Image by Mohamed Nohassi.
If there’s one truth about the nuclear power industry, it would be that it is persistent. Despite the fact that nuclear power has been drastically curtailed in a few countries and is being rejected for economic and other reasons in many others, the industry continues to push its product as if it had never been the pariah it should be. Like an annoying mosquito, it buzzes in and out of the body politic, just waiting for an exposed place to suck blood from that body. Sometimes this means convincing individuals and associations identified with what is known as the green energy movement that nuclear energy is an affordable, safe and clean way to meet rising energy demands. Other times, it worms its way into agreements with foreign governments looking to move beyond petroleum-based energy sources. Indeed, Iran is probably the only nation being called on to end its nuclear energy program. In the United States, another of its methods is to charm, cajole and otherwise force itself into conversations in state governments looking for ways to cut their carbon footprint. It only takes one or two well placed state politicians to be receptive and the next thing the people know is they will be paying for nuclear reactors they neither asked for or want. Unless New Englanders do something, this is the situation they will find themselves in before they know it.
Recently, the Vermont news organ VTDigger published an article alerting its readers to the fact that Vermont governor Phil Scott and some other officials in various New England governments are considering the use of nuclear power to provide the region’s future energy needs. Although the discussions are in the early stages, it is still a good time to begin developing opposition to an energy source that has been resoundingly rejected by Vermonters. This is especially true given that the omnibus climate bill that Scott presented at the beginning of the Vermont 2025 legislative session would change the current Vermont Clean Energy Standard. This standard requires all of Vermont’s energy to be from renewable sources by 2035. The nuclear industry and its allies in the public sector—who include Governor Scott—want to redefine nuclear power as renewable. Indeed, Scott’s proposed changes would reclassify nuclear power as a renewable energy source, something that it most clearly isn’t.
From 1972 until 2014, a General Electric-designed reactor operated in Vernon, VT. At its peak it provided up to a third of Vermont’s energy needs. Like many other reactors the plant, known as the Yankee Nuclear Reactor, was the target of many protests aimed at shutting it down. Although I did not participate in the movement to shut down the Yankee plant, I was quite involved in similar efforts in California and participated in meetings, rallies and at least one direct action during the campaign to close the Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo, CA. I also attended a protest at New Hampshire’s Seabrook plant. I do know several Vermonters who did participate in the movement to close the Yankee Plant in Vernon; most of them remain completely opposed to bringing nuclear power back into Vermont. Like them, I remain unconvinced that nuclear power is safe, cheap or environmentally friendly—green, if you will.
As has been reported in Counterpunch and elsewhere, the nuclear energy industry spends a lot of money in its efforts to convince politicians bureaucrats to participate in its boondoggle. In Vermont, it seems reasonable to assume that some of that money is already being spent on convincing politicians and regulators to change Vermont’s renewable energy definition and add nuclear energy to that definition. This would then allow the building of nuclear reactors in the state. The product the industry is currently pushing are known as SMRs or small modular reactors. According to the industry, these reactors are less expensive than the giant science-fiction type building once synonymous with nuclear energy. Although the units are considerably smaller the original cost estimates are usually exceeded exponentially. History tells us that this usually the case in the industry, One typical example of this can be found in a July 20, 2023 article in The Nation magazine by writer and environmental activist Joshua Frank. In that article, Frank describes a proposed SMR project by NuScale corporation in Utah that saw its cost estimates go from an estimate of $55 a megawatt hour to $89 a megawatt hour. Neither price includes the original four billion dollar subsidy from US taxpayers—such subsidies are a fairly standard practice in the building of nuclear reactors. In addition, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that the estimated price of $89 a megawatt hour made in 2023 is considerably higher than that in 2025. After all, what isn’t a lot more expensive now than it was two years ago?
Equally, if not more importantly, is the carbon footprint created in the process of building and maintaining these reactors. In other words, the uranium mining, the plant construction and the disposal of radioactive waste (which has a half-life in the millions of years). On a more mundane and practical plane, even if these plants should be approved, it would take years, maybe even a couple decades to build them and get them in operation. That time estimate does not include potential delays—delays which almost certainly would lead to higher costs. Vermont and the rest of New England would be better off using that time to develop and improve renewable sources from wind, sun and water than bowing to the misrepresentations, cajolery, and bribes of the nuclear power industry in its never-ending attempt to sell its poison genie.
