BRATTLEBORO — Vermont Yankee is an old plant, at the end of its original service life, and it is running at 120 percent of its originally intended ability. The company running it is trying hard not to put money into its maintenance unnecessarily. What can you expect but breakdowns?
As Vermonters, we might console ourselves that a bit of tritium getting into the groundwater is not all that terrible. It might have been much, much worse. Instead of being in Vernon, where it can only go south, it could have been airborne radioactive cesium with a good south wind, going all the way to Burlington. We are lucky. This time.
Some people are very upset that Entergy representatives might have lied about underground pipes. Again, what can you expect? They are lying about putting money into our local economy, when all the money they get at VY is coming out of our economy, and the greater amount that is being shipped away. They are lying about nuclear power being cheap, when in fact it is the most expensive power available. They are lying about 600 Vermont jobs being lost, when there are only 200 Vermonters employed at the plant, and many of them will not lose their jobs when the plant closes.
They lie about the potentials of renewable power, which can, in fact, provide a respectable amount of base-load power. They lie about the carbon footprint of nuclear power, saying that it is much smaller than wind or solar - their calculations ignore the fact that their uranium is enriched in the dirtiest coal plant in the country, ignore decommissioning, ignore dealing with waste, and only consider solar derived from archaic photovoltaic technology.
They are taking money out of our pockets and putting it into theirs, and they have a lot of money to pay for advertising. What can we reasonably expect but lies? We should be more understanding.