Green Right Now Reports
In a blow to the nuclear power industry, Vermont’s State Senate is pulling the plug on the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, which has been beset by environmental problems ranging from missing fuel rods to the uncontrolled release of radiation.
The Vermont Yankee Power Plant (Photo: NRC)
The Senate voted this week (26-4) to not renew a requested extension of the plant’s 40-year license, which expires in March 2012. The vote came after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged this week that yet another radioactive leak had occurred at the Yankee reactor in 2005. It also followed President Obama’s declaration of a new era for nuclear, beginning with $8 billion in federal loan guarantees for a large nuclear power plant near Augusta, Ga.
Vermont’s House of Representatives may vote on the issue, but if either chamber denies the extensive of the license, the plant must be closed. The Vermont Yankee Power Plant, licensed in 1972, is permitted until March 2012, according to the DOE.
The power of Vermont lawmakers to shutdown the facility is unique among states, and the move by the Senate marks the first time a state legislature has closed a nuclear plant, according to Greenpeace, which lauded the move.
“Vermonters sent a message to President Obama and the nuclear industry today,” said Greenpeace’s Nuclear Policy Analyst Jim Riccio. “The nuclear renaissance is dead on arrival. We can retire old, decrepit and leaking reactors like Vermont Yankee and help usher in the energy revolution that America needs.”
“When Americans have the choice about the kind of energy they want in their communities, they don’t want nuclear,” Riccio said in a news release. “… Greenpeace is calling on Vermonter legislators to vote against relicensing in the house as well so that the message to America registers loud and clear.”
Said Vermont Organizer Jarred Cobb, “From farmers and schoolteachers to businesspeople and students, the people of Vermont are overwhelmingly in support of a energy future that relies on clean and safe renewables like wind and solar. The communities living in the shadow of Vermont Yankee have had to worry for too long about this aging reactor.”
Environmentalists are divided on whether nuclear power should play a role in a new clean energy economy. Some like that nuclear reactors do not emit carbon emissions, but many others fear that just the sort of leaks and difficulties faced by the Vermont Yankee Plant make nuclear power risky and damaging to the environment.
The Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, a boiling-water type reactor, is owned by Entergy.