BRATTLEBORO — RE: Richard January's letter [“VY workers committed to safety, precision, detail, dedication, skill,” Nov. 9].
What value does safety hold if the regulator is unable to stop either a) the waste stream, thus leaving waste that needs monitoring for thousands of years, or b) the risk of environmental destruction, in the event of an accident, complete with years, decades, and generations of genetic mutations?
So much for safety. If, god forbid, something else should go dreadfully wrong, if there should be a dreadful release of radionuclides at VY, Vermont and New Hampshire's tourism and dairy industries would be irreparably harmed, notwithstanding the spectacular cooling tower collapse of August 2007 or the misstatements made by a number of officials, such as former Entergy Nuclear Vice President of Operations Jay Thayer and a few of his cronies who get paid less.
“Tapping” a valve with a mallet does not sound to me like “highest quality” work, nor the work of “honed” Entergy professionals. This action led to a scram a few years back. Leaking tritium also does not sound like Entergy really gives a damn about Vermont and it land/environment appreciation.
I beg to differ with your statement that VY has constantly received the highest ratings from the regulators.
In fact, in 2001, VY won the notoriety of receiving a yellow finding on the issue of security. At the time, it was the least-secure reactor in the country. After 9/11, every reactor had many changes to their security regimen. No one in the public knows if VY received any more than the other reactors. All I know is the NRC stopped doing the force-on-force Operational Safety Response Evaluation drill for years after the VY or 9-11 event.
The New England grid as managed by Independent Systems Operator of New England has an extra 6,000 megawatts of available electricity and will have the surplus for the foreseeable future.
VY's risky nuclear power is not needed.
VY never did offer the state a reasonable, competitive cost for the power after March 21, 2012.
It is about time people saw the truth that nuclear power is no longer cost-beneficial. Without the government subsidies from cradle to grave, nuclear power is more expensive than many other power sources now. This is not new information.
VY is no longer needed in Vermont.
The industry is on the way out in many places around the world. Why should the U.S. not realize that nuclear is a dead-end route before more generations of innocents have their money wasted, or worse, their health impacted?