Welcome to the nuclear renaissance.
Entergy Corp, one of the largest nuclear-power producers in the U.S., issued a surprise press release Tuesday, saying it plans “to close and decommission its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vermont. The station is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014.” Although the press release came from the corporation, it was years of people’s protests and state legislative action that forced its closure. At the same time that activists celebrate this key defeat of nuclear power, officials in Japan admitted that radioactive leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe are far worse than previously acknowledged.
“It took three years, but it was citizen pressure that got the state Senate to such a position,” nuclear-energy consultant Arnie Gundersen told me of Entergy’s announcement.
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Back in 2011, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, who called Entergy “a company that we found we can’t trust,” said on Democracy Now!:
We’re the only state in the country that’s taken power into our own hands and said that, without an affirmative vote from the state legislature, the public service board cannot issue a certificate of public good to legally operate a plant for another 20 years. Now, the Senate has spoken … saying no, it’s not in Vermont’s best interest to run an aging, leaking nuclear-power plant. And we expect that our decision will be respected.
Read more at The intolerable costs of nuclear power and benefits of saying no
