vermont

Liar Liar Two Years Ago?IBM's wafer fab plant employs thousands of people in Essex Junction. It is the biggest private employer in the state. If Vermont Yankee is voted off the island, will IBM sail away?Today, Vermont Public Radio (VPR) described this issue in a short article: Shumlin Works to Change Image. VPR has these quotes from...[read more]

ISO-NE Insists on Vermont YankeeYesterday's post described how ISO-NE (the New England grid operator) required Vermont Yankee to stay in the 2013 forward electricity auction. Yankee had asked to drop out because it has neither a license renewal nor a certificate of public good past 2012. ISO-NE, however, said that Yankee had to stay in...[read more]

There was a time when I lived in a large western state famous for producing a wide variety of fruits and nuts - both literally in their large agricultural sector and figuratively in their sadly amusing political sector. Since I was only a temporary California resident while attending graduate school, I did not get too concerned about...[read more]

There are some people who have the ability to turn almost any conversation about fantasy futures into a "boring" discussion involving honest numbers, real physics, material limitations and chemical equations. They are the geeky types who just do not know how to have fun by spinning tales involving perpetual motion, unlimited energy...[read more]

It is going to be a short post - I was up way too late last night watching a scrappy little college team take one of the elite programs in all of college basketball all the way to the wire in the National Championship game. Congratulations to both teams for an excellent game. The report commissioned by the Vermont Legislature on the...[read more]

Vermont politician's remarks on solar energy get attention Readers may wish to take a look at the story in the March 18 edition of the Brattleboro Redformer a Vermont newspaper. about mis-statements of fact by Vermont State Senate Leader Peter Shumlin. In a TV interview, Shumlin asserted that Germany gets 30% of its electricity from...[read more]

' Several weeks ago, Vermont Senate President Peter Shumlin called a vote of the Vermont Senate on whether or not to give the Public Service Commission permission to issue a certificate of public good for the continued operation of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station. One of the premises underlying the decision that the Senate made...[read more]

This is a followup to my post about whether or not nuclear power is considered green power and Vermont, the Green Mountain State’s issue with the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant license renewal.  I was channel surfing today and because of my “connection” with Vermont, the power plant in Vernon, and the refusal of by Vermont’s...[read more]

The Vermont Department of Health has a well organized page detailing the results of the search for the source(s) of tritiated water leaks at Vermont Yankee. It includes regular updates, site maps and detailed sample results. Based on an update dated March 5, 2010, a remotely operated pipe inspecting vehicle has helped workers discover...[read more]

I came across an interesting statement in an article titled "Coal Industry Review" written by Alfred T. Wells, Jr. and published in the September-October 1964 issue of the Financial Analysts Journal. (I know, I need to find some more interesting hobbies besides digging through ancient magazine journal articles.) Here is the quote that...[read more]

Several of my regular sources of information about the happenings associated with nuclear energy, including John Wheeler's This Week In Nuclear and Meredith Angwin's Yes Vermont Yankee have published stories about the recent flurry of news regarding the discovery of tritium in ground water on the site of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power...[read more]

Fast Fission Podcast #22 – Get the MP3 File Here There is a political and public relations cauldron boiling in Vermont over a recently discovered tritium leak at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.   Tritium is a mildly radioactive isotope of hydrogen and has a 10 day biological half-life when it is ingested by humans.  The...[read more]

A frequent contributor to the discussion threads here on Atomic Insights shared the following observation about the battle over Vermont Yankee. I think it deserves more attention than it will get buried in a separate commenting system. I would be interested in hearing from you; especially if you have a personal connection to the...[read more]

Yesterday, the Vermont Legislature warmly received a non-nuclear energy salesperson and allowed her to continue her traditional tactic of emotionally telling negative stories about the competition. I know, that is a purposely provocative way to describe the event, but that is certainly one way of looking at a situation where "wind and...[read more]

The other day I ran across reports of a curious event, in which the Attorney General of the state of Vermont convinced Entergy, which owns or operates 11 of the nation's 104 active nuclear power plants, to back away from characterizing nuclear power as having zero emissions. Technically, of course, the AG was correct. However, as a...[read more]