As a Waitsfield constituent who has been a member of the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance (VYDA) since before Vermont Yankee shut down in 2014 (although it's still undergoing the decommissioning process), I'm writing to alert our state representatives Dara Torre and Candice White to testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure.
Staff of the Vermont Department of Public Service are testifying on behalf of Governor Phil Scott's proposal to label and count nuclear power as clean energy. Nuclear power certainly is not "clean." Across the nation, from Hanford, Washington, in the WWII period right through the energy industry's current efforts to push so-called small nuclear reactors, nuclear power plants have been plagued by accidents involving discharge of radioactive materials into the air, soil and rivers.
Additionally, current threats with a potential for radioactive discharges include terrorist attacks on nuclear plants via drones as well as the real possibility of crashes and/or sabotage during long-distance transportation of nuclear waste to a temporary storage destination. (Much of Vermont's waste is transported to a temporary storage facility in the southwest of the United States, where it's an ever-present hazard to the health of residents in marginalized low-income communities.) Please note that none of the temporary storage facilities has a planned shutdown date because Congress never has designated a permanent site for the nation's nuclear waste.
The governor's interest in promoting nuclear power as "clean" apparently rests on a belief that this will assist state efforts to transition away from dependency on nuclear fuels by opening up grant possibilities. Federal legislation (the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act) recognized nuclear generation as on-par with renewable sources like wind and solar for tax credit eligibility. Yet Vermont's Renewable Energy Standard explicitly excludes nuclear fuel from its definition of renewable energy. By re-labeling nuclear as a "clean" power source, Scott's proposed omnibus climate bill seeks to circumvent that exclusion, to procure funding for small nuclear reactors (SNRs).
A recent VTdigger article noted barriers to SNR consideration. "the technology is still in its infancy. Currently, only two operational small nuclear reactors exist in the entire world, and though many sites in the U.S. have plans to bring more online in the next decade, the supply chains to build the facilities at a wider (and cost-effective) scale, simply don't exist yet."
VYDA does not believe nuclear power needs to be re-labeled as "clean" in order to initiate a community solar program. I urge our state representatives not to support the governor's "Clean Nuclear" scheme.
Evans lives in Waitsfield.
