Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant - Protests and Politics

Protests and Politics

See also: Anti-nuclear movement in the United States, Nuclear Free Vermont, Safe Energy Vermont, New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution.

Polls have found that a majority of Vermonters oppose relicensure of Vermont Yankee. In the 1970s and 1980s there were many anti-nuclear protests at Vermont Yankee which attempted to block access to the plant. More recent protests include:

• January 2006: 100 anti-nuclear supporters demonstrated at the front door of Entergy Nuclear, and eleven people were arrested for trespassing.
• April 2009: A rally and two full-page advertisements in The Burlington Free Press, which mocked the Vermont Yankee Power Plant, were paid for by a newly formed group, The Clean Green Vermont Alliance.
• April 2009: About 150 activists marched from Montpelier's City Hall to the State House to urge lawmakers to back development of clean energy sources such as wind power and solar power; the marchers had gathered 12,000 signatures in support of closing Vermont Yankee.
• January 2010: A coalition of anti-nuclear activists participated in a 126-mile walk from Brattleboro to Montpelier in an effort to block the re-licensing of Vermont Yankee. About 175 people took part in the March, some joining for the day and some for longer stretches.
• On February 24, 2010, a large number of anti-nuclear activists and private citizens gathered in Montpelier to be at hand as the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 to not issue the Vermont Yankee reactor the "Public Good" certificate it needed for continued operation past 2012. Under Vermont law the re-license would have to be approved by both houses to continue operation.

In February 2010, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 against allowing the PSB to consider re-certifying the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant after 2012, citing radioactive tritium leaks, misstatements in testimony by plant officials, a cooling tower collapse in 2007, and other problems. Some businesses in Vermont are concerned there is an absence of a clear plan to replace the electricity generated by the plant. A spokesman for IBM, the largest private employer in the state, and the state's largest consumer of electricity, said "we have to be smarter than this". Larry Reilly, president of Central Vermont Public Service Corp., Vermont's largest utility, stated in 2011 that he was untroubled by the prospect of closure. "There's plenty of power out there . . . The bottom line is that it's not a big problem for us. Historically we have used 140 megawatts and we have been planning for years to close this gap through diversification." Reilly also stated that he did not expect the price of electricity in Vermont to increase if Vermont Yankee closed. Analysis by researchers at the University of Vermont estimated that an increase of "slightly more than 3 percent" in the retail price of electricity in Vermont would result from closing Vermont Yankee.

Governor Peter Shumlin is a prominent opponent of the Vermont Yankee. Two days after Shumlin was elected governor in November 2010, Entergy put the plant up for sale.

There have been many recent protests against continued operation of the plant. In March 2011, 600 people gathered for a weekend protest outside the Vermont Yankee plant. The demonstration was held to show support for the thousands of Japanese people who are endangered by possible radiation from the Fukushima I nuclear accidents. On March 22, 2011, the day after the NRC issued Vermont Yankee's license extension, Vermont's congressional delegation—Senator Patrick Leahy (D), Senator Bernie Sanders (I), and Representative Peter Welch (D)—issued a joint statement decrying the NRC's action and noting the similarity of Vermont Yankee to units then in partial meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power station, Japan.

In March 2012, more than 130 protesters were arrested at the corporate headquarters of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, the first day of the plant's operation after the expiration of its 40-year license.