An Uncertain Nuclear Countdown

 

The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, Vt., on the banks of the Connecticut River.

If the clock is ticking on the lifetime of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, when will it actually close?
As I write in Friday’s Times, Entergy, which bought the plant in 2002, is looking for a buyer because the state Legislature has refused to give the company permission to run it after Vermont Yankee’s initial 40-year license expires in March 2012. (What is more, one of its top opponents in the Legislature was elected governor on Tuesday.)
But if the Legislature does not relent, it may not last even that long.
“No nuclear plant has ever operated to the end of its license,” said John Reed, an investment banker who specializes in nuclear plants and helped organize the auction under which Vermont Yankee was sold by its builders eight years ago.“You get to the point where you say, if all I’ve got is six months or a year to recover incremental capital, I’ll just shut now.’’
State lawmakers declined to allow an extension for the plant because they were angered by misstatements by the company and the discovery of leaks of radioactive tritium.
Michael Burns, a spokesman for Entergy, said the company would have to make “substantial commitments” in the second quarter of next year if it were planning to run the plant beyond March of the following year. One obvious reason is replenishing the fuel; to cut costs and increase production, many nuclear plants, including Vermont Yankee, have gone to 18-month cycles.
Replacing the fuel assemblies takes the same amount of time whether the assemblies are designed for cycles of one year or 18 months, but the longer-lasting ones require more uranium 235, the kind that splits easily in reactors. That means millions of dollars in additional cost.
Another problem is personnel. Keeping the plant’s staff on hand might require the payment of retention bonuses, Mr. Reed said, and those will have been wasted if plant shuts down.
Entergy said it had announced the proposed sale partly so that its 650 employees would know what was in the works.
In past transactions, plant employees have mostly stayed put. While the trend of the last 15 years has been for a few companies to specialize in running reactors rather than have each utility run its own, nuclear plants are not standardized. While top management may change, replacing workers therefore involves many hours of training.