German environmental leaders are urging Vermont officials to follow their country's lead and drop nuclear power.
In May, the German government announced plans to phase out all nuclear power plants by 2022. The decision came in the wake of mass anti-nuclear power protests across the country after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station disaster.
The Fukushima incident is considered to be the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. In March, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused explosions and leaks of radioactive gas at three reactors that suffered partial meltdowns. In addition, spent fuel rods caught on fire and released radioactive material into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean.
The reactors that emitted radioactive contaminants into the Japanese environment are Mark 1 General Electric models, identical to the type used at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station in Vernon.
In a visit to Montpelier on Oct. 11, which was coordinated by the Maryland-based anti-nuclear power group Beyond Nuclear, Jochen Flasbarth, president of Germany's Federal Environment Agency, and Arne Jungjohann, of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, joined Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, to discuss Vermont's shift away from nuclear power.
“It's an amazing shift in energy policy,” Flasbarth said of the Vermont Legislature's decision not to renew the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's operating license in 2012.
Flasbarth said Germany plans to transition toward 40 percent renewable energy by 2020 and 80 to 100 percent renewables by 2050. He said 25 percent of Germany's energy on its grid comes from renewable sources.
The country might use more coal in the next 10 years to replace its nuclear sources, but the amount of coal it burns is capped by the European emission trading system. This system covers installations that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide, and it includes nearly half of the European Union's carbon dioxide emissions. Companies receive emissions allowances that they can buy or sell as needed.
Klein, who chairs the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, said the policies Germany has implemented validate the work he and others have been doing to move away from nuclear power.
“We are moving toward a more independent, cleaner energy system,” Klein said. “We are going to be less reliant on big, centralized power producers.”
Jungjohann, who is affiliated with the German Green Party, said Vermont's legislation is a rare example nationally of cleaner energy initiatives in the United States.
“You don't change politics in Washington,” he said. “Where it's happening is at the state level.”
Jungjohann praised Vermont for its decision to implement a “feed-in tariff” policy that sets different rates for different types of renewable projects in order to encourage investment in renewable technologies.
In Vermont, the Legislature enacted a law in 2009 to create a “standard offer” for certain projects of less than 2.2 megawatts. The essence of the standard offer is that it requires utilities to purchase electricity from certain small renewable projects at above-market price-usually calculated to cover the cost of developing a qualifying project.
In Germany, unlike Vermont, there is no cap on the feed-in tariff. The system also adjusts such rates to keep them closer to the market cost of energy. Likewise, the standard offer program is open-ended in Germany, while in Vermont there are a limited number of projects that can receive the benefit.
Jungjohann said Germany focuses on developing energy cooperatives for projects like wind farms that keep revenue in local communities. He said this type of decentralized, community-owned approach produces acceptance and economic benefit for the people who live near the projects.
“There's a small-town energy revolution on its way,” Junjohann said.
He said in Germany people are already seeing the benefit of creating a local energy economy.
In Vermont, proponents of Vermont Yankee fear a shutdown will result in higher energy prices for ratepayers if the state has to purchase its energy from the New England grid.
When asked about the costs of shifting away from nuclear power, Flasbarth said “the bill presented to the consumer is not the real bill” when taking into account the costs of environmental problems that could occur as a result of nuclear power. He claimed, further, that investing in renewable energy in Germany had helped the country overcome the global economic downturn by creating jobs and a “green economy.”
Larry Smith, a spokesman for Vermont Yankee, said he could not discuss the future of the nuclear plant in Vermont's energy portfolio because of the pending litigation between Entergy and the state of Vermont. Entergy filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in April seeking a judgment to prevent the state from forcing the plant to shut down in March 2012.
Vermont Yankee's position, he said, is that the plant is safe and that comparing the facilities there to the Fukushima Daiichi plant is unfair.
“It's apples and oranges,” Smith said.
Critics of Vermont Yankee have highlighted the fact that the Vermont plant uses a GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactor similar to the one that failed in Japan, as well as technical problems with the facility, including a tritium leak and the existence of strontium 90, a radioactive material, in fish near the plant.
Smith said the two facilities have a similar design, but there are significant upgrades at Vermont Yankee that were suggested by General Electric or mandated by the Atomic Energy Act.
One of these upgrades included hardened vents designed to send hydrogen into the atmosphere in an emergency to avoid build up of the gas that could explode. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed Vermont Yankee's license earlier this year but maintained that the agency would continue to evaluate safety measures at the plant in light of the disaster in Japan.
Flasbarth also spoke at the Renewable Energy Vermont conference and at the Bethany Church in Montpelier. The Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance and the Vermont Public Interest Research Group also sponsored the Vermont stop on the Beyond Nuclear tour.