Closing Yankee is doable
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By MICHAEL J. DALEY - Published: December 11, 2008
It might not seem so from recent news items, but the Department of Public Service reports about Vermont Yankee should be very encouraging to citizens who want the plant closed in 2012.
It's hard to see that because the department emphasizes the benefits of keeping Vermont Yankee open while highlighting only the costs of closing it. But a close look at the details leads to this conclusion: If Vermont Yankee is not relicensed, the lights will stay on, electric costs will not change dramatically, and the jobs lost at Vermont Yankee will be replaced many-fold by jobs in the renewable energy sector.
Here are the building blocks of that conclusion:
1) The reports find that Vermont Yankee is insignificant to the New England power grid and will not be missed if closed. That means the lights will stay on in Vermont and everywhere else.
2) The added cost to electric rates of closing Vermont Yankee could be as little as $21 million over 20 years. That works out to just about $1.75 per person per year ($21 million/20 years/600,000 Vermont population).
3) Earlier Public Service Department polls showed 62 percent of Vermonters want the plant to close and a lot of them were willing to pay more for that result. Obviously, $1.75 per year is not too high a premium to pay to end the risk of nuclear accident and the generation of 20 more years of nuclear waste.
4) Most figures are given in 20-year totals to create an impression of the plant's importance, but the reports reveal it is actually a very tiny part of the Vermont economy: a mere three-tenths of 1 percent (0.3 percent) of the gross state product and only four-tenths of 1 percent (0.4 percent) of the work force.
5) Contrast this with tourism — the industry most likely to collapse following a significant radiological accident at Vermont Yankee — at about 25 percent of gross state product.
6) The reports state that renewable energy sources could replace Vermont Yankee at an estimated cost of 7.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is cheaper than current market rates and not as subject to inflation and market volatility.
7) Using renewables to replace Vermont Yankee will preserve our very low carbon footprint and eliminate any increase in our radioactive one, as well as ending the risk of a reactor accident.
8) Renewable energy — particularly wind and wood-fired power plants — typically creates jobs at a rate of four or five to one over nuclear. Replacing Vermont Yankee's 262 megawatts with in-state renewable development could create as many as 1,000 new jobs.
9) The reports show that about 68 percent of the direct and indirect economic benefit to the state economy comes from the wages of the 257 Vermont employees at the plant. The rest comes from the generation and property taxes.
10) Since a nuclear reactor operator spending his or her salary is no different from a wood plant worker spending theirs, the direct and indirect economic benefits from these new jobs could be five times greater. New generating facilities will pay property taxes. These combined new revenues will easily outstrip the lost generation tax from Vermont Yankee.
Beyond all this, there is a huge factor the experts overlooked. A Public Service Department report identified nearly 200 megawatts of cost-effective energy efficiency savings. Why did the department fail to make efficiency part of the strategy for replacing Vermont Yankee? Perhaps because efficiency costs only 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, half the price Vermont Yankee is charging us today. Talk about cheap. Such a comparison would obviously make the costs of Vermont Yankee's continued operation seem huge indeed. And the other problem might be that Efficiency Vermont is three times more effective at creating jobs by saving electricity than Vermont Yankee is by generating it.
Once efficiency is factored in with the already encouraging opportunities of renewable energy development, closing Vermont Yankee becomes a win for the ratepayers, a win for the state coffers, a win for the environment, and maybe even a win for Vermont Yankee employees as jobs in the electric energy sector increase dramatically throughout Vermont.
Michael J. Daley of Westminster is an author of books of science and science fiction and a lifelong renewable energy advocate.
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