Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant

Vermont Yankee is a General Electric boiling water reactor (BWR) type nuclear power plant currently owned by Entergy. It is located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, in the northeastern United States, and generates 620 megawatts (MWe) of electricity at full power. The plant began commercial operations in 1972. It provided 71.8% of all electricity generated in Vermont in 2008, which is 35% of the overall electricity used in the state. The plant is situated on the Connecticut River just above the Vernon Hydroelectric Dam. The reservoir pool created by the dam serves as the source of Vermont Yankee's cooling water.

The plant's operating license ran out in March 2012, and the question of whether its license will be renewed is complicated by the fact that Vermont is the only state in which the state government has a say in nuclear plant licensing, rather than just the federal government.

In February 2010, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 against re-licensing of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant after 2012, citing radioactive tritium leaks, misstatements in testimony by plant officials, a cooling tower collapse in 2007, and other problems. On March 21, 2011 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued their renewal of the operating license for the Vermont Yankee plant for an additional 20 years.; the renewed license will expire March 21, 2032. As of April 2012, its request for a new state certificate of public good is pending before Vermont regulators.

There have been many anti-nuclear protests about Vermont Yankee since the 1970s. In March 2011, following the Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster, 600 people gathered for a weekend protest outside the Vermont Yankee plant. In March 2012, more than 130 protesters were arrested at the Brattleboro, VT offices of Entergy, the corporate owners of the plant, after more than 1,000 protesters marched over three miles from the Brattleboro downtown area to the protest site.