Its Nuclear Plant Closed, Maine Town Is Full of Regret 380
mdsolar writes in with a story about the fallout from a nuclear plant closing on a small town in Maine. "In a wooded area behind a camouflage-clad guard holding an assault rifle, dozens of hulking casks packed with radioactive waste rest on concrete pads — relics of the shuttered nuclear plant that once powered the region and made this fishing town feel rich. In the 17 years since Maine Yankee began dismantling its reactors and shedding its 600 workers, this small, coastal town north of Portland has experienced drastic changes: property taxes have spiked by more than 10 times for the town's 3,700 residents, the number living in poverty has more than doubled as many professionals left, and town services and jobs have been cut. 'I have yet to meet anyone happy that Maine Yankee is gone,' said Laurie Smith, the town manager. 'All these years later, we're still feeling the loss of jobs, the economic downturn, and the huge tax increases.'"
When is it going to happen to San Francisco? (Score:5, Interesting)
At some point, this is going to happen to San Francisco, and the entire so-called Silicon Valley.
While the economy of this region was once diversified, ranging from professional services to software development to computer hardware development to heavy industry, we've seen much of that flee over the years.
These days, the companies and people that remain are nothing compared to the giants of days gone by. They are strangers walking through the ruins of what was once a great civilization. They try to imitate what they see, but they lack the inherent essence of what The Valley was in its heyday.
Some people call it economic stagnation; I prefer to call it rampant hipsterism. That which mattered has been replaced by that which is superficial. Where we once had leaders and innovators, now we have manchildren who wear tight jeans, large glasses, and act with the maturity of toddlers.
When Bill Hewlett was in the room, everyone listened to him, even when he wasn't saying anything. But today, we get to hear self-entitled young men prance around in fedoras, taking photos of everything while subsequently going on about social media and Web 2.0 and Ruby-on-Rails.
If it can happen in Maine, I think it can surely happen in California. The parallels between the two are astounding.
Contrary to the other posts in this thread... (Score:5, Interesting)
Contrary to the other posts in this thread...
It's doubtful that the activists who caused the closure actually live in the town; they are likely from out of area, and just uniformly against nuclear power for the sake of being against nuclear power.
From the article, it looks like there isn't a NIMBY in town, and that the town is actually filled with PIMBY's ("Please In My Back Yard").
Re:Uh oh! (Score:5, Interesting)
I know you're being sarcastic, but it's not just nuclear power plants that generate revenues. Where I live, there's a large wind farm that pays millions a year through council and business taxes: they make my small sleepy town mega-rich and pose zero threat to the environment, save for a few birds that think they can fly through the spinning blades now and then.
Re:Contrary to the other posts in this thread... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's doubtful that the activists who caused the closure actually live in the town; they are likely from out of area, and just uniformly against nuclear power for the sake of being against nuclear power.
From TFA
But the plant faced serious allegations of safety violations and falsifying records around the time it was closed, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Agency investigators found Maine Yankee relied on inadequate computer analyses to demonstrate the adequacy of its emergency core cooling system; “willfully provided inaccurate information” to the NRC about its ability to vent steam during an accident; and provided falsified records of safety-related equipment.
Yeah .. damn commie hippie activists. Causing a proud 'Merkin company to close down.
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
They are hardly alone in that, though. All kinds of industrial processes (especially anything inherited from the good old days when Men Were Men, Cigarettes were a health food, and PCBs were a Miracle of Science), even if their buildings are cheaper to tear down, leave the underlying site in lousy enough shape that it's usually cheaper just to say 'eh, fuck 'em' and choose a greenfield location somewhere else. Even something as minor as a gas station can be Wacky Remediation Fun Time if their storage tank leaked before they went under or moved.
(The only other aspect, though the article is polite, or feckless, enough to ignore it, is that nuclear plants operate under an NRC license, which is of limited duration unless renewed, which requires a variety of testing steps, so their demise is probably rather more predictable than the usual '$FOOCORP moves to China to save 10 cents per widget' story. If your town is basically fucked without its resident nuclear reactor, you really want your town leadership to be well informed(or doing their best to batter down the doors and demand to be made aware) of exactly where in the lifecycle the reactor is, whether HQ is looking for a renewal, whether there are issues that would scuttle that, etc. Predicting a 'Haha, Outsourcing Surprise!' event is relatively challenging. Predicting whether or not a reactor will get recertified or mothballed may not be trivial; but it's a much better defined problem. My guess is that there's a really ugly backstory there. Either the town ignoring the problem to bask in the present, the operator stonewalling/flimflamming the town until it was time to give them the shaft, some of both, some other flavor I'm not thinking of; but that would be the one major wrinkle distinguishing a reactor from any other 'industrial site not easy to remediate'.)
Re:Uh oh! (Score:5, Interesting)
We've had wind farms erected on some of the windier ridges near my hometown. One of the coolest things about them is that you can drive right up to the windmills and check them out. A majority of them are erected on farmland, and the farmers are paid about $3000/yr per windmill on their property... even if it's on land that was otherwise unused (such as very rocky soil or old pastures no longer in use). Some people complain that they make the skyline ugly, but most people I've talked to think they make rather serene vistas along the tops of the valleys.
Re:This is disputed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is disputed (Score:5, Interesting)
the mining and preparation of the nuclear fuel is quite carbon dirty. Not to mention the enormous costs of the structures and transportation of the fuel and whatever.
Yeah, coal plants don't have any of those problems.
Re:Uh oh! (Score:4, Interesting)
I know you're being sarcastic, but it's not just nuclear power plants that generate revenues. Where I live, there's a large wind farm that pays millions a year of other taxpayers' money through council and business taxes: they make my small sleepy town mega-rich and pose zero threat to the environment, save for a few birds that think they can fly through the spinning blades now and then.
There, fixed it for you. and recall that the prim promoters of wind and solar brush the necessity of backup, on-call generation under the taxpayer's carpet as well.
Do not think that I am a dr. Strangelove or something: I am just trained in analysing economic alternatives where my money and livelihood are on the table, and there's no taxpayer whom I can pass the buck to. I'd love to see a comprehensive, "all side effects in" study of such things, but all are more or less ass backwards things:" Since renewable energy is good per se, we'll subsidise it to the tune of [insert number of billion Euros here] each year, and therefore it achieves grid parity".
Re:This is disputed (Score:5, Interesting)
When livelihoods depend on doing the wrong thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are an enormous number of cases where government cannot find the will to do the right thing because so many people's livelihoods are dependent upon doing the wrong thing. Fixing healthcare, ending the war on drugs, reining in surveillance, saner military and foreign policy, a lot of people stand to loose well paying jobs if these things come to pass. This isn't just come greedy CEO who isn't going to make as huge a profit. Its middle class professionals and skilled workers who will be obsolete because what they do is harmful to the world.
How do we structure plans to do the right thing in a way that deals with this problem? A lot of the political pushback comes because of this issue. Congresspeople need to protect jobs in their districts, even if they are jobs that make the world a worse place. How do we do better while having a plan for the people and communities left behind?
The flip side of the argument in those in this position take a big gamble. A small town with a sustainable fishing economy expands to support a new nuclear industry that won't be there forever, but never really establishes or expands parallel industries that can survive independently. When nuclear goes, the infrastructure for it is still there, costing money, but the people and taxes to support it are not. In the meantime, its original economy from before the nuclear plant has gone through change and neglect. Its a story that plays out again and again in small formerly industrial towns. The clock turns back, but there is no support for doing that sanely, and so negative feedback loops happen, and as a nation we loose the stomach for change. If we better addressed this issue, maybe more could get done.
Re:This is disputed (Score:2, Interesting)
Just to play devil's advocate, solar may be more expensive, but where does that money go? It doesn't just evaporate, it goes back into the economy somewhere providing more jobs and more demand. Assuming Germany is buying panels it produces itself, then the increased cost of electricity is met by the jobs needed to make and install these panels. As opposed to fossil fuels which would likely be imported and likely creating no new jobs except vanity projects somewhere in the middle east.
So although the end user sees a hike in electricity prices they could also see lower unemployment, crime, better education etc as a result of all this extra industry needed. Sure it requires big subsidies, but so do all other forms of energy production.
I obviously don't have the figures to prove it but given that Germany is currently bankrolling most of Europe implies that on average its overall economic policy is good. In the past countries have fuelled boom times by resource exploitation (Thatcher in the 80s for example with north sea oil) so perhaps you have Germany doing something weird here.
Of course all this theory falls down if the solar panels are being made in China and installed by Polish immigrant workers who are sending all their spare cash home. But then I have no explanation for Germany's current economic boom.
Re: This is disputed (Score:5, Interesting)
Guy points out solar works in Germany, which is cloudier than America.
Solar "works" in Germany only as a supplement to other, traditional plants.