US nuclear-plant advertising campaign draws accusations of consumer fraud
The Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant
http://www.vpirg.org/
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A consumer-rights group has accused the owners of the Vermont Yankee NPP of misleading advertising. The NPP has been advertised as “safe, clean, reliable”, which isn’t actually the case, according to the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG).
“The plant hasn’t proved itself reliable. Over the past few years there have been several breaches while in operation,” research group members say.
Assertions that the NPP doesn’t discharge the carbon-dioxide gas responsible for climate change are also not accurate, and actually mislead consumers. Carbon emissions occur both during the production of nuclear fuel and during transportation of nuclear materials and nuclear waste, as well as when nuclear waste is processed. Without this, not one NPP would be able to function, and therefore NPPs are directly responsible for CO2 emissions, and assertions otherwise are suggestive of straightforward deception.
The owners of the NPP are trying to present the old plant, which entered service in 1972, as “safe, clean, reliable,” as they hope to obtain a licence to prolong its engineered life-span.
Full-page advertisements for the NPP have been taken out in local newspapers, and advertising segments placed on radio and television. A special website celebrating the safe, clean, reliable NPP has been created as well:www.safecleanreliable.com.
Consumer-rights activists have analysed the NPP advertising campaign, and at the beginning of September sent a six-page letter to state Attorney General William Sorrell based on their findings, demanding that he launch an investigating and alleging that paid-for advertisements for the NPP in a number of media outlets are in breach of the state's law protecting consumers from misleading and dishonest advertising.
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| VPIRG Executive Director Paul Burns. |
| http://www.vpirg.org/ |
“The owners of the NPP are showing such disregard for the truth that they've actually reached the point of breaking state law," says VPIRG Executive Director Paul Burns. The letter includes extracts from the NPP’s paid-for advertising that contradict the facts or generally accepted views.
And it’s not only the legitimacy of the claim that the NPP is “safe, clean, reliable” that’s being challenged: there are allegations of corruption too.
For example, the NPP’s contribution to Vermont’s Clean Energy Fund, the activists say, was the result not of concern for the environment, as the NPP’s advertising says, but of a secret deal with the state administration under which, in return for a generous contribution to the fund, the NPP would be permitted to store more radioactive waste at the facility in the town of Vernon, Vermont.
Although this is not mentioned in the letter, Burns maintains that the NPP’s principal slogan – “Vermonter to Vermonter” – is also a fraud.
“The irony of a Louisiana-based corporation saying ‘Vermonter to Vermonter’ is indicative of the deception that is inherent in these ads,” Burns said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Oversight bodies – cheerleaders for nuclear energy
Bellona Web obtained an exclusive interview with VPIRG Clean Energy Advocate James Moore.
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| James Moore |
| http://www.vpirg.org/ |
Bellona: What are you expecting from the state’s Attorney General?
Moore: The Attorney General is obliged to investigate the case. However, the resources of his office are limited, and it's possible that he won't be able to undertake a comprehensive investigation and get at Entergy (the company that owns the NPP). We'll see how events unfold.
Bellona: What’s the position of the federal authorities and the state authorities regarding the Vermont Yankee NPP?
Moore: Here in the United States the federal body responsible for oversight of nuclear energy (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is just a joke. They’re the cheerleaders for nuclear energy. They’ve already said that they think Vermont Yankee can work for another 20 years after 2012.
At the state level our leaders or divided. Our governor is a big supporter of the NPP. But among the state lawmakers there are lots of deputies who say that the NPP should be shut down according to plan in 2012.
Bellona: What will be the next steps for your anti-nuclear campaign?
Moore: We’re working on trying to convince the state lawmakers to reject a request from the corporation that owns the NPP to allow them to operate the station after its working life expires in 2012.
It remains to wish the VPIRG good luck with its activities and to note that in the U.S. as in Russia, the federal bodies that are meant to keep a watch on nuclear energy are also cheerleaders for the industry.
In Russia, the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Oversight (Rostekhnadzor) confirms, without batting an eyelid, the validity of building new NPPs and extending the working lives of old ones – even if they’re obsolete and dangerous like the Kola and Leningrad plants. However, unlike Russia, in the United States, such decisions cannot be taken on the sly and without approval from the state legislative body. And lawmakers may not be taken in by the nuclear sector’s pleas, but rather listen to the opinions of independent experts and the views of the population, and not allow dangerous plans to be put into practice.
Who benefits from the sell-off of “second-hand NPPs”?
Robert Williams, a spokesman for Vermont Yankee, denied the accusations and links them to the upcoming extension of the NPP’s working life.
Entergy Nuclear acquired the 30-year-old NPP from the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation in July 2002 for just $180 million. A new NPP of a similar class is valued at $1.5-2 billion – about 10 times as much. Along with the old NPP the new owners also inherited previously processed nuclear waste and responsibility for decommissioning the plant.
The previous owners earmarked about $310 million for decommissioning the plant, which is clearly not enough to carry out this complex operation safely. That would need about a billion dollars, and it's unclear where the NPP could get the money.
The plant’s new owners have the option of selling electricity at dumping prices, as they picked up the – admittedly old – equipment very cheaply. There was a similar situation with Ukrainian NPPs and the Ignalina NPP in Lithuania after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The new owners obtained the plants for free, meaning that the Ignalina NPP could sell electricity extremely cheaply, as the price didn’t have to include the cost of the NPP's equipment and buildings, for which the Soviet Union had already paid.
It is a shame that the NPP’s new owners are not particularly bothered about bringing the decrepit reactors up to modern safety standards or preparing them for decommissioning.
Extending working lives: when money's involved, safety goes out of the window
Entergy Nuclear hopes to get permission to use the old reactor even after its current licence runs out in 2012.
The reactor at Vermont Yankee has a working life of 40 years, but the new owners want to extend its lifetime for another 20 yeas. This has caused justified concern among experts and protests from local residents.
The situation is very similar to that at several of Russia’s NPPs. For example, reactors number 1 and 2 at the Kola NPP were brought online in 1973 and 1974, respectively. They are also old, dangerous reactors that pre-date the Chernobyl disaster. They have also had their working lives extended, the energy they produce is also sold at dumping prices, and they’re also not being readied for shutting down.
But in Russia the problems look more serious than in America. Vermont Yankee at least has $300 million for decommissioning the nuclear reactor, whereas the four-reactor Kola NPP has no money at all, nuclear agency chief Sergei Kirienko said at a meeting with residents of Murmansk Oblast on October 6, 2006.
It’s unlikely that the money has been found since then.
The governors – victims of nuclear advertising?
However, it seems that Murmansk Oblast Governor Yury Yevdokimov is completely unconcerned about this state of affairs. Governor Yevdokimov doesn’t really want to get a handle on the problems of the Kola NPP – instead, he wants to build a new one, KNPP-2. At the very same meeting with Kirienko in 2006, he promised medals for those who take the decision on building a second NPP.
It's too bad that Russian governors are inclined to believe what the nuclear lobby says. They take the nuclear sector’s assurances of “safe, clean, reliable” reactors completely uncritically, without realising that they’re falling victim to misleading advertising.
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| Kaliningrad Region Governor Georgy Boos. |
In May, for example, Kaliningrad Oblast Governor Georgy Boos, while pressing for the construction of an NPP, talked of the “high safety standards that characterise the fifth-generation nuclear reactors that Russia has.” The governor also talked about the thorough study of the issue that had been carried out by Rosatom.
To experts, the comments were ironically amusing. Russia doesn’t have “fifth-generation” reactors. Not one. There are none – anywhere in the world. There's only a tender for the design – for fourth-generation reactors – and it’s not clear what the result will be. But the governor believes, or wants to believe, what Rosatom says.
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| Kostroma Region Governor Igor Slyuonyaev. |
| http://www.region.kostroma.net/ |
The picture is the same in Kostroma Oblast. The regional boss has no qualms about renewing construction of the Buisk NPP.
“If we’d built the plant in the 1990s, it would have been of a similar type to Chernobyl. So it’s good that we didn’t build it. Now the technology has made great advances, which means we can make civilian nuclear engineering safe as well. Therefore, we need to build the NPP,” Governor Igor Slyunyayev said in November 2007. It’s yet another case of ministerial faith in the existence of some kind of new reactors that are “safe, clean, reliable”. Russians, it seems, are inclined to believe the adverts.
But regardless, it seems to me that the key to the governors' bizarre gullibility lies in the realms of finance and money. “According to a report from Rosenergoatom, in some regions NPPs are the biggest taxpayers, whose contributions form a significant part of budgetary income not just for the towns near the plants but for whole oblasts,” says the press service of one of the unsuspecting governors, giving a direct indication of the reason for the general interest in NPPs.
The problem for Russia’s governors is that all talk of future tax income from NPPs sounds more like bravado meant to drown out less pleasant thoughts of possible accidents and catastrophes, of the unsolvable problem of nuclear waste, and of the NPPs possibly going bankrupt if the government pulls a swathe of subsidies … but when money’s involved, safety goes out of the window. This is forgotten in Russia, but not, it seems, in the U.S.
Accidents at NPPs – do they happen or not?
Regardless of the nuclear lobby’s reassurances about the reliability of the reactors, accidents do happen at NPPs. In fact they happen regularly, at NPPs of all types, in all countries that currently still have working nuclear reactors.
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| Water leaking out of a damaged cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee plant in August 2007. |
| http://www.safepowervt.org/ |
Let’s return to the Vermont Yankee NPP, were a serious accidence happened on August 22nd, 2007.
The western cooling tower collapsed, and a huge volume of water leaked out of the NPP’s cooling system. Fortunately, the water wasn’t radioactive. But the accident could easily have had serious consequences, since a nuclear reactor without a working heat-extraction system can be damaged, the core could undergo partial meltdown and radiation could escape into the environment. It was a leak of coolant that caused the largest accident at a U.S. NPP, at Three Mile Island in 1979.
But a catastrophe was averted on August 22nd, 2007, at Vermont Yankee, as other cooling towers were activated and the plant’s output was reduced by 70 percent, but the plant continued to operate. The reason for the accident was decay in the wooden framework of the cooling tower. In other words, the company operating the NPP wasn’t in a position to identify and replace rotten wooden beams, while at the same time spending vast amounts of money on advertising the “safety and reliability” of its NPP, which was literally falling to pieces.
It's understandable why people in Vermont don’t believe the irresponsible advertising and are asking the attorney general to punish those responsible for it. In total, Vermont Yankee has suffered 76 breakdowns of the cooling system and three fires in the transformers.
In fact, something similar is happening at NPPs in Russia as well. There haven’t been any accidents caused by rotten wooden beams yet, but deficiencies in reactors’ cooling systems and fires in generators and transformers occur frequently.
For example, in July 2008 Rostekhnadzor reported the following incidents: July 1st, Kola NPP; July 4th and 12, Bilibino NPP (“defects in welded joints” of the main pipes were discovered, and the plant had to carry out an emergency shut down of reactor no. 2); July 17th, shut down of reactor no. 3 at the Balakovo NPP due to “steam formation in the area of the steam generator.” In June 2008 there were two operating infringements, two in May and five in April. On average, one “incident” is recorded at each reactor of Russia’s NPPs every year.
But whereas such minor accidents don’t attract much attention in Russia, in the US lessons are learned and they try not to allow old NPPs to be advertised as being reliable.
Vermont Governor Jim Douglas was forced to admit that accidents cast doubt on the nuclear sector’s assurances about the reliability and safety of NPPs.
“These events have shaken the confidence of Vermonters and our neighbours in New Hampshire and Massachusetts about the safety and reliability of the plant,” Douglas said. “They have brought into question whether Vermont Yankee should operate beyond its present operating license expiration date of 2012.”
Russia is not America
But what definitely isn’t happening in Russia is a discussion of the problems of nuclear energy by politicians.
It’s impossible to take seriously declarations made by governors either under direct pressure from Rosatom or under the influence of dishonest advertising by the nuclear sector.
Yet, for example, David Deen, Michael Mrowicki, Steve Darrow, the three Democratic candidates for the Vermont House of Representatives from the towns of Putney, Westminster, and Dummerston, which are the nearest towns to the NPP, all hold the same position and do not support the nuclear sector.
All of them say that the NPP should be shut down before its licence expires in 2012. All of them have promised not to vote in favour of extending the NPP’s working life. And all of them agree that the state government ought to finance efforts to improve energy efficiency and to promote the use of alternative sources of energy. This position is widely discussed and will most likely gain the support of voters.
Unfortunately, there are no politicians at the regional level in Russia who talk honestly about the problems of ageing NPPs. No lawmaker in Murmansk Oblast has said publicly that they support the demands of local organization Nature and Youth for the Kola NPP to be readied for shutting down. There are no such local politicians either in the Voronezh or Leningrad oblasts, where NPP reactors are also operating beyond the end of their planned working lives.
Moreover, Russia’s environmentalists don’t have the opportunity to be heard and understood by the prosecutor’s office if they try, following the example of their American counterparts, to catch the nuclear lobbyists in outright deception and misleading advertising.
So Vermont Yankee will most likely be shut down in 2012; there is no such certainty regarding the Kola, Leningrad and Novovoronezh NPPs.
Andrei Ozharovsky, a physicist with Ecodefence, is a frequent contributor to Bellona Web.
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