Vermont Yankee was a nuclear power plant, located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, in the New England. The plant had begun commercial operations in 1972 and in 2008, the plant provided 71.8% of all electricity generated within Vermont. On December 29, 2014, its owner Entergy ceased the plant's operations.
In March 2011, 600 people gathered for a weekend protest outside the Vermont Yankee plant, in the wake of the Fukushima I nuclear accidents. On March 22, 2011, the day after the NRC issued Vermont Yankee a license extension, Vermont's congressional delegation, Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Representative Peter Welch, issued a joint statement decrying the NRC's action and noting the similarity of Vermont Yankee to units at the Fukushima Daiichi power station.
Despite an extension to plant life, which had been granted 2 years earlier, on August 28, 2013, Entergy announced that due to economic factors, notably the lower cost of electricity provided by competing natural gas-fired power plants, it would cease operations and schedule the plant's decommissioning in the fourth quarter of 2014.
When Vermont Yankee was set to close, activists such as Bill McKibben claimed that Vermont “is completely capable of replacing (and far more) its power output with renewables, which is why my roof is covered with solar panels.” Vermont Yankee, a 604-megawatt nuclear plant, provided New England with 42 years of reliable, carbon dioxide-free power before its closure at the end of 2014. The plant’s capacity factor exceeded 80 percent over its lifetime—more than double the capacity factor of the most efficient solar or wind plant in the United States, which were expected by some to replace it.
However, that wasn’t what happened. Instead, natural gas generation expanded in New England. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions increased 7 percent in 2015. And now, Pilgrim, a nuclear power plant in Massachusetts, is also set to close in 2019 due to economic factors. Sadly, Pilgrim employs 600 people with an annual payroll of $55 million, pays nearly $10 million in town and state taxes, and provides power for more than 500,000 homes.
