Vermont Yankee and the History of Nuclear Power

Two lessons can be taken from the history of the nuclear power industry. First, the 103 reactors now operating at 65 locations around the United States should be closed immediately. Second, ordinary people, acting together, can close existing nuclear power plants, and stop new ones from being built.

The nuclear power industry was created by the federal government in the mid-1950s. The technology required to use nuclear power to generate electricity was invented by the same government scientists who had invented the first nuclear bombs, which killed more than 100,000 people in World War II. Many of these scientists worked for universities and private companies like Monsanto and Union Carbide, which did the work under contract with the government.

In 1946, Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, which created the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), later renamed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The AEC oversaw both nuclear weapons — previously under the control of the army — and nuclear energy programs. As a result, the secretiveness that one would expect of a military nuclear weapons program also kept the public from learning about civilian nuclear power for the first two decades that the technology existed. During this time, the federal government spent millions of taxpayer dollars doing the research that would later make the nuclear power industry possible. There was little or no public opposition to nuclear power because its potential problems, such as safety and nuclear waste management, were kept secret.

In 1949, the Soviet Union became the first country besides the U.S. to detonate a nuclear bomb. Soon after that, Congressman Chet Holifield said, "We cannot be indifferent to the enormous psychological advantage that the Soviets would gain if they demonstrated to a tense and divided world the ability to put the atom to work in peacetime civilian pursuits…. The United States will not take second place in the contest."

In 1949, there were no American companies interested in building nuclear power plants. Power companies considered coal power plants to be a better investment. And experts were predicting minimal increases in demand for electricity in the U.S.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 effectively created the nuclear power industry. The government provided the industry with millions of dollars of free research, heavily subsidized fuel, discounted waste disposal, tax breaks, and, perhaps most significantly, taxpayer subsidized insurance in case of an accident. The insurance was provided by the Price Anderson Act of 1957. Congress has renewed the Act approximately once every ten years and it's still in effect.

A 1982 study performed by the NRC for Congress predicted that a serious accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plant near New York City would kill 50,000 people and result in 100,000 "radiation injuries" and $300 billion in property damage.

Fear of the government getting into the business of electricity generation prompted private corporations to build nuclear power plants. The federal government had spent $1.2 billion on developing nuclear reactor technology by 1962, more than double the amount the industry spent. In the mid-1960s, less than 1 percent of the electricity used in the US came from nuclear power. In 2000, nuclear power reached its peak, providing 20 percent of US electricity. As of 2005, that had declined to 19 percent.
There were a large number of people who worked for the nuclear power industry and who therefore had a direct financial incentive to lobby for government subsidies for the industry. According to "Nuclear Politics in America" a book by professor Robert Duffy, "by the early 1970s the AEC had contracts with 538 corporations, and 223 colleges and universities… private firms with AEC contracts employed approximately 125,000 workers."
In the mid-1980s, the NRC, whose members were appointed by President Reagan, changed its rules to allow new nuclear power plants to open even when state and local officials said there would be no way for people near the plants to evacuate in case of an emergency. Then-governor Mario Cuomo of New York called the change "absurd."

President Jimmy Carter's Department of Energy had agreed in 1977 to eventually take all the industry's "high-level" nuclear waste. It wasn't until 1987 that Congress decided where the federal government would dump the nuclear waste that Carter had offered to take: Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Duffy matter-of-factly writes that, while it was being debated, this legislation was known as the "screw Nevada bill."

The nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain still has not opened. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated in 2001 that the total cost of the dump would be about $58 billion. The waste is stored around the nation near the reactors where it was created.

In 1995 the National Academies of Science issued a report that said nuclear waste kept at Yucca could still be deadly in 1 million years. During that time, the waste will need to be watched 24 hours-a-day by heavily armed guards.

The Department of Energy under President Reagan and the first President Bush cut funding for renewable (like solar and wind) energy programs by 94 percent during the decade of the 1980s and cut funding for energy efficiency programs by 91 percent between 1981 and 1987. At the same time, funding for nuclear programs "remained largely intact."

Spending $1 on energy efficiency programs like Efficiency Vermont saves approximately three times as much energy as spending one dollar on nuclear power generates. The dollar spent on energy efficiency also creates more jobs than the dollar spent on nuclear.

In other words, if New Englanders took the money we now give to Entergy for electricity from Vermont Yankee and instead spent it on programs like Efficiency Vermont, the Vermont Yankee plant could be closed, our electricity bills would go down, and there would be a net increase in jobs.
Wind power and energy efficiency programs are at least twice as cost effective as nuclear power at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That's because of the fossil fuel used for construction of nuclear power plants, mining and transporting nuclear fuel, and transporting, guarding and storing nuclear waste. Nuclear power causes global warming.

No new nuclear power plants have been ordered in the U.S. since 1978.
Protests preceded the shutdown of the Shoreham, Yankee Atomic, Millstone I, Rancho Seco, and Maine Yankee nuclear power plants. A 2007 article in the "Journal of American History" did not hesitate to give protesters credit for the decline of the nuclear power industry: "The protestors lost their battle [when California's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant opened in 1984], but in a sense they won the larger war, for nuclear plant construction ended across the country in 1986."

On May 2, 1977 police arrested 1,414 protesters at the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. In August 1978, almost 500 people were arrested for protesting at Diablo Canyon. On June 2, 1979 about 500 people were arrested for protesting construction of the Black Fox nuclear power plant in Oklahoma. The next day, about 600 people were arrested at a rally at the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, NY. On June 30, 1979 about 38,000 people attended a protest rally at Diablo Canyon. On August 23, 1979 in New York City about 200,000 people attended a rally against nuclear power. On Sept. 23, 1979 about 167 protesters were arrested at Vermont Yankee.

It seems likely that if more people start showing up at protests against Vermont Yankee, and risking arrest for non-violent civil disobedience, Vermont Yankee will close.

Eesha Williams lives in Dummerston. A revised version of his book "Grassroots Journalism" was recently published.