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Despite the announced closure of Vermont Yankee in 2014, there still remain 30 GE Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors operating in the U.S. These reactor designs are sitting duck disasters waiting to happen. They are near identical in design to the reactors that exploded and melted down at Fukushima Daiichi. The design was described by former GE engineers in 1976 as "so dangerous that it now threatens the very existence of life on this planet."

This is ever more true today as these reactors age and degrade and our regulator refuses even to enforce minimally effective safeguards. 

Is your community organizing to shut your local Fukushima?

Please join our Freeze our Fukushimas campaign. For background on this flawed reactor design, and for a list of the Mark Is and IIs in the US, download our Freeze our Fukushimas pamphlet and feel free to reprint and distribute it widely. (Please be patient - it may take time to open.)

Please consider downloading our ad (shown left) and using it in your publications and in handouts or on your website and social media sites.

To join the campaign and be a part of upcoming actions, please contact Paul Gunter at Beyond Nuclear. Several important events are in the works and will be announced soon.

Grassroots activism laid the groundwork for Vermont Yankee's announced demise

Bob Bady, a founding member of the Safe and Green Campaign, has penned an op-ed at the Vermont Digger entitled "What Killed the Beast?"

The beast to which he refers is Vermont Yankee, a GE Mark I boiling water reactor, identical in design to the wrecked, leaking Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 in northeastern Japan.

He writes: "...The ultimate goal of a large corporation such as Entergy is to make money. Its growth or demise is about profit. The backstory is actually what prevented Vermont Yankee from making enough profit to continue to operate for decades to come.

Certainly cheaper natural gas was a signficant factor, as was an old plant that would require significant maintenance in the coming years. Pending costly federally mandated safety improvements, precipitated by the Fukushima disaster, also loomed.

The tipping point, however, the thing that might have really sealed Vermont Yankee's fate, was grassroots activism...".

He concludes that "because the anti nuke environmental community in Vermont, southwestern New Hampshire and western Massachusetts worked hard, long and intelligently to rally public opinion, and educate the Vermont Legislature," state laws signed by Vermont's former, pro-nuclear Republican governor became a "big expensive problem" for Entergy.

Bady adds "Entergy's income was first impacted when, by late 2010 and early 2011, its reputation had become so damaged by its own misdeeds, brought to the spotlight by activists, that Vermont electric utilities played hardball in contract negotiations. As a result, no deal emerged between Vermont Yankee and Vermont utilities, and Entergy was left to sell its product on the "spot" market, where prices had dropped because of cheaper natural gas."

Author Richard Watts asked the same question: how could Vermont Yankee go from being seen as a good neighbor and mainstay of the Green Mountain State's economy by some, to being almost universally disdained, even by former supporters, as a pariah, with top elected officials referring to Entergy publicly as a "rogue corporation"? Watts' book, Public Meltdown: The Story of Vermont Yankee, shows that Entergy's cover ups and lies under oath to state officials -- such as the 2007 cooling tower collapse brought to light by whistleblowers (photo, above left), and Entergy executives' perjury regarding radioactivity leaks into groundwater -- combined with widespread grassroots activism, turned the tide.

Just say no to nuclear power -- from Fukushima to Vermont

Vermont Yankee is a GE BWR Mark I atomic reactor, identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, has published a column in The Guardian analyzing Entergy's surprise announcement that it will close the Vermont Yankee reactor in October 2014, in light of the worsening crisis at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan.

Goodman quotes Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Associates, Inc.:

“It took three years, but it was citizen pressure that got the state Senate to such a position”, nuclear-energy consultant Arnie Gundersen told me of Entergy’s announcement. He has coordinated projects at 70 nuclear plants around the country and now provides independent testimony on nuclear and radiation issues. He explained how the state of Vermont, in the first such action in the country, had banned the plant from operating beyond its original 40-year permit. Entergy was seeking a 20-year extension.

The legislature, in that 26-to-4 vote, said: ‘No, we’re not going to allow you to reapply. It’s over. You know, a deal’s a deal. We had a 40-year deal.’ Well, Entergy went to first the federal court here in Vermont and won, and then went to an appeals court in New York City and won again on the issue, as they framed it, that states have no authority to regulate safety.

Vermont Yankee to close in 2014!

In a victory for the state of Vermont and its people, Entergy will close Vermont Yankee (a GE Mark I BWR, identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1-4) in 2014 and begin decommissioning the reactor. According to the Wall Street Journal, "The station is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014." The State of the Vermont, with overwhelming public support, voted to, and has been demanding, the shutdown of the troubled, aging Mark I, a twin design to those that melted down and exploded at Fukushima Daiichi. Entergy fought successfully to keep the plant open in the courts of law with support from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But the company had been exposed for lying under oath about buried leaking pipes and the reactor had suffered leaks, fires and the collapse of cooling towers. It is also contributing to thermal pollution in the Connecticut River that harms the wildlife there and the aquatic ecosystem. More news...

Thom Hartmann interview of Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps

On August 12th, Thom Hartmann interviewed Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps about the latest from Fukushima Daiichi on his radio show. Kevin teleported in via Skype from the office of Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Chicago. Fukushima Daiichi Units 1-4 were GE BWR Mark Is.

NEIS has watchdogged IL's GE BWR Mark Is (Dresden 2 & 3, Quad Cities 1 & 2) and IIs (LaSalle 1 & 2), as well as its numerous other reactors of different designs, for over 30 years.