and construction that allows buildings and homes to use less energy.

Even with this limited increase, Vermont will remain a strong leader on electrical energy efficiency. Unfortunately, there are still too many savings left on the table. As a result, Vermonters will be paying too much and polluting too much to meet our power needs. We could easily make twice the investment we are making now, and that’s what we should be doing. The Board’s decision is a baby step in the right direction, but we still have a marathon to run.

The Vermont Public Service Board recently approved a contract for Vermont utilities to buy power from Hydro-Québec for 20 years.  The new contract will supply about 20% of Vermont’s power needs, bringing 225 MW of power into Vermont to replace an expiring contract for 310 MW.  The starting price for the power is about $58.07 per MWh and will be adjusted annually based on regional electricity prices.  Vermont regulators found the agreement provides Vermont financial benefits by locking in a stable price that is lower than many other sources of electricity.  Contracts such as this represent only the tip of the iceberg for power imports from Québec, as Hydro-Québec partners to build transmission lines through New York and New Hampshire.

Hydro-Québec is a government-owned utility with some nuclear and fossil fuel plants, 60 hydroelectric generating stations, including seven new dams built since 2000, and significant new expansions on the horizon, including 3,000 MW of new hydropower projects in Québec’s far north as part of the province’s $80 billion “Plan Nord.”  Because Hydro-Québec supplies more than enough power for its own region, the expansion represents Hydro-Québec’s commitment to selling more power to other areas, including New England.

Regulators quickly approved the contract, citing its purported value as a relatively low-carbon and low-cost power source.   However, importing vast amounts of power from Québec is no “green” silver bullet.  Last October, CLF highlighted troubling aspects of the power deal between Hydro-Québec and Vermont utilities. CLF showed that the power deal falls short by failing to honestly represent its environmental impacts.  A few of the problems with the deal:

• Without adequate verification, the environmental claims aren’t necessarily accurate.  A portion of the claimed “clean power” could really be coming from coal or other fossil fuels.  Under the contract, the energy sold must be 90% hydropower, but without any independent verification, it is impossible to ensure that Vermont gets what it bargained for.
• The contract fails to address impacts of new dams that would flood vast areas of northern Québec. Nothing in the contract limits Hydro-Québec’s ability to build new dams as demand for energy grows; this means the contract with Vermont tacitly supports new dams and the resulting damage.
• The contract allows Vermont utilities to sell the renewable claims elsewhere when Vermont itself has no firm obligation to keep its energy supply low-carbon.  Unlike other New England states, Vermont has no requirement now to purchase renewable power. This means that Vermont utilities benefit financially from a system it is not truly a part of, and would allow other states to continue to rely on dirty power sources such as coal.

As a region, we must ensure any new commitments to import power from Canada clearly advance our clean power goals.  Any new imports of hydropower should replace the power we are currently getting from coal and other dirty, inefficient power plants.  Only then can we actually lower our carbon emissions from electricity.   The challenge for New England is to make sure any level of imports meets our needs, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and avoids exporting environmental problems to the north.  Indeed, that challenge is why CLF is calling for a comprehensive, regional analysis of imports from Canada within the Northern Pass permitting process.  CLF continues to push for greater reliance on cleaner energy resources and to demand honest evaluations and representations of environmental benefits and impacts.

Another radioactive fish was found near the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in southern Vermont.

This is the at least the third time a fish contaminated with Strontium-90 was found in the Connecticut River.

Vermont Yankee officials defy common sense.  They continue to claim there is no connection between the contaminated fish and the nuclear reactor on the banks of the river, choosing to blame nuclear bomb testing that took place decades ago and the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

An news articles point out, Vermont Yankee reported Strontium-90 releases to the NRC in annual reports from 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. So, what is more likely? That these releases caused radioactive isotopes to show up in fish a few miles downstream, or that events taking place over 25 years ago are to blame? During Public Service Board hearings last year, CLF’s expert showed that radioactive isotopes likely migrated through the site along with the release of tritium.  Hydrogeologist Stratton French testified:

“A more likely explanation for their occurence at these distant locations is that these radioisotopes migrated beyond the release point along groundwater flow pathways.  This conclusion is supported by Entergy VY’s own sampling data.”

This continues to show that Entergy is an untrustworthy partner to supply Vermont with energy.

The nuclear industry – and Entergy in particular – sure seems to have problems keeping promises.  Back in the 70s, nuclear power was “too cheap to meter.”  With Vermont Yankee, Entergy officials swore under oath there were no underground pipes.  Then those pipes were found to be leaking.  Last month, Entery told a federal court judge it needed an immediate court order to stay open to make the $65 million investment in new fuel.  The Court didn’t buy Entergy’s bullying and last week declined to order a preliminary injunction.  Today, Entergy announced it will purchase the fuel anyway.

Entergy’s fuel purchase decision is not surprising.  The court’s order noted that refueling will cost between $60 and  $65 million, and Vermont Yankee will generate $90 million in revenues by operating until March 2012.  Vermont Yankee’s revenues will cover its fuel costs.

Still, this is a dubious and risky business decision for Entergy.  Their Nuclear Regulatory Commission license is on appeal.  CLF is representing the New England Coalition in this appeal.  Also, Vermont Yankee does not have the needed permission to operate from Vermont past 2012.  This is an old reactor with a long and troubled history.  Retiring the facility as planned on March 2012 is the responsible thing to do.

Entergy’s credibility is buried along with its leaky pipes.  Any economic risk is Entergy’s own making.  Vermont continues to have a strong legal case.  States have the right to decide their energy future and land use and shouldn’t be forced to accept polluting, unreliable and untrustworthy nuclear plants and operators.  Let’s leave a clean energy legacy to our children and grandchildren.