Nancy’s editorial from the Brattleboro Reformer, Maybe 29, 2010:
Parallels between VY, oil spill disaster seen
By NANCY BRAUS
Saturday May 29, 2010
The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seems a world away from the struggle to shut Vermont Yankee in 2012, but the parallels are striking. The potential for a terrible failure of technology due to the negligence and greed of the corporate owners reminds us that both of these operations are too risky for our communities.
We have lived through some huge environmental disasters that are now household names: the Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, as well as countless horrible coal-related accidents. The public has demanded and gotten some nominal regulation of the huge energy corporations over the past four decades, but the organizations regulating energy giants have been riddled with problems. The recent mining disaster at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine, the explosion in the Gulf, and our own tritium leak at Vermont Yankee, all occurred because regulators were not doing their jobs. These federal agencies come fully packed with people who have spent years working for energy industries, and many intend to return to lucrative jobs in the same field. They are reluctant to strictly interpret regulations or to find fault with personnel, policies, or procedures.
As information comes out about the permitting process and oversight of the mile-deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, it is clear that no one was paying attention, and British Petroleum, Transocean and Haliburton were left to drill and extract oil using whatever methods
they thought would get the job done, including some disastrous shortcuts. When the explosion occurred, BP was supposed to be prepared (as part of their permit to drill) to clean up any oil spills. We can all see how that worked out for them and for the Gulf of Mexico. All the safety processes and inspections were left up to the corporations. The regulatory agency was far too busy collecting funds from energy companies to do something as mundane as their jobs.
In the present time, the easily extracted fossil fuels have been taken out of the ground. Oil-drilling enterprises have moved into places less and less suited to safe and controlled operation. The nuclear power plants that were built in the United States during the initial excitement and hype about the peaceful atom (experts claimed that this power would be “too cheap to meter”) are all aging badly and being pushed to produce power way beyond their intended retirement dates. We are getting into dangerous and uncharted territory.
Vermont Yankee is a case in point. Soon after Entergy purchased the plant, they pushed for an “uprate,” meaning Vermont Yankee has been operating at 120 percent of its intended capacity to produce energy. In this time, we have seen an automatic shutdown (SCRAM) a cooling tower collapse, the leak of radioactive water from a crumbling underground piping system, a condenser that needs a very expensive replacement, and countless other problems. This plant has the potential for a nuclear disaster. This is the worst-case scenario, but if such a thing happened, our region would be uninhabitable for the long distant future. The damage from a radiation plume would impact not just the immediate area around the plant, but many miles around.
The huge volume of highly toxic radioactive waste on the shores of the Connecticut River is another potential source of a massive environmental disaster. Many areas have seen 100 or even 500 year floods events as climate changes occur, and water levels rise in many places. Do we have any assurance that the “temporary” storage for the tons of the most toxic substances in the world will never get into the river water in the case of submersion?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is supposed to have the exclusive right to monitor safety issues at nuclear plants. We are not comforted by the fact that they seem to only regulate after something bad happens, and then the “regulation” consists of hollow words. The operating license of Vermont Yankee describes how the plant will not release unmonitored discharges of radioactive water. Yet when Vermont Yankee and other plants do just that, there are no negative consequences except when they are caught and exposed by concerned citizens and the media. In the words of the Union of Concerned Scientist’s David Lochbaum, “If you have ever paid a quarter for an overdue library book, you have paid more than any nuclear plant has ever paid in fines to the government.
The NRC has yet again shown itself to be the revolving door agency we know it to be. The new on-site safety officer at Vermont Yankee, David Spindler, is a former Entergy employee, having worked for the company until October 2006. The agency fundamentally undermines the integrity of any rules when the regulator is a buddy of those he is supposed to be regulating.
Let us learn from the nightmare currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico — we do not need to endanger the future of our children and our planet to power our lifestyles. Our society can make a decision to use power that does not threaten whole species, bodies of water, the very air we breathe, the soil we grow our food in, and the rivers that sustain life. Even if the entire United States is slow to grasp this, the people of Vermont can and must repower our state and lead the way. We can use solar, wind, hydropower, and conservation and successfully shut down Vermont Yankee before we live through another disaster that defines the folly of nuclear energy.
Nancy Braus is a local business owner and an active member of Safe and Green.
We’re a family owned independent bookstore specializing in books about social change, the environment, and multicultural children’s books. Many of our books are by original, creative, and progressive authors.