The news today in the Boston Globe is that Vermont Yankee is shutting down. The report from NRC today, 12/29/14 is that plant is generating 74% of its power. So the plant is still running. I will watch this numbers periodically to determine when it is actually off line.
Today, 12/30/14 the plant is at 0% capacity according to the NRC Website.
The Northampton Gazette recently published my letter:
To the editor,
I’ve met several old men in the valley who remember when the Connecticut River used to freeze over. That has not happened in a long time. Nevertheless, The Oxbow has remained frozen during winters, and there has been ice fishing there. Many people believe that the Connecticut River is open because it is a flowing river. They do not believe me when I say that the river is open, when looking from the Coolidge Bridge, in January, because of the nuclear power plant at Vernon, Vermont.
Last year I wrote a piece for the Gazette about this thermal pollution from the reactor. Since a reactor produces 650 MW electricity, and the steam turbines are one third efficient, I calculated that the terminal output of the reactor is 1300 MW per hour. With this much heat, one could take the contents of an Olympic size swimming pool from room temperature, to boiling, to complete evaporation every 1.4 hours. I have enclosed a photo of the reactor showing melting of the river at Vernon.
This winter at the reactor will be shutting down, and for me it will be an experiment. Unless there is particularly warm winter and there is no ice fishing on the Oxbow at all, I believe there will be ice fishing and snowmobiling on the Connecticut River. We shall see.
Andrew Larkin
28 Days until Vermont Yankee stops making power, stops making waste, and our Connecticut River valley is nuclear free again. Wow. What do you do? When you finally get what you’ve been working towards for years? When you know that the lives of your children and your community will be better because of what you…
http://www.safeandgreencampaign.org/benefits/2014/12/vy-un-plugs-in-4-weeks
There will be a celebration of those who worked to shut down Vermont Yankee
Our local hero, Frances Crowe.
Frances Crowe, 95-year-old antinuclear activist, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 8 Oct 14, AbstractIn this interview, legendary activist Frances Crowe looks back on 70 years of protesting against the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. She describes the impact that the news of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had on the American public in 1945—and how she and her husband, a radiologist and physician who had educated her on the effects of radiation poisoning, then decided to take a stand against its use. Among other acts of civil disobedience, she went on to spend a month in federal prison after spray-painting “Thou Shalt Not Kill” on the casings of missile tubes at a nuclear submarine base in Rhode Island. This grandmother of five has been arrested nine times for trespassing at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station and was arrested again on January…
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Vernon Radiation Safety 