BRATTLEBORO — Our family has been involved with two nuclear power plants, Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station (OC) in Lacey Township, N.J., and Vermont Yankee (VY) in Vernon. When we lived in Red Bank, N.J., 50 miles away from Oyster Creek, we worked to shut the plant down, and later since moving to Vermont, we have worked to shut down Vermont Yankee.
Oyster Creek is the oldest operating nuclear power plant in the United States, coming on line in 1969. Vermont Yankee began operation in 1972. They are both General Electric BWR-2 “boiling water nuclear power plants,” which could not be licensed today.
Oyster Creek was relicensed for another 20 years in 2009 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), but not without a struggle. In New Jersey, Gov. Jon Corzine worked hard to prevent the relicensing of Oyster Creek, but was overruled by the NRC.
According to Dennis Zannoni, New Jersey's top nuclear engineer, “the NRC is more concerned with reviving the nuclear industry than protecting our health and safety.”
Vermont Yankee has also applied for a 20-year license extension after 2012, which is supported by both Gov. Jim Douglas and the state nuclear engineer, Uldis Vanags.
As the first nuclear power plant to be relicensed, Oyster Creek will be a “test case.” Designed to last for only 40 years, it already has a history of mechanical failures and unplanned shutdowns.
And because the plant was built without cooling towers, it uses a system that cools the plant by sucking 1.3 billion gallons of Barnegat Bay water into the plant every day and running it through its old-fashioned cooling system. This leads to the massive destruction of shellfish larvae, fish eggs, and plankton, the killing of endangered sea turtles, large fish kills, and biocides released into the bay.
The owner of the plant, Exelon, has said that it would shut down the plant rather than spend $800 million to build cooling towers.
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Oyster Creek is located in Ocean County, the fastest-growing county in New Jersey. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of high-level radioactive waste is stored at the plant. If an accident or terrorist attack were to occur, evacuation of more than a half million people living in nearby towns would be nearly impossible.
Vermont Yankee has also been subject to a series of breakdowns and accidents, including a cooling tower collapse, cracks found in the steam dryer, and leaks of radioactive water inside the plant.
In August 2007, the Utility Workers Union of America, Local 369, which represents VY workers, called for immediate action to correct the many “degrading conditions” at the plant which threaten its margin of safety.
And similar to Oyster Creek, an accident or terrorist attack at Vermont Yankee would cause devastating consequences.
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Citizens of Vermont, however, have also been fortunate in one important respect. On Feb. 24, 2010, a historic vote took place at the Statehouse in Montpelier. Thanks to the leadership of Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, and authorized by Act 160, the Vermont Senate voted 24-6 to block the Public Service Board from issuing a Certificate of Public Good, effectively preventing further operation of Vermont Yankee after its license expires in 2012.
A first in the nation, this has been a tremendous victory.
With Vermont Yankee shutting down in 2012, the Vermont Public Interest Research and Education Fund has determined that Vermont Yankee can be replaced with local renewable energy resources that would add tens of millions of dollars to our tax base and also allow Vermont to create hundreds, possibly thousands, of new jobs.
And, according to the fund, we can meet “all of Vermont's traditional electricity needs, power 100 percent of our transportation sector and produce some excess electricity, with continued investment in energy efficiency, wind farms, biomass, solar power, hydroelectricity facilities and Vermont farm and landfill methane projects.”