42 Comments

  1. You are so correct. However, they will try to blame Entergy for “not taking care” of their employees.

    Arnie just comes out and says there shouldn’t have been employees anyway. In that sense, he is more honest than Shumlin.

    Shumlin’s comments are literally making people ill. People like me, for example, and lots of the people at the plant.

    1. Meredith,

      I’m confused, maybe you (or Rod) can explain the economics of VY in some detail or link to some explanation elsewhere on the web.

      The cost of electricity in New York & New England, VT included, is some of the most expensive in the nation; as I recall >10 cents kWh. As with the rest of the US it’s increasingly gas fired, with the NE region’s legacy nukes (~20%) and Hydro Quebec providing most of the baseload.

      According to the NEI the production cost of fission is 2.2 cents per kWh (the uranium fuel itself is about 0.6 cents per kWh IIRC), gas production cost is ~4 cents per kWh. Ergo fission and hydro are the 1st dispatched, gas much further up the cost curve; see: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7590

      Yet I just read in the AP article:

      “Currently, nearly all of [VY’s] power is shipped to electric companies in neighboring states.”

      Is VY not allowed to sell its electricity in VT for some reason? or MA, NH, CT, NY (all equally pricy markets)?

      “Low natural gas prices brought by the shale gas boom are making it difficult for nuclear to compete as a method of electrical generation. That, coupled with tough regional market rules imposed by the regional power dispatch agency ISO New England, sealed the plant’s fate, said [Entergy CEO] Denault.”

      What are ISO New England’s “tough regional market rules” exactly?

      A fission kWh is typically less expensive to generate, especially from a fully amortized legacy reactor purchased cheaply around the turn of the century, than new gas turbines even if driven by gas as cheap as $4 MMBTU.

      1. No, VY is not allowed to sell their power in Vermont. Why?

        Green Mountain Power, owned by Canadian Gaz Metro Limited Partnership, didn’t renew their contract, in my opinion to deliberately starve the facility out out of the state. The plant was selling electricity fo $.03-$.05/kWh when gas was going for $.05-$.07. GMP President Mary Powell just happened to be the chairman of Governor Pete Shumlin’s inaugural committee, since then he has been very warm to the idea of tearing down ridgelines in favor of building wind turbines. These turbines require natural gas for backup, and by an odd coincidence, Gaz Metro gas from Canada is ideal for that purpose.

        I’ll let you connect the dots.

        http://www.7dvt.com/2011gorillas-ghosts-and-greed

  2. They already (the local governments) have the future of Kewaunee and Vermont Yankee plants in line. Since the infrastructure is in place, gas thermal plants are one step away.

    Being green, you can’t choke on coal.

  3. Rod,
    I’ve been an engineer at Vermont Yankee for 15 years and it will be a sad day when this extremely well run power plant is shutdown. There were a lot of tears shed by the employees from the top all the way to the newest employee. But the handwriting has been on the wall for quite some time since electricity prices in New England were barely at or above operational cost. When you add the burden of panicky Fukushima modifications into the mix the plant just was not sustainable.
    No one should pay any attention to Arnie Gundersen. To true believers he’s a messiah and you cannot hope to sway them. Arnie is in a long line of American snake oil salesman. He’s built a business to suck as much $$$ from an industry he betrayed.
    Those of us who have been at Vermont Yankee through all these battles are saddened and are, of course, not looking forward to the day that we can no longer work with the best. I’ve been at many plants but it took only a few weeks time here to realize what a special place VY was. As any one at VY would admit, our Hearts & Souls were wrapped up in this plant and being able to bring the benefits of nuclear power to others. However, make no mistake, despite Arnie’s comments the state never shut the plant down. We lost out to an unregulatable Oil & Gas lobby.
    We all appreciate the support from you, Meredith, Howard and so many others.

    1. Jim,

      I’d like to ask you a few questions, as someone who’s been there.

      Do you know what VY’s total operating costs were?

      Do you know any details on the electricity market in NE that Entergy is talking about? Does it involve the same negative pricing issue that we’re hearing about in Illinois, with govt. mandates/subsidized windfarms being built and the grid being forced to take their surplus power? How much wind is in that region?

      Finally, a lot of us are wondering why Entergy spent so much money on the plant and on legal battles if they knew that “the handwriting was on the wall for quite some time” as you say.

    1. Unfortunately, after going up to 4$, Henry Hub price is back down to 3.5 = http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdd.htm

      As soon as the price starts to get significantly higher, more wells will become profitable and be dug, so I’m not too optimist about a significant chance of quick changes. On the long term, digging more wells means exhausting the resource faster, but it won’t happen any time soon.

      1. My take on the stuff coming from the crew at The Oil Drum is that most of the wells now being drilled are not profitable based on gas production (associated gas from wells with good liquids production are another matter) and are only being drilled because of contractual obligations.  This is why the active rig count is going down; rigs are getting more efficient, but nobody is going to drill anything they are not required to drill under their contracts.

        This will go on until gas companies start going bankrupt.  At that point the contracts are torn up by the bankruptcy court.  Any well without an operating profit gets shut in immediately, and new drilling halts.  Production falls, prices jump.

        The first few bankruptcies will show the trend.

      2. According to this article, exploration, land acquisition and development of new gas wells has virtually ground to a halt.

        http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-18/shale-grab-in-u-s-stalls-as-falling-values-repel-buyers.html

        At current prices, well operators are actually losing money, as Engineer-Poet pointed out. Also note inertial effects and the tendency for such industries to have a boom/bust cycle. Prices will have to rise quite a bit to reverse the inertia and get them investing/drilling again.

        One graphic I saw suggested that a large amount of supply would be “profitable” at a gas price somewhere between $5 and $6. It’s not clear that a slight profit will be enough to stimulate the necessary drilling, however. My judgment is that we should be able to expect prices of ~$6 over the mid to long term. Perhaps significantly higher. Anything much lower is clearly unsustainable.

  4. Most people don’t cross-check their beliefs. They can easily accept an anti-nuclear tirade in one breath, which includes destroying good paying jobs, and then turn around and support labor and the goals of a livable wage and growing middle class in the next breath and never see that they aren’t making any sense.

    My father, who has been living off of a wonderful pension since 1985 buys into the talk radio hokum and rails against all these public employees who “think they deserve overly generous pensions which we just can’t afford.”

    Most folks just believe whatever their chosen tribe tells them to believe and don’t examine it for any kind of validity.

    The kind of mind which tests ideas against evidence, the scientific mind, is disappointingly rare. This scares me. At times, I worry that it will bring down technological civilization, or at least, make it a miserable hell-hole for all but aristocracy.

    Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a conservative problem. This isn’t a liberal problem. This is a universal problem of folks not devising experiments and checking their beliefs against the evidence available in the world.

    Of course, it doesn’t help when so many folks are working so hard to falsify the evidence in the case of nuclear electricity generation. The trail of meaningless credentials granted by shady organizations which claim to be science oriented but are actually nothing but policy shills is frightening. The work of those, so credentialed, is infuriating. Do they even realize that they are professional liars, set up in a web of deceits, to make them look credible?

    1. In the case of Arnie Gundersen he knows very well that he is a liar but it has proved lucrative. I believe both Gundersen’s feel that they were destroyed by the nuclear industry and want payback. I don’t know the truth of what happened to him when he was at NES but I do know that truth really doesn’t matter. Much of the opposition is faith based and you get to choose your facts. Just as the fact that gas prices may rise in the future. Reality is what is today.

    2. You’re on the mark, Jeff, and the “solution” sounds like an old broken record:
      Aggressive gung-ho public nuclear education in media, public and schools. Use the anti’s playbook.
      Had such been implemented even after TMI, the FUD effects of Fukushima and Chernobyl could’ve been greatly mitigated. The cocky complacency that things would blow over once the TMI panic died down is coming home to roost in spades now. I mean it’s REALLY bad when people would rather have climate change than bet on a proven sure shot to defeat it.Give the devil his due, the antis have done their head jobs royally well on public and pols. Maybe a tardy red flag for the nuclear community.

      Re: “Of course, it doesn’t help when so many folks are working so hard to falsify the evidence in the case of nuclear electricity generation. The trail of meaningless credentials granted by shady organizations which claim to be science oriented but are actually nothing but policy shills is frightening. The work of those, so credentialed, is infuriating. Do they even realize that they are professional liars, set up in a web of deceits, to make them look credible?”

      Those old “Get Smart” TV fans will remember that shtick where Smart is captured by a villain who catches Smart’s attempt to escape by using a lame ploy, and the villain derides Smart by jeering; “What do you think I am, Smart, an idiot? Anyone can tell you that trick won’t work! It’s Stupid! It’s Old! It’s Tired! It’s Moronic!” And suddenly Smart’s ploy makes him escape and the villain sheepishly mutters “…And it works!!”

      James Greenidge
      Queens NY

  5. Hi everyone

    About ISO-NE. There are many problems at VY which can be laid at ISO-NE’s door.

    ISO-NE made some recent changes, including negative pricing. They are also paying $78 million to oil-fired units as capacity payments. Both of these changes are new this summer, actually, new in August.

    My blog post covers much of this
    http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2013/08/questions-i-frequently-ask-myself-about.html

    Also a Power Engineering article about VY and ISO cover this

    http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2013/08/iso-ne-dont-blame-the-market-for-vermont-yankee-retirement.html

    ISO knows it is getting partially blamed for VY closing (at least by some of us and by Entergy) and is fighting back in its press release and in articles

    Changing the subject:

    Jim Rogers–as I noted in my blog post, according to an article in Bloomberg, VY was “breaking even” this year. Also, the company had defended the plant vigorously in court. So while people knew there were problems and the plant was only marginally profitable, my friends were shocked and surprised by the announcement. I mean…six million paid to lawyers and they just won an important case and they are CLOSING? I think that maybe in retrospect it seems inevitable or something, but the people I know at the plant (a small subset since I don’t work there) were in a daze after the announcement. I was.

    I think the changes in ISO had a lot to do with it.

    Another note. Loading fuel is expensive. There was a great deal of question (would they or wouldn’t they order fuel) in late 2011. At that time, a load of fuel for 18 months was estimated to cost $60 million dollars (in the newspapers). I have no idea how accurate that estimate was. It was the accepted-wisdom at the time, however. They made this announcement at the time that they would have had to load fuel.

    http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2011/07/predictions-on-vermont-yankee-i-dont.html

    Yet another note: Thank you, James Greenidge, for all your support over the many years and the many blog posts. I know that I don’t always answer your comments, but I always appreciate them.

  6. Oops… I meant…”they made this announcement at the time they would have had to ORDER fuel”, not load fuel.

    Must get coffee….

  7. Aaron.

    I should have answered you also…sorry!

    At the time of the vote-against-VY, and the lawsuit, and so forth, the Vermont utilities decided not to buy from VY. For example, Vermont Electric Cooperative turned down a good deal from VY because they were VY. Some links in this blog post. Green Mountain Power bought from Seabrook.

    http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2011/05/nimby-and-nukes-vermont-utility-makes.html

    There were lots of comments at the time about VY should give Vermont utilities a better deal than anyone else (violates the commerce clause of the Constitution, but that was the expectation at the time) and that Entergy was untrustworthy and so it was okay for Vermont utilities to not buy from VY, not about price, but about nasty-VY and nasty-Entergy. (my words).

    At any rate, VY sells into the grid, and may have (I don’t know) small power purchase agreements with some out of state utilities.

    The situation allows Vermont utilities to say that “Vermont buys no power from VY anyway, so it makes no difference to our customers if they shut down.” Yeah, well it will make a difference, not having them on the grid…Anyhow, all the VY power is sold out of state, or to the grid (where some of it is bought by in-state utilities.)

    1. Meredith,

      Thanks for the reply. What was VY selling its MWhs for anyway? The wholesale rate for electricity in New England was 3.6¢ in 2012 — in 2008 it was 8¢ per kWh so there is a great deal of recent volatility. I’m surprised a large baseload generator like VY doesn’t sign long term suppy contracts, does ISO not allow for this? Little Ginna thus far is able to survive in next-door NY. Can’t VY sell into NY? I was told that Pilgrim in MA was a cash cow.

      Again NEI & EIA cites average national fission generation production costs @2.2¢ per kWh. Gas in New England sold for an average $4MMBTU in 2012; the heat rate of an advanced combined cycle gas plant (@6500 BTU per kWh) would be ~2.6¢ per kWh.

      The heavily subsidized “negawatts” of wind in ISO-NE couldn’t be enough to drive off VY, esp over summers and winters, VY would be down in spring/fall given alternating 18mo fuel cycles anyway.

  8. I hate to say it, but I am starting to have a nagging suspicion about this situation because it is similar to what Dominion did with Kewaunee. And that is, I am wondering if some of these companies that own these marginal (from a profit viewpoint) plants that are “break-even” or slightly negative on the income side are using them to generate “revenue” by tapping their decommissioning funds. Are they seeing these decommissioning funds as “assets”, rather than the generating facilities themselves? The business model today seems to be strongly tilted towards short-term, whats-the-bottom-line thinking, and a huge decommissioning fund may be a tempting cash cow that otherwise would not be available as a revenue stream. It might be analogous to the corporate raiding epidemics of the ’80s and ’90s, wherein companies that were otherwise profitable were broken up for their cash value rather than staying in business. Are we seeing decommissioning fund raiding here?

    I will say up front that this is just speculation. I have no proof that this is what is going on. It’s just that the two cases are so similar I have to wonder. If it is true, then it would be yet another example of an “unintended consequence” of an NRC regulation (requiring decommissioning set-aside).

    1. @Wayne
      I think you are onto something. The new Entergy CEO (since February) is a bean counter, not an engineer or power plant guy. He comes from a background of accounting, MBA, CFO. I suspect that if a facility comes up one bean short, he will slash it, especially if that unleashes other funding (decommissioning). The aggressive legal defense of VY was initiated and pursued under his predecessor.

      I also think that the executives at Entergy in the early 2000s failed to fully account for the particularly perverse anti-nuclear politics of the Northeast. Vermont ain’t Louisiana.

    2. One of the utilities I worked for had their Decommissioning Fund (DF) invested in a blind trust that was required to earn about 6% (minimum). A lot of the funds were insurance related and always beat that minimum, even with the recession(s). It was @ 100% about 10 years ago and has great earning since then. With the amount of over funding (due to the required conservatism), years to “plan” the decommissioning, years in a mothball status – with minimal expenses, and then more years to do the actual decommissioning, they will (could) make money off of the fund until I pass away. I am sure many others will not “lose” any money by shutting down either. Keep in mind, they had to have the DF 100% funded by the initial proposed end of life date. That was a few years ago for about half of the plants and many of the single unit, small, plants.

  9. To be truthful, maybe it is time for the NRC to change the rules regarding decomissioning. We need, as Captain Kirk would say, “a third alternative” (actually a 4th alternative to decon/safestore/entomb) I would call “preservation”. That is empty the fuel, clean everything up but don’t take it apart so that when the price of gas goes up the place can be restarted, even though it might need some upgrades. This “preservation license” might last 2-3 years and then have to be renewed every so often or can be converted to an operating or a decomission license if need be. I would hate to see all that stainless steel and concrete go to waste.

    Meanwhile, for places like Crystal River that are broken, would it be possible to use some of the components in other nuclear plants, that is if they are not worn out?

    Another question: Fort Calhoun has so much trouble – Why isn’t that one being decomissioned and VY and Kewaunee are when there is nothing wrong with them?

    1. We’ve Japanese and German(?) auto plants running in this country. Time to push to revamp laws prohibiting foreign ownership of (and salvaging) nuclear plants. That might be easier than rewiring NRC decommission regulations and for the pocketbooks of nuke bailing power companies. If governments REALLY believe in climate change, then every nuclear plant in the world is an international emergency asset in the bank to dent the problem. Why shoot the life rafts of your own floundering ocean liner? Unless the powers that be believe climate change is really bogus and a half. Be interesting to see a poll of whether the public fears nuclear’s remedy more than climate change itself. It’d likely be a pretty poor show of the science quotient in this country.

      James Greenidge
      Queens NY

      1. Indeed — that’s the main reason why I’m sceptical of all the talk of climate catastrophe. If the climate threat was really as bad as the scientific establishment says it is, why aren’t we building nuclear power plants at double-time speed and simply gunning down any protesters who get in the way? Surely a few thousand dead Greenpeacers is preferable to letting many millions of people die from climate-related catastrophes?

        Either the political establishment doesn’t really believe in AGW, or (worse) they oppose nuclear power because they believe it will prevent the depopulation that they view as the only true solution to environmental problems…

        1. George:

          Re: “Surely a few thousand dead Greenpeacers is preferable to letting many millions of people die from climate-related catastrophes”

          It might literally come that if some freakish meteorological catastrophe freezes or blows or washes away a few coastal cities as a harbinger of things to come but greens find their hatred for nuclear even more alarming. China and many other countries have few qualms of submerging whole towns and counties to erect dams, drowning protestors or squatters putting down or not, and it’s really time to apply some lethal force as a SERIOUS object lesson to protestors who think it’s a fun sport to overrun the perimeter of a nuclear plant. Cruel? How many tears would be shed if a whole gang of bank or jewelry store robbers (if you live in L.A. you know how rampant THAT ditty is!) were gunned down trespassing and ransacking so in the act?

          Re: “If the climate threat was really as bad as the scientific establishment says it is, why aren’t we building nuclear power plants at double-time speed.”

          You know what’s amusing to me? We have all these sci-fi flicks — Hey, a meteor’s headed for earth! Quick! Let’s lay down all our international squabbles and build some spaceships with bombs to blow that sucker up, YEA!! And the audience cheers! The earth is saved! Hey, the inside of the Earth is rotting away and the magnetic field will fry us! Quick! Let’s all lay down all our international squabbles and build some mole machines with bombs to start the core up again!! YEA! The audience cheers! The earth is saved! Hey, the martians are landing!! Quick! Let’s all lay down all our international squabbles and get our militaries working together to kick ’em out! YEA! The audience cheers! The earth is saved! Hey, climate change’s gonna roast or chill us out! Quick! Let’s all lay down all our international squabbles and anti-nuke hang-ups and save and fix and build as many zero-CO2/Methane nuclear plants as we can to nip the problem in the bud because it’s the best reliable 24/7 high-powered solution we have and China can show us how to build them in just three years too!! Quick, let’s save the earth!
          Crickets…
          Too many people have fears and survival and common sense in the wrong priority.

          James Greenidge
          Queens NY

        2. If the climate threat was really as bad as the scientific establishment says it is, why aren’t we building nuclear power plants at double-time speed and simply gunning down any protesters who get in the way?

          Pure self-interest.  The people making their money off the status quo are not the people who’ll do the suffering and dying from the results.  (Or at least they do not believe they will be.)  We saw the same thing with the tobacco lobby.

    2. That is what really breaks my heart in this whole situation. There is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, wrong with either VY or Kewaunee. The plant structures are intact. The containment is in good shape. All of the machinery is in perfect running order. The transmission infrastructure is there. All of the generators are fine. The plant site has been prepared and developed for power generation. It has a license to operate. It has a skilled staff in place. It is like throwing away a perfectly running Cadillac because you say it costs you money to put oil in the crankcase.

      The ONLY THING wrong with SONGS is one set of steam generators at one unit. Everything else is fine. There are plenty of reputable companies who can replace steam generators.

      The only thing wrong at CR3 is the containment. While that is more of a challenge than the other examples, I find it hard to believe in a country like this, that has done the things it has done, that it is an insoluable problem. Yes, it will cost. I understand that. But what is the real cost of throwing away these assets, and not just monetary cost?

      1. Wayne SW writes: The ONLY THING wrong with SONGS is one set of steam generators at one unit.

        =============

        Wow! You need to read some NRC/SCE/MHI documents to clear your misconception. All four replacement steam generators were in bad condition – a condition never before seen after only one year of operation.

        1. @jaagu

          I’ve read the detailed technical reports. In the nearly 40,000 tubes (4 steam generators, each with more than 9,200 tubes) there was exactly ONE that had a leak, with a maximum leak rate of 75 gallons per day, less than 1/2 of the tech spec limit that would require an immediate shutdown.

          There was some unusual wear on several hundred tubes, caused by tube to tube rubbing in a relatively small section each steam generator. The tubes in unit 3 were more affected than those in unit 2. Several hundred tubes in unit 3 were worn enough to require plugging, but the steam generators would have still had a sufficient number of active tubes to be within design limits for full power operation.

          Only a couple of dozen tubes in unit 2 would have been plugged for preventive measure.

          Since the unusual wear was caused by tube to tube rubbing, it is unlikely that additional tubes would have started rubbing together during subsequent operation. Rubbing is not like chemical corrosion, it shows up early in the operational history of a heat exchanger. If components don’t rub immediately, they probably never will rub.

            1. I stand corrected on the detail of the specific type of rubbing. I also stand corrected on the number of tubes in each S/G – it is 9727, which is substantially “more than 9200”. I stand fast on the assertion that none of the steam generators showed any excess wear in more than 10% of the tubes, which is the typical number of excess tubes available. I also continue to assert that the damage was caused by rubbing, which is typically something that shows up almost immediately in the life of a heat exchanger. If tubes didn’t rub in their first cycle, the wouldn’t have started rubbing later.

              That is different from corrosion, which is the phenomenon that limited the lives of first and second generation S/Gs.

        2. The size of the leak was within Technical Specification limits. They could have continued operating – Legally – within NRC requirements. The leak would be analogous to a leak (of about one drop per week) around a fitting on the brake cylinder reservoir in your car. Would the NTSB demand a recall? Would you junk your car? Would you continue driving it? The problem was caused in part by the fact that the newer computer design process and milling/fabrication process is actually causing problems. Sort of like back when digital hand-held computers started being sold. They provided different answers to problems and calculations performed with slide-rules. The newly minted NRC (formerly AEC) went ballistic. Calculations appeared to be done incorrectly and since they had the wrong answer, the engineering review and QA did not seem to be up to par for not finding or allowing these problems.

  10. i remember the greens making the argument that nuclear power did not employ enough people and that labor-intensive solar energy would create more jobs. Like a good defense attorney, the greens use any argument to make their case regardless of truth, logic or morality. They also said nuclear power would lead to a police state in order to safeguard Plutonium. Or that nuclear power would cause the rivers and lakes to boil from waste heat.

    I guess I part company with many here as far as basing the case for nuclear on climate change. I have seen this movie too many times where the plot centers around a catastrophe unless the government steps in to save the day. By itself, the behind the scenes look at how the “climate scientists” handle their data and the poor quality of their software is enough to convince me that the climate change meme is bogus.The greens care about the environment as much as neoconservatives care about US security. The greens are NOT our friends. The argument for nuclear should be based on safety as well as economics. The pipeline explosion in San Leandro alone killed more than Fukushima. An Fukushima had 3 core releases with 1960’s technology. If you want to see a really dangerous concentration of energy, consider a LNG terminal.

    I do agree that there is something odd about the sudden use of fracking, which has been around since the 1940’s. This also goes for the funding for the environmental movement by charities endowed by oil fortunes such as Pew and Rockefeller. These same foundations also fund internationalist oriented organizations which consider an independent nuclear power infrastructure an obstacle to global control. Hence Lovins.

    Gundersen claims that the AP1000 has only a 0.7 psi margin of safety. This is the difference between a deterministic worst case accident peak pressure and the minimum design pressure of the containment. He has to know he is deliberately misleading his audience. I attended the same university as Gundersen (about 5 years later) where I learned the difference. I am sure I could get numerous RPI Nuclear Engineering alumni to sign a statement rebutting Gundersen’s lies (and have discussed the idea with a few) but I doubt it would do any good.

  11. FermiAged, if our friend Arnie is not telling the truth, then I think you and the alumni should say something and not just dismiss it and “it won’t do any good”. I am interested in nuclear power but did not get into engineering and I would like to know the truth. I’m sure people think Arnie is an engineer and knows what he is talking about and how would other people know otherwise? Even if it means “badmouthing” Arnie.

    Meanwhile, is there any way to maybe get Entergy to change their mind? I mean, its still on, the fuel is still in there, they didn’t send the license to the NRC yet?

  12. Looks like the argument that CO2 reduction is needed to prevent global warming is B/S. If it were true why are we shutting down the Nuclear power plants (ZERO CO2) and building CCGT units(only a 40% reduction per kWh)? Isn’t that sort of like being half pregnant or half a virgin? In the very near future gas prices will go up and no one will be using electricity. Is that the tactic?

  13. If it were true why are we shutting down the Nuclear power plants (ZERO CO2) and building CCGT units(only a 40% reduction per kWh)?

    You are expecting an ideological coalition to have pure logical consistency.  This never happens.

    There are widening fissures in that coalition.  Watch the film “Pandora’s Promise” to see how many major figures on the Green side have looked at climate change, the old “No Nukes” pledge, and dumped the latter.

    1. As usual the “Engineer-Poet” causes my head to spin. Richard Lentz is correct when he says: “Looks like the argument that CO2 reduction is needed to prevent global warming is B/S.”

      The theory was exciting when Arrhenius presented it in 1896 but it was false. I don’t blame Arrhenius for presenting a theory with such breathtaking power and simplicity; the shame belongs to modern “Scientists” who still take it seriously, in the face of overwhelming falsification from observations such as ice core measurements.

      http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/
      http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/arrhenius-revisited/

      1. As usual the “Engineer-Poet” causes my head to spin.

        If you screwed it on right, it wouldn’t do that.

        Richard Lentz is correct when he says: “Looks like the argument that CO2 reduction is needed to prevent global warming is B/S.”

        Let me get this straight:  Lenz notes that the left-liberal “No Nukes/Ban the Bomb” position adopted in the 1960’s has been retained by their modern counterparts (positional consistency), while they have added a “Renewable Energy” position (which is consistent with the Natural Everything movement which many of them were also part of) in response to the growing body of evidence from climate science that carbon emissions are going to have effects we won’t like… and that proves that the science is wrong?

        As Rod says, the left-liberals, hippies and such were wrong about nuclear power from the beginning, but the public has been so heavily propagandized on this issue it is very hard to re-educate people.  But I’ll let you in on a little secret:  the propaganda does not make the science wrong, and neither do political inconsistencies.

        The theory was exciting when Arrhenius presented it in 1896 but it was false.

        That is a fascinating thing you just did:  you went back to the very first published paper on the phenomenon in order to claim it is BS, exactly the way religious creationists denounce Darwin instead of modern science.  Behind this is either the mentality that science is no different from religious revelation… or some pretty deep cynicism.  Either way, sick and wrong (but fascinating).

      2. Also, your critique of Arrhenius is scientifically illiterate.  The fourth-power radiation law was known to Arrhenius (discovered by Boltzmann in 1879), but you are ignorant of it as well as many other elementary science facts.

  14. Jim Rogers
    August 29, 2013 at 10:01 AM

    Vermont Yankee is what I would call a “Shabby Old Nuke” (BWR, GE type, 1972) . You worked there for over 15 years while I spent exactly one week at Oconee Station (BWR, B&W, 1973) another shabby nuke.

    In my opinion “Shabby Old Nukes” are by far the cheapest way to generate electricity in spite of the absurd number of people that the federal government mandates to secure them and to monitor their operations.

    Somehow you have concluded that Vermont Yankee is not viable. Your comment sounds as if you are striking your colors. That makes no sense to me as the link below shows. If my analysis is wrong, please explain. I would be more than happy to spend a week at Vermont Yankee so that I can write a better informed analysis. I await your invitation:
    http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/electric-power-in-florida/

    1. Uh oh … typo alert.

      I spent exactly one week at Oconee Station (BWR, B&W, 1973) another shabby nuke.

      I assume that you meant to type “PWR”; unless Babcock & Wilcox built a secret Boiling Water Reactor that I didn’t know about. Where would they put the OTSG’s? 😉

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