This is very good news.
Plan to close Vermont Yankee marks latest blow to nuclear power
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt., will be shut down by the end of next year due to financial factors, the company that owns the plant announced Tuesday, in the latest sign of a difficult economic climate for nuclear power companies.
Entergy Corp., the New Orleans-based company that owns Vermont Yankee, plans on closing and decommissioning the plant by the fourth quarter of 2014, in cooperation with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is the fifth nuclear plant this year to close or to have plans made for its closure.
Older nuclear plants with their high overhead costs are having a tough time competing with new natural gas fired plants.
The company said the decision to close was based on “a number of financial factors” including sustained lower power prices stemming from the natural-gas revolution, a high cost structure for the plant, and what it called "wholesale market design flaws" that artificially deflate energy prices. Some 630 people work at the plant.
Likely also a contributing factor was the ongoing legal battle with the state of Vermont, where state officials had been trying to shutter the plant on their own authority. In 2006 the state legislature granted itself the authority to close the plant and in 2010 voted to do so.
Meanwhile, utilities have plans to build three new reactors, the Monitor reported in June.
I remember the Clamshell' Alliance's opposition to Vermont Yankee back in the late 1970s, and 1980s when I was active in an anti-nuclear group here in Washington state patterned after them named the Crabshell Alliance. Had this closure been announced in the 1980s this would have been a a major event, today being part of a trend its not as much of one.