The Impact of Closing Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant

"If VY stops operating it will:

- increase Vermont power cost by $620,500,000 during the 6-yr period after VY is closed.
- raise Vermont electric rates from $0.120/kWh to $0.137 kWh, or 14.2%.
- require a capital expenditure to implement renewable power systems in 6 years = 2,086/3,595 ($2.49 billion + $5.14 billion) = $4.43 billion. See Vermont Electric Power in Transition report, pg 3.

http://www.coalitionforenergysolutions.org/vt_elec_pwr_in_transitionpr.pdf

- add 66 billion lbs of CO2 to atmosphere, because of power purchases from the grid for 6 years.
- eliminate 635 high-paying union jobs PLUS at least that many more in the 300-sq mi area within 25 miles from VY, because of the lesser spending by these laid-off workers who will find it difficult to find work that pays as well, who will be paying LESS in state taxes, who will be collecting MORE in state benefits for some years, all this while the state is dealing with record budget deficits during the Great Recession..."

and so on, and so forth. But at least, *at least* we won't have banana-strength radiation in a small area of the ground under the plant.

Some truly insane, psycho-anti-science responsible for this. :crazy:

http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/52228/impact-closing-vermont-yankee-nuclear-plant?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

Leave it operating for a couple more years while the new one is built, then switch operations. It's installed capacity is only 620 MW--a single AP-1000 reactor would provide 50% more power, and at a rough cost of half what they're going to pay to replace the thing over six years.

http://www.coalitionforenergysolutions.org/videos.html What a lame video

Chernobyl had a containment system. It went off like a volcano and blew its 2000 ton lid off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE2G-KE93bM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuU97uiQom4&feature=related

The roof of the reactor building was a light industrial structure. No different than your average industrial park warehouse or local Walmart.

Chernobyl had a first, last, and only line of defense. The reactor pressure vessel. Nothing else. It also was a positive void coefficient reactor something that has been illegal in the US since the emergence of nuclear power. The Russian design required alert and talented human operators to continually ensure the reactor didn't enter a positive feedback loop. Something they failed to do on April 26, 1986.

Western reactors are negative void coefficient designs. Achieving a positive feedback loop is physically impossible. It requires no reaponse by the operators. As temperature rises the water boils into steam, steam being less dense provides less moderation and thus less fission. Less fission leads to less heat. A runaway condition is simply impossible.

It had a containmet system designed to handle a 3 mile island event and it failed. It had a 2000 ton lid and it blew it off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE2G-KE93bM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPsDCYrlhsE&feature=related

The only thing that cooled the molten reactor core was luck not design. It did have some emergency containment systems but it lacked a dedicated passive (i.e. safety by just being there) containment building that all western reactor designs are required to have. Back to the luck. The emergency coolant system was above reactor floor. When the reactor blew apart it cut the coolant lines. Water poured out onto the reactor floor and then down stairwells into the sub-basement. The reactor melted its way into the sub-basement. By pure luck enough of the core and enough water ended up in the same place.

The "2000 ton lid" was the top of the reactor not a seperate containment. The RBMK reactor is very tall. The height is compounded by the fact that the reactor could be refueled while in operation resulting in even higher and complex crane system above the reactor floor. Building a containment building around it would have been very costly. This wasn't an accidental oversight. Soviet central planners looked at the cost and decided it was prohibitive.

Everyone (Soviets, IAEA, Western Scientists) knew the RBMK design was dangerous. Safety wasn't a high priority for the Soviets, the same people who intentionally starved their own population.

There is a reason why that reactor design has never been aproved in the US or in any other Western nation. Hell even China isn't building RBMK reactors and all their reactors have a containment building. Notice the containment doesn't cover the reactor floor.





See the thin steel wall construction at the back, the WINDOWS on the left. There was no containment. Calling that a containment would be like calling a Walmart Supercenter capable of containing the awesome energy of a full reactor breach. Even your description of 2000 tons "lid" is bogus. It was made up of individual blocks to facilitate refueling while reactor was operational (the photo shows it partially dissembled) which individually weighed much much less.

The purpose of a containment building isn't to be tight seal that is the purpose of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV). First in TMI fission was halted they were dealing with decay heat a tiny fraction of full reactor output. In Chernobyl the reactor was running maxed out fission rate with no method to stop it. In TMI the RPV never ruptured but if the reactor's temperature couldn't have been brought under control they could have intentionally DEPRESSURIZED the reactor. Open the reactor to containment. Now why would they do that? Because containment is a second airtight barrier. The volume of containment is roughly 40x that of the RPV. By the combined gas law we know as VOLUME increases PRESSURE and TEMPERATURE decrease.

Chernobyl didn't have that option.
1) It didn't have a full containment (nothing to stop reactor breach).
2) It had no airtight space to vent the reactor and release pressure (lower temperature and pressure)
3) The reactor had positive feedback loop which mean that fission couldn't be halted (positive feedback loop).

There is a reason a "Chernobyl accident" hasn't happened in the US, it is because it is impossible in the US. Western designs rely on "passive safety". Keeping a western US reactor running requires constant attention because fission will only occur under a narrow range of conditions. Too much temperature or pressure and reactor will lose criticality. No response from control room or a loss of power and control rods will drop stopping the reactor.

That isn't to say that potential dangers don't exist but Chernobyl has about as much to do with Vermont Yankee as the Challenger accident does with Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicle.

I know what Chernobyl denialist like to claim. It had none because it was not like ours.

It was built after 3 Mile Island and it was built to handle a 3 Mile Island event. It failed, but it did catch the melted core.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE2G-KE93bM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPsDCYrlhsE&feature=related

Not at all... but the really ridiculous claim is your BS that because you use the same word for two dramatically different things, that one is just as susceptible to failure as the other.

In your opinion, does something with windows really qualify as a "containment structure".

Just wondering...

Never a dull moment with you, is there?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE2G-KE93bM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPsDCYrlhsE&feature=related

...but there's still miles to go before you find a decent source... or understand what they're saying.

You might try reading more than that paragraph if you hope for this to end better than your last couple embarrassments. :)

the roof of the factory where I work weighs as much if not more

For some reason that information is missing from the website.

I'd be willing to bet it is some arm of the nuclear industry. I've perused a couple of papers from the site and it is clear they are presenting boilerplate nuclear slant - for example, Post uses German Feed in Tariffs as a template for concluding that renewables "produce too little power for dollar invested". It is surprising that such an esteemed individual would fail to recognize that the desired product of the German Feed in Tariffs isn't the current *averaged* cost associated with German renewable power production. All non-nuclear industry analysts recognize that the measure of the success of the German FiTs is the amount and pace of technological innovation that the FiTs encouraged and the degree of price reduction that those innovations have resulted in.

In other words, his conclusion is not in any way supported by the evidence presented. He continues in another area of the same paper to claim that the German FiTs have been a success for "vendors, developers, etc." but that since "the definition of success is... competitive power production" the results of German policies are a "dismal" failure.

So once again the true nature and purpose of of the FiT policy is misrepresented in order to allow a false claim of policy failure when, in fact, that policy has been wildly successful at its intended goal of promoting innovation and lowering costs by spurring investment in a sector of infrastructure that is socially necessary.

And finally we see the nature of the extreme bias of the authors by the claim that "Germany, realizing the huge investment in PV solar and the small quantity of variable, intermittent and expensive power from it, decided to significantly reduce its PV solar FITs."

That is simply a lie. The FiT payments were lowered because the policy has been effective at lowering costs and the reductions were a natural response to the declines in the costs of production.

In short, since they can't be honest about what we can easily verify I wouldn't put much stock in anything this group has to say that requires a lot of time to verify - such as a complex economic and technical analysis of the power needs of a state.

We know who funds Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) and we know from long history that they ARE acting in the public's interests; in contrast here is the business website for the "founder" of the Coalition: http://www.carnotcommunications.com/


Can you say "astroturf"?