BRATTLEBORO — Recent haggling over spending on overdue upgrades for fire and police facilities raises questions about why more help isn't available for a town that must play first responder for Vermont Yankee (VY), the state's lone nuclear power plant.
That unique and onerous responsibility will continue long after the plant ceases producing electricity, especially as Entergy, the plant's owner, pulls back on its emergency planning obligations. Emergency readiness might actually need to be expanded in the years following closure due to special challenges the plant's spent-fuel pool presents.
VY has more spent fuel in its pool than any other New England reactor (eight cores' worth, when the original design of the pools called for only one) - one of the highest concentrations in the nation and, consequently, the lowest percentage in safer dry-cask storage.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chair Allison Macfarlane co-authored a 2003 report at Massachusetts Institute of Technology calling for immediate action to relieve the dangerous situation at the nation's spent-fuel pools.
The National Academy of Sciences also reiterated concerns about these structures being pushed to the brink, with far more waste stored for a longer time than was ever imagined.
The NRC staff is right now wrestling with whether to require the “expedited removal” of waste from these pools to help avoid the risk of catastrophic fire that could result in a regional Armageddon.
So who is running into the unlikely but highly catastrophic possibility of such a radioactive fire?
One thing we know: It's not Vernon police. Federal and state help should be available to address the spent-fuel problem swiftly, support our first responders, and generally help Brattleboro and the surrounding region use decommissioning and the long-term waste management being thrust upon us - like it or not - as opportunities.
But we've got to work together to get there.
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Regulations and laws are changing rapidly as national nuclear waste policy is overhauled, and it behooves our towns to weigh in now. One such deadline - Thursday, April 10 - looms for public comments on Emergency Planning Exemption Requests for Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants. Other changes being debated within the NRC right now would compel Entergy to comply with 'expedited transfer' of spent fuel to safer dry cask (the decommissioning strategy Entergy agreed to pursue in its closure deal with Vermont).
The police and fire problems point to a long pattern of denial about especially Brattleboro's special rights, responsibilities, and – yes – opportunities as a reactor-turned-waste-management town. For while the hamlet of Vernon is the physical location of the reactor and for 40 years reaped the tax breaks and economic payoffs from that fact, Brattleboro is the economic hub of a tri-state region that shoulders the broader pain of plant closure as well as the increased risk and responsibilities that nuclear-waste management and reactor decommissioning present.
“There will be a landslide of reactor closings in the next 30 years,” former Brattleboro Development Credit Corp, executive director Jeff Lewis said at recent gathering of those exploring the socio-economic impact of nuclear plant closings.
Lewis said decommissioning is expected to run about $1 billion over an indeterminate period of time. Entergy has until December to lay out how it plans to spend those funds in a NRC-mandated Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report.
But nuclear leaders like former NRC commissioner Peter Bradford told conference attendees that states and localities might have more of a say than they think.
The new economy is in decommissioning, security, waste-management technology, and lawsuits. Nuclear operators, including Entergy, sue and are winning hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from the U.S. government for failing to produce the long-promised repository for waste generated by the nation's nuclear fleet.
The companies get something out of the fix; the community does not. The government needs to provide more relief in the form of economic opportunities that build upon the $12.6 million which Entergy has already committed to help Windham County's economy.
All stakeholders agree the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which meant to guide national nuclear waste management, has failed miserably. U.S. courts have suspended all licensing of new reactors until a viable waste plan is in place - a reality that forces momentum for legislative change.
A bipartisan, presidential Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future was called to come up with a solution to the crisis. Its 2012 final report, the blueprint for change that the industry largely supports, calls for “community consensus” and special tax and other incentives for those who step in to help take on the problem.
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Brattleboro and 64 other communities nationally are already managing this waste with no consensus, myriad jurisdictional questions unanswered, rules in flux, and no benchmarks in sight.
Military base closings provide a model for the kind of approach we need. Just as military bases have done, nuclear communities provide a national benefit and deserve similar help as part of the national overhaul of nuclear-waste policy currently being shaped.
The Blue Ribbon Commission's findings resulted in the the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2013, which would establish a new organization to manage nuclear waste, provide a consensual process for siting nuclear waste facilities and ensure adequate funding for managing nuclear waste.
Legislative changes could include more forms of tax relief and assistance with first responders - the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) doles out millions and millions to fire departments each year.
Changes also call for the immediate use of $24 billion, the taxpayer- and industry-funded Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for expedited transfer of spent fuel from pools to safer dry-cask storage, alleviating a main point of contention between Entergy and the Vermont attorney general.
Vermont is uniquely situated to influence this legislation, as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is a high-ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee responsible for the bill.
Although no House companion has yet been introduced, Vermont's sole U.S. Representative Peter Welch could also assume a leadership role as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
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Brattleboro has been the epicenter of poisonous social polarization around the plant from day one. Some of the town's smartest people simply stepped out of the fray to avoid extremists on both sides.
Now, a unified front of the region's best and brightest is necessary if we are to secure the help we deserve for managing the nation's nuclear waste.
Brattleboro can activate our region's high-tech, intellectual, and hugely creative human capital to squarely meet the challenges and opportunities being a nuclear-reactor-turned-waste-management town represent, starting with fully supporting our first responders - with a little help from our friends.