Hundreds march against Yankee nuclear plant

[bananas]

Source: Rutland Herald

More than 500 people marched down Main Street in Brattleboro on Saturday, carrying banners and pledging to end what they claimed was a year of illegal operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant by Entergy Nuclear.

The exuberant gathering, bolstered by Vermont’s famous Bread and Puppet Theater, chanted “shut it down, Vermont Yankee, shut it down, now” along the length of Main Street.

Several people from the street joined the parade, which occurred in the late afternoon on a sunny early-spring day.

“We’re here to mark one year of Entergy operating illegally,” said organizer Chad Simmons of the SAGE Alliance. “We’re not going to let them operate any longer.”

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Read more: http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20130331/NEWS02/703319885/1003

[druidity33]

1. I was there with my wife and kid... good day, good turnout. K&R, nt.

[PolitFreak]

2. K&R

[Flatulo]

3. The northeast power grid is already stretched to the limit. When we get 2" of wet snow,

we lose power for a week. Some towns lose it for a month.

I just have to wonder - how will that 640 MW be replaced? Wind and solar seem to take decades to get approved. Cape Winds was finally approved after a 10 year pitched battle over the view from Hyannis.

I want these nuke plants closed too, but not until there is replacement clean power.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

4. The article says it is shut down now...

And you still have power, right?

[Flatulo]

6. We have power like a third world country.

I've lived in this area my whole life, 57 years. It's only in the last decade or so that the power had been so iffy. The grid normally has something like 3% margin.

My power goes out about every month or so these days. It browns out on a weekly basis. In the summer it's much worse. A thunderstorm can knock it out for days.

Demand had grown, the supply just hasn't kept pace.

If we could cut the approval process for wind from a decade down to a few years it would help. But the approval has to go through a dozen or more regulatory agencies.

On edit: one of our many problems is that the utilities laid off tens if thousands of workers over the last 10 years. Verizon alone fired 30,000 linemen to save money. When we have a bad storm, linemen come in from as far as Ohio and Illinois.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

7. We got a grid tie, 20 solar panels, but should have installed batteries for back-up

We often lose power during winter storms, but 5-7 days are the longest outages we have. Usually it is back on withing a day or so. We first thought of a combo, wind and solar, but the wind generator had to be mounted on an 80 foot tower and we needed approval from all our neighbors, so we passed and just went solar.

[Flatulo]

10. Yeah, a lot of fed-up people in town have gone with 20 - 25 panels for a 4 kW system.

I live in a townhome development, so that's not an option. I've been looking into a Genrad 8 kW whole-home natural gas fired gennie, but the condo association hasn't given me approval yet.

I worked at Evergreen Solar in Ayer, MA for a year before the management sold the company to the Chinese and laid off the entire 800 person workforce. This was after accepting $69m in state subsidies. They had a very nice panel, and proprietary technology for growing wafers at 1/3 industry cost. If they had hung in there, they could have been the cost leader and very close to grid parity at $2 per watt. But the lure of quick money was too much and they sold all the assets and technology for easy money.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

11. Sorry to hear that. Hope you found good employment. NT

[Flatulo]

19. I actually did find work right away at Vestas Wind Systems in Hudson, MA.

This could have been a dream job, but the management there was disfunctional, and despite having a very good engineering team, could not deliver a generator on schedule.

Vestas is a huge Danish multinational with 67,000 turbines installed worldwide. They had made a major investment in the States, opening up three design centers and employing over 2000 people, mostly engineers.

But they were counting on the East Coast to really take off and expand into offshore wind projects. I was working on a 6 MW generator design. Then the global meltdown hit and so many offshore projects were cancelled. After hanging in for three years they closed shop.

I took the opportunity to retire, as I had been suffering for many years with chronic severe back pain. But I was so disappointed that it all fell apart. I mean when the fuck are we going to get serious about clean power? The federal subsidies dried up, and subsidies to solar (Solyndra) became a political liability thanks to the fucking republicans. The Chinese invest $5b into solar and now dominate the industry. We put in 1/10 that amount and they want to fucking impeach the president. It's just insane.

Every country with an ounce of brains is subsidizing clean power because they KNOW it is coming, and they want to be a leader when it takes off. Except us.

[Auntie Bush]

8. Where do you live? I don't have problems like that!

I've been here for 32 years. Long time ago we lost power after bad storms...but now it hardly ever goes out. I'm in Southern VT. Where are you ...up in the NE Kingdom or somewhere remote?

[Flatulo]

9. I'm in central MA. Last year the state fined the utilities $18m for their shoddy service.

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. Sure it's not just Local?

Sounds more like Grid Operations problems rather than Power Generation. ISO New England AFAIK hasn't had any problems securing sufficient generation capacity, thanks to Quebec Hydro. Perhaps one or two days in recent years where large consumers (Industrial) were asked to cut back during a heatwave. But otherwise it's been solid.

[magical thyme]

13. service issue, based on what you wrote below

They should have more people working on the lines. Keeping VT Yankee running won't fix that.

Glad to see Cape Winds was finally approved.

Sorry to see you were one of the people laid off from Evergreen. I half considered moving back to Mass for a chance to work at a solar energy company. Shameful that they sold out; all the worse to an overseas company.

[Flatulo]

14. National Grid used to routinely trim the trees before winter.

They stopped doing it years ago, and now the slightest bit of wet snow sends hundreds of branches crashing down, taking the power lines with them.

Two winters ago I saw the ground burning in front of our development. A high voltage line came down and just sat there, frying the ground. It sat there like that for three days. The local cops just closed the road so no one would get hurt.

It felt like we were living in Upper Volta, only with rockets.

[magical thyme]

15. amazing

when I moved to Maine 10 years ago, I thought I was leaving civilization behind.

Instead, we have roads cleared after blizzards and nor'easters in record time, and I've have only lost power once for an extended time (20 hours. a transformer blew, needed full replacement), and no more than a couple hours a couple other times.

Looks like I left the 3rd world and found civilization instead!

Oh, and I just remembered that they closed Maine Yankee right about when I moved up here. Now our nukes have been in cold storage for several years and we successfully sued the Feds for failing to remove them.

I have the option right now to switch to 100% wind electricity and we just put in our first tidal generator last summer.

All we have left to do is lose the teabagger accidental governor and we'll be golden.

[Flatulo]

17. If be willing to pay a premium for clean power.

Cape Winds will be provide 170 MW, but it will de dedicated to the islands and most of the Cape.

I wonder if National Grid is making money on the side in the generator business. Everyone around here seems to have one.

Congrats on your tidal generator. It's just crazy how much free energy is laying around, courtesy of the sun and celestial mechanics. I'm a mechanical engineer and I see wasted power everywhere. I stand outside by the vent from my electric clothes dryer and feel hundreds of watts of heat being vented to ambient. A simple manifold and heat exchanger there could provide much of my homes heat requirements.

[magical thyme]

20. I understand we could also generate a decent amount of electricity

just using the temp difference inside and outside our homes in winter...

A lot of old, forgotten technology could reduce our demands if all put together.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

5. K & R nt

[madokie]

16. We stopped a nuke plant from being built in my back yard years ago

They'd already started site preparations when they finally gave up. My first foray into the nuclear world and let me tell you one thing I learned. Never heard so many lies, half truths and bullshit in my life, before or since.
Dad always said that if a person will tell you a little lie he'll also tell your a big lie. That saying has served me right as I've traveled on this journey here on the big blue and green ball.

[snooper2]

18. And I bet all 500 of them enjoyed their hot shower that morning before "marching"

LOL

[Pterodactyl]

21. They should shut it down and replace it with solar panels and windmills.