Energetics: September 2013

Entergy announced on August 27th that it would close it’s Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, located in Vernon, Vermont, in late 2014. Following a small number of other troubled nuclear plants, Entergy cited the low cost of natural gas and “artificially low electricity markets” as the reason for the closure. The state government and many Vermont citizens are happy to see it go- but as the largest energy generator in the state, how will it change the energy landscape of Vermont and the rest of New England?

The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant

The (Brief) History of a Yankee

Vermont Yankee came online in 1972, directly in the midst of the US nuclear era. A 650 MW plant, it was originally licensed for a 40 year schedule of operation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It’s a pretty standard light water reactor, similar to most of the nuclear reactors built in the 60s and 70s that are still operating today.

But today, it’s impending closure draws celebration from many Vermonters, including Governor Peter Shumlin. In 2010, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 to block the recertification of the plant by the Vermont Public Service Board, which oversees Vermont's utility industries. So what turned Vermont’s citizens against the plant?

Nuclear power in the US has drawn criticism and distrust countrywide from the very start, due to its association with the 1940s development of nuclear weapons. Economic problems for the nuclear industry in the late 1970s seemed to break the illusion that nuclear power was to outright replace fossil fuels, and issues were joined with a renewal of public fear in 1979 over the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One of the nuclear reactors there suffered a partial nuclear meltdown, destroying the reactor and requiring an expensive decommissioning. Finally, in 1986, the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine struck a near fatal blow to the public perception of nuclear power, standing as the worst nuclear disaster in history. Chernobyl brought a new fear to the public mind- radiation.

The destroyed Chernobyl reactor in 1986. The disaster
killed dozens and left a large amount of Eastern Europe
contaminated with radiation.

Vermont Yankee carried on through this much like other US nuclear reactors- generating a steady part of US baseload energy cheaply and cleanly, while generating nuclear waste which the US still can’t decide what to do with (Link, Yucca Mountain). In 2002, Entergy bought the plant for $160 million.

Vermonters tend to have their own personal style of opposition, including the occasional 12 foot long antinuclear paper-mache cow. The steady group of Vermont nuclear protesters were galvanized in 2007 when a cooling tower at the plant partially collapsed, causing the plant to have to reduce it’s power output while repairs were completed. Then, in early 2010, Vermont Yankee reported detecting radioactive tritium in local groundwater monitoring wells. The leak was traced to a corroded steam pipe and repaired without noticeable contamination of drinking water supplies, but the cleanup was incredibly expensive for Entergy.

Yankee’s safety was the primary driver in the Vermont Senate’s attempt to prevent its relicensing. Despite the state's efforts, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was behind Vermont Yankee, offering a 20- year license extension in 2012. Entergy and the State of Vermont became locked in a long legal battle, which ended in a victory for Vermont Yankee in 2013, in which the federal government ruled the State did not have the authority to force the plant to close. Less than a month after winning their battle to keep Yankee open, Entergy announced their decision to voluntarily close the plant in 2014.

Despite their odd timing, Entergy is claiming that the plant is simply not economically sound to run given the plummeting cost of natural gas created by the new hydraulic fracturing rush. It’s unlikely that this alone would cause the plant to be too costly- after all, there are over a hundred other similar nuclear plants with no imminent plans to close- but it is entirely possible Vermont Yankee has more needed upcoming maintenance and repairs, and Entergy does not want to take their chances footing a large bill to keep the old plant running.

As to giving up just after winning the lawsuit, this might be chalked up to a moral victory- Vermont Yankee isn't Entergy’s only nuclear electric power plant, and giving up to avoid a costly legal battle would set the precedent that other states can push their nuclear plants towards closure as well. Entergy is seeking to make a point: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal governing body built to oversee and manage the US portfolio of nuclear reactors, is supreme. This is especially important as talk of new development in the nuclear industry is slowly bubbling up- Entergy doesn't want to run the risk of having further projects shut down despite their federal backing.

The End of Vermont Nuclear

The Energy Information Agency actually has data on every power station in the US- which is actually pretty great. From this you can piece together a pretty good picture of Vermont’s energy generation portfolio. Vermont has one of the cleanest generation schemes in the US- with several hydroelectric plants, some new solar and wind, and rare scattered fossil-fuel generators, the state only has a single plant that utilizes natural gas. Vermont and Rhode Island are the only two states to not have a single coal-fired power plant.

Vermont Yankee is the state’s only nuclear power plant, and yet you may be surprised to learn that it consists of nearly 3/4 of the state’s annual generation.

This has to do with the economics of scale; the dozen plus large hydroelectric projects in the state are on rivers that simply are not big enough to be huge generators. Nuclear power utilizes a smaller footprint to generate more electricity, something most renewable technologies don’t have the opportunity to do.

If you’re worried that Vermont as a state could never make up for a loss of almost three quarters of its electrical generation and that the state will go dark, you need not be. Green Mountain Power, the state’s largest transmission company, stopped purchasing power from Vermont Yankee in 2011. To be honest, one of the reasons energy generation is rarely reported by state is that it is rarely used in the same state it was produced- the US electrical grids are widely interconnected, and market sales of electricity cross borders more often than not. Although Green Mountain Power makes a point of siding with the people of Vermont by refusing a contract with Vermont Yankee, they do not state quite as directly that much of their generation comes instead from nuclear power in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

But when it comes down to it, Vermont is already an energy importer- whether it be hydroelectric power from Canada or nuclear from New England. But this still means that more economic activity is moving out of the state- which is a tough blow for a state that has struggled to keep jobs inside it's borders and has seen large drops in population. And if the energy Vermont Yankee is producing isn't used in Vermont, then the implications for New England might be more interesting.

The Evolving Energy Landscape of New England

In 2011, Vermont Yankee generated nearly 4% of the electricity generated in New England. That may not seem like a whole lot, but it will be missed- and needs to be replaced.

New England is a special place, in terms of energy. It has a very clean generation profile compared to the US as a whole, and it‘s been getting cleaner. When you take the whole region’s power supply breakdown, it looks like this:

Coal, the king of electricity in the US, is dwarfed by other technologies in the New England states which boast a staggering 50% generation through natural gas. Although cleaner than coal, natural gas still produces a lot of carbon dioxide- so while it’s environmentally better, it’s not the best. But when it comes to New England, 43% of their generation is greenhouse gas free (almost- see this), which is impressive. The bulk of that greenhouse gas free generation is though nuclear plants like Yankee.

So what will replace Yankee? Well, lets look at how New England has changed in the last twenty years:

It certainly won’t be a coal or petroleum plant, but you all already knew that. New England has been aggressively phasing out coal through fuel switching and renewables. In fact, New England has replaced 65% of it’s coal power and 98% of it’s petroleum generation to cleaner alternatives from 1991 to 2011, so it’s pretty safe to say that that’s not happening.

It’s also unlikely to come from hydroelectric power or more nuclear- hydro because nearly all of the hydroelectric sites that can be developed have been, and nuclear because there isn’t enough public support in the air yet- especially not in a victorious Vermont.

So what does that leave us? A few options stand out: solar, wind, and natural gas. Let’s take a look at each.

Replacing Vermont Yankee with Solar

A 2.2 MW solar farm recently installed in South Burlington, Vermont

When it comes to solar panels, central generation isn’t its strong suit. Solar technology has exploded on the New England grid from 0 MWh in 2007 to 6,579 MWh in 2011- but, that still is only 0.0053% of the grid’s power. That’s next to nothing.

But solar does shine in distributed generation- which is a lot harder to measure quantitatively. When you put a solar panel on your house, you buy less energy from the grid- so the grid needs to generate less energy. From the utility’s point of view, it looks identical to you having a newly efficient home. Solar is almost certainly a contributor to the decrease in energy demand across the US recently, but how much so is uncertain.

For now, though, we're considering replacing Yankee with grid power. The National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) has a map of solar potential across the US- how much energy a standard solar panel could pick up on an annual basis. Looking at southern Vermont, where Vermont Yankee is now, we see that you could generate between 4.0 and 4.5 kWh per square meter of solar panel per day, on average. But we're not very good at capturing this energy- we can hardly extract 0.58 kWh per day out of this, on average. We need to generate 4,907,355,000 kWh a year. Each of our square meter solar panels would produce...

And to cover Vermont Yankee, that means we need:

23 Million solar panels covering 5,680 acres

That is a lot- and it would probably take up a bit more space because Vermont is far enough North that the panels would need to be tilted to pick up enough sun. Solar has been growing quickly, but it's unlikely that it will be able to expand quite that fast to cover the space that Yankee will leave behind.

Replacing Vermont Yankee with Wind

A wind turbine from the 40 MW, 16 turbine Sheffield Wind Farm

Wind will probably be a little more effective than solar power here. Wind is more often considered a viable part of grid-scale generation, and actually covers 0.7% of New England’s total generation. When it comes to where this wind is being generated, however, you may notice something interesting:

Maine seems to have a monopoly over wind generation, covering over 80%. That’s no coincidence- Maine has the largest amount of unpopulated wilderness, and that’s its biggest play. When it comes to wind power, people are wind’s worst enemy- shooting down projects because they would be loud, ugly, or require environmentally damaging mountaintop construction. This is often called NIMBY- the Not In My BackYard effect- and has been most famously encountered in the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts.

But lets take a look- how many wind turbines are we talking?

GE manufactures a modern wind turbine with a maximum power output of 2.5 MW, which is one of the largest on the market. This means that when enough wind is blowing, it will generate that much power. The wind doesn't blow all of the time though, so they won't generate that much power all of the time. However, the northeast is a pretty good place for wind- so we can assume that each of our turbines will have a decent output, around a capacity factor of 0.25- meaning that they're operating near full power an average of 25% of the time.

And that means:

At that rate, we'll need:

900 Wind turbines

So we’re looking at nearly 900 new wind turbines in the Northeast to match Yankee’s annual output. This is a 564% increase in the Northeast’s wind power, though- which means it would not be an easy feat. Finding locations, beating local resistance, and being able to install all of these would be remarkable. A good start would be to complete the Cape Wind project- which would result in the installation of 130 wind turbines of the coast of Massachusetts. Replacing Vermont Yankee with wind would be difficult, but it could be done.

The only problem with both wind and solar is that it fills a very different role in the electrical grid than nuclear power. Both wind and solar are intermittent sources of power, meaning that they cannot be relied on during any specific period- much of the time they won't be generating anything. Nuclear, on the other hand, is usually a baseload power source- meaning that it is always running, providing the power that is used first in the grid, and can be turned on and off when needed. Switching this baseload to renewables would stress the readiness of the grid- but wouldn't be impossible.

Replacing Vermont Yankee with Natural Gas

The Fore River Generating Station in North Weymouth, MA

Natural gas has an advantage over wind and solar in that it has been growing at a much larger scale recently. This is mostly because of the new gas fracking boom, which has dropped the price of natural gas.

Between 2001 and 2011, New England’s annual natural gas generation has increased by 30,000,000 MWh, over six times Vermont Yankee’s output. Natural gas units have varied sizes and electrical outputs, but we can use as an example the Fore River Generating Station, a natural gas plant about the same size as Vermont Yankee, in North Weymouth just south of Boston. Given a new, similarly modern plant to Fore River as our replacement for Yankee, we are looking at:

1 Plant, containing 3 generating units

Natural gas generation is a large carbon dioxide emitter, however- and according to the IPCC estimates, a natural gas plant of the size of Vermont Yankee would produce nearly 2.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. As solar, wind, and Vermont Yankee itself are nearly carbon dioxide free, this represents a sizable slip in New England’s carbon reduction goals. But natural gas has none of the siting issues as the other two- in fact, a closing coal plant could be easily retrofitted into a gas plant.

The other effect of New England’s large conversion to natural gas is that it potentially ties electricity to a fuel that’s had very volatile price rates in the past. Nuclear is one of the most stable electricity sources when it comes to cost- and so, if the natural gas fracking rush suddenly goes to bust, New England could lose out.

Finally, natural gas would never be installed in Vermont- the state has enough resistance to gas development that gas development would assuredly happen in Massachusetts, or Connecticut. This means that Vermont is losing high paying, technical jobs- something the state has been struggling with.

So what’s likely to happen? Unfortunately, it’s probably no contest- natural gas development is a nearly guaranteed replacement for Vermont Yankee. Solar and wind will certainly be growing at high rates, but are unlikely to overtake the generation of Yankee for some time. And this may be a repeated scenario across the US soon, as more domestic nuclear plants shut down due to age restrictions. The US is converting to gas faster than renewables- and is spinning down coal and nuclear. In general, this is resulting in lower greenhouse gas emissions, but results in a dangerous economic time bomb- if natural gas prices go back up, we'll see a much larger impact on energy prices in the US than ever before.

One thing that comes without a doubt is that much of Vermont is celebrating the closing of Vermont Yankee. And this isn't unprecedented- their concerns about Vermont Yankee's safety were valid. But as New England likely quietly turns to natural gas in it's absence, we must remember that sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.

Sources

http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactor/vy.html

http://www.safecleanreliable.com/

http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/08/27/vermont-yankee-nuclear-plant-shut-down/VthM9oe73f8zeaHdWJJOVN/story.html

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20130827/NEWS07/308270007/Entergy-closing-Vermont-Yankee-nuclear-plant-in-2014-promises-safe-decommissioning

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2011/05/24/vt_utility_to_buy_power_from_nhs_seabrook/

http://blogs.burlingtonfreepress.com/politics/2013/08/27/green-mountain-power-corp-comments-on-entergys-decision-on-vermont-yankee/