Submitted by GraniteGeekNH t3_z6wak3 in vermont
This article says it will be gone by late 2026, four years earlier than planned.
(Gone except for the radioactive material, of course - it's being stored here, there and everywhere)
Comments
_crAss_ t1_iy6gs4o wrote
Unfortunately the time when nuclear could have served as a "bridge technology" to more sustainable sources in the US has likely passed. When is the last time a new plant has been built in this country, including a major overhaul of an existing facility? The permitting, engineering, and construction costs just don't pencil anymore as they did decades ago. Building more wind and solar from a kilowatt/$ standpoint makes more sense at this point.
Maleficent_Rope_7844 t1_iy7utrx wrote
Except wind and solar don't provide baseload for us, and won't for the foreseeable future.
Unless we setup some serious offshore wind in the Atlantic, but I'm not sure how far our current grid could carry that power.
VThillbilly t1_iycr2c5 wrote
To many regulations by your corrupt government we need more new and sate of the art nuclear power plants. Wind and solar can only do so much also doesn't help when most the solar fields in my area send the power to Massachusetts does Massachusetts send solar power to VT ? VT used to be a great state with a great and honest name the Democrats from other surrounding states have ruined VT and they just use VT like a slave this is rediculous we need less democrats in Montpelier from the gov all the way down.
grnmtnboy0 t1_iy3tt0b wrote
Shutting down Vermont Yankee was a huge loss to Vermont. Yes, the reactor was old but it should have been replaced with something new and safer, not tossed out altogether. This just threw away all the infrastructure already in place to say nothing of the skilled people who operated it. Instead Shumlin and his cronies closed the best power generating plant that Vermont ever had.
Loosh_03062 t1_iy4u74u wrote
Don't forget the disposable income those well-paid skilled people were able to spend in the area. How many high-five/low-six figure salaries are no longer getting spent in greater Brattleboro and how much tax revenue went away between salaries and Yankee's property tax?
grnmtnboy0 t1_iy631ba wrote
Exactly. IMO, this plus his other idiotic policies make Shumlin the worst governor that Vermont ever had
Hank_Arrr_Hill t1_iy6iez9 wrote
> Yes, the reactor was old but it should have been replaced with something new and safer, not tossed out altogether.
Sometimes we have a habit of viewing the past in better terms than it really was. Entergy Louisiana had absolutely no interest in keeping the plant running from the day it was acquired, and VY was not going to see any investment past the bare minimum. Remember the leaking pipes? They spot patched it to the minimum standards instead of replacing the whole system to cut costs. Ultimately it was a business decision, not a political one, to decommission a plant past its usable life.
VThillbilly t1_iycroi8 wrote
This is what the Dems want they want electricity to be extremely expensive to push out the working class they are slaves to this electric climate cult that has no real reason to exist except to destroy. I used to believe the hype myself till I started looking into things nuclear power has come along way it's not like it once was solar and wind can't sustain the population look at tx they are flat land wind mills all over I've been there solar all over and what happened when it got cold there and they needed power for heat and such it all crashed same in California. People need to wake up stop believing all the propaganda you see on TV and the newspaper do your own research listen to other sides then just one.
Most_Expert_8080 t1_iy3e9ad wrote
Baby boomers need to get over the fact that nuclear plants have waste that can be easily and safely stored.
theghostofmrmxyzptlk t1_iy3mpes wrote
"Here, there and everywhere" is a completely disingenuous way of conveying the truth, that we're working with the Feds for a final, permanent solution for every trace of radioactivity. I'm not sure what they'd prefer.
GraniteGeekNH OP t1_iy3rooh wrote
We've been working with the feds for a "permanent solution" my entire life and I'm one of those scorned boomers. Don't hold your breath.
Like many people, I wish we had found a way to keep VY and other plants operating, but we can't downplay the complexity of the waste storage issue. The volume isn't much by, say, coal-ash standards but the toxicity is in a league of its own.
rivunel t1_iy4yf2p wrote
Relevant xkcd.
flambeaway t1_iybzdar wrote
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
Also pretty funny for a Granite Geek to be such an alarmist about low levels of radiation. You know granite is radioactive, right?
https://gizmodo.com/grand-central-station-is-radioactive-1689028425
balding_dad t1_iy3lzb3 wrote
I hope we get a replacement gen 4 in the works soon. If anywhere in the world needs nuclear to supplement wind and solar it’s the place with 6 hours of sunlight for 5 months a year.
realbusabusa t1_iy4rkn7 wrote
VT is all part of the ISO-NE power pool. Lucky for you Millstone wasn't shut down (yet).
bobsizzle t1_iy6pv8k wrote
It's funny, everyone who wants electric cars, doesn't realize they're usually powered by hydrocarbons. And on top of that, there isn't enough power to actually charge electric cars if everyone made the switch. So it'll be slow to implement. Modern nuclear would be a great power source. Not to mention, it's emission free and there are no worries about wind or sun .
ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy6wriq wrote
False, not in Vermont and no, it wouldn't, it's way to slow to build, way too expensive, way too difficult to site and poses numerous, very serious safety hazards. There is simply no need to manufacture any more super dangerous radioactive waste. We already have enough of that awful garbage for the future taxpayers to manage for the next 200,000 years.
Solar is the least expensive way to make electricity and is showing explosive growth and will have no problem helping to make our countries renewable energy goals a reality.
GraniteGeekNH OP t1_iy86stg wrote
It's funny, everyone who is scared by change pretend that other people don't know where electricity comes from and don't know there are complications with the power grid.
Pro tip: Yes, they do. You can stop saying that now.
ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy3w779 wrote
They had better dig up all of that soil that they contaminated with Strontium-90, Cobalt-60, Ceasium-137, and a massive plume of tritium, just to name a few. Or will they just lie about having underground pipes that leak radioactive waste again and pretend it's not there?
And there still is no responsible way to deal with all those casks full of super dangerous used radioactive fuel, so it will just sit there, a few feet above the flood plain, just waiting for a big ice jam or flood. Now the taxpayers get to manage that waste for the next 200,000 years.
That awful poison factory should have never been built, I am happy that it is gone. Nuclear fission is a failed technology and that place was grossly mismanaged, because the supposed "regulator" is captured and populated with people from the very industry that it is supposed to be regulating.
They drove this plant into the ground until a huge section of the cooling tower collapsed from neglect and the groundwater around the plant was polluted with fission products that never should have been found outside of containment, then they lied about it, yet were somehow allowed to investigate themselves and "remediate" their own environmental crime, with pretty much zero consequences. The industry is so corrupt.
They stored radioactive waste in kiddie pools, lost track of fuel, tried to gaslight people about the radioactive pollution found in the Connecticut river and tried to soup up that dangerous, embrittled antique instead of doing the responsible thing and shut it down when it should have been decommissioned.
Good riddance, I am happy that these foolish, dangerous, filthy, super expensive power plants are on their way out, because the private sector cannot be trusted to run them safely. Time and again, all over the globe, the industry chooses short term profit over safety.
Thankfully we have much better options now that are actually green, renewable, safe and affordable. It just doesn't make financial sense to build any more of them. Nuclear fission was never a good deal for anyone but the few companies that extracted the short term profit, while leaving future taxpayers to deal with the enormous mess.
A few days worth of expensive electricity for many thousands of years of radioactive waste management, what a deal!
balding_dad t1_iy3y4nw wrote
We currently consume three times more energy than we produce and 70% of homes are heated by fossil fuels or wood. The status quo is completely unsustainable and nuclear is a crucial part of a balanced energy strategy. I know the old guard green peace types think nuclear is scary but in 10 years when the boomers are gone the rest of us are going to be rueing our failure to build three reactors as the basis of our energy future.
Edit: source
lantonas t1_iy42k7a wrote
But we can fill every field in Vermont with solar panels instead!
ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy43wha wrote
Vermont's in-state electricity net generation has come almost entirely from renewable resources since the permanent shutdown of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station at the end of 2014.
In fact Vermont already has the lowest carbon dioxide emissions of any state.
lantonas t1_iy5swhq wrote
A quarter of which is from burning wood. And hydroelectic power from... Canada.
More than half of our power isn't even generated in state.
ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy428zt wrote
>The status quo is completely unsustainable and nuclear is a crucial part of a balanced energy strategy
That is absolutely false, we do not need nuclear fission at all, not to mention the fact that even if you were somehow able to find a site for a new plant, which is very doubtful, it would be a decade just getting the planning done, and like another decade before it was actually built, and most likely billion over budget. Financially, nuclear fission just can't compete, even with the massive subsidies and the Price-Anderson act.
Also, nobody wants a pile of radioactive waste in their back yard.
WE have much better options now, which are much easier, and much much faster to build, which don't come with all of the awful liabilities of nuclear fission, or the permanent radioactive waste problem. In fact, they don't consume any expensive fuel whatsoever and they actually make money instead of wasting it.
The green revolution is here and this failed technology is dead, thankfully.
balding_dad t1_iy44t8w wrote
The existing renewable options don’t actually fill the same energy niche as coal and natural gas. We still need baseload power to serve as a stable base for consumption. This company has been trying to “solve” grid storage as baseload power since 2012 and they’re still saying “two more years” (spoiler lossless energy storage is very expensive and probably thirty years away). Our existing renewables are great for variable needs but the existing options are coal, natural gas, and nuclear. For the baseload niche, that is our choice today, I choose nuclear.
ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy46wl7 wrote
>We still need baseload power
This is also false, first, we already have "baseload power" from Hydro-Quebec, what we need are sources that can be easily taken on and off line, which nuclear is terrible at. It is actually a liability in our future grid.
Also, everywhere else, "baseload" power stations are not going to be a part of our electric grid going forward, renewables and batteries are what is actually being built now, we have this technology today, which is much cheaper, safer, greener and easier to build than super expensive, dangerous, unpopular nuclear fission plants.
Edit: spelling
mountainwocky t1_iy3is6j wrote
I’d certainly much rather live near a nuclear power plant than live near a coal fired power plant.
I’m ok with them decommissioning old nuclear power plants once they have a newer, safer designed plant built and operating. There are new designs that are essentially meltdown proof so no worries about “The China Syndrome“ happening.