FYI: Northern Pass High Voltage Transmission Project

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I grew up in the fall out zone of both Vermont Yankee and Yankee Rowe. Ironically, the bigger danger to us elementary school kids in the valley was the hydro plant up stream (which was reportedly very close to failing during Irene).

Many people lived in the hilltowns without real jobs. They somehow made a living protesting Yankee Rowe. When they were successful in getting it shut down, they turned their efforts on trying to prevent the waste from being removed from the site.

Prior to decommissioning, our side of the county went through a project of rebuilding the elementary schools. The wheels were in motion by the time the plant was closed. The impact? The new elementary schools are largely sitting half empty. The strings attached to the construction funds resulted in the towns deciding to keep operating the half empty schools, as they'd be on the hook for the bonds if they attempted to close and consolidate. As a result of that, property taxes in some of the smaller towns escalated. One good friend of mine had to continue to run her farm into her 80s, as it was the only way she could pay her property taxes. And for what it's worth, the area is lined with high tension lines which, though unsightly, haven't ruined the beauty nor scared away tourists. Ironically, the thing that deflated local tourism at the time was the construction of interstate highways and how they avoided the region.

We also have reports of New Hampshire's grid being overtaxed in the past year, to the point in which rolling blackouts almost occurred. We also have reports that part of the ridiculous new solution, a taxpayer funded wind farm near Plymouth with proceedings being sent to a Spanish companies, isn't even feeding the grid (but is getting tax credit for spinning the turbines anyway).

A few new modern nuclear plants in remote areas would be an interesting solution. Instead, we're shutting down what plants we have left and are permanently scarring our mountaintops for 20 to 25 years of minimal energy production that wouldn't be remotely economical if not for funneling our tax dollars to foreign entities.

By the way, according to reputable source Wikipedia, Vermont Yankee's annual energy generation is 4,703 GW hours. The Groton wind farm high-end estimate? 158 GW hours. So, if we were to try to replace Vermont Yankee with wind, we'd need to build 704 more mountaintop Spanish turbines to Groton specs and hope they're generating power round the clock. Or maybe use some more coal.
 
While I abhor nuclear, I'm not a fan of wind farms either, except in specific locations. I think the real solutions will not readily come, sadly, because they would require that all of us live differently and sacrifice some things, and we Americans are told we should never ever have to do this because it's, um, well, un-American. :( Depressing, but not hopeless.
 
As I on occasion have to deal with the "grid", it is generally regarded as the most complex machine ever created by mankind. One of the many things I have learned is that there are multiple ways to "skin the proverbial cat" and given the complexity of the system, an expert can come to pretty anywhere whatever solution they want to. I really hope folks aren't trying to frame a debate, that its either Northern Pass or Wind Mills in NH or Northern pass versus Vermont Yankee versus Wind, the current problems and issues of the regional grid are far more complex

From a carbon neutrality perspective arguably, nuclear power is carbon neutral and the baseload replacement power is most likely carbon contributing. Europe is managing to survive a high proportion of renewable baseload somewhat by using Norway's (and to lesser extent Finland's)pumped storage capacity to buffer the impact of renewables but the recent decisions by Germany and others to shutter nuclear power has led to a resurgence of coal and to a lesser extent wood . Contrary to popular belief, coal fired powered generation is not banned in Kyoto accord countries, rather the cost for carbon emitted must be offset by buying credits, this should lead to overall reduction in carbon, but the reality is that numerous third world countries are manufacturing highly suspect carbon credits for sale to the highest bidders to the point where carbon credits are dirt cheap. The carbon trading market in Europe is widely regarded as suspect and the price of carbon credits have dropped to the point where coal plants can buy offsetting credits and still be the least expensive power as compared to high cost renewables. Germany Spain and Britain have all overly subsidized renewables and other suppliers in adjacent countries have taken advantage of those subsidies that are now a major drain on the economies of Germany Spain and Britain.

Britain recently has had to pass significant subsidies to keep several coal plants in operation as they lack enough baseload power due to renewables. Four power units in particular are supposed to be shifted to wood pellets, unfortunately, those 4 units will consume about 60% more so called waste wood then available in Great Britain . The result is those power plants plan to source their fuel from facilities like Millinocket's proposed Thermogen operation. Thermogen's ultimate goal is to produce torrefied wood pellets (torrefaction is a special pretreatment resulting in something similar to a charcoal briquette). Their plans are to purchase and process more wood than when Great Northern Paper was in full production, unlike the paper industry, the employment base is far lower. Ultimately they plan to build additional plants in Eastport Maine and elsewhere. So a subsidy for renewable power in Britain is going to lead to the most extensive logging of the Maine woods in probably 50 years. RWE in Germany had been purchasing cutting rights and building pellets plants in the south east for similar reasons. The type of cutting used to justify this type of forestry is going to resemble the methods used in New Brunswick, basically kill off the hardwoods after a cut and plant genetically optimized monocultures of spruce in large plantations.

With regards to Northern Pass, the Norway example in Europe where they have dammed numerous rivers and basins for use for pumped storage, Hydro Quebec is offering the same deal for the US, fortunately PSNH happens to be between Northern Quebec and southern NE so if they can build it, they make a lucrative return for every electron that goes back and forth. Arguably given this geographic monopoly, they should be able to afford to bury the line but NU has already entered the current revenue/capital ratio in their balance sheet so they don't want to admit to Wall Street that its going to take longer and cost more for the same return. CEO's become ex CEOs for this type of issue especially when he keeps insisting that its going to happen.

The current grid issues in New England are currently related to the natural gas resurgence. Most of the older coal plants were located along the coast close to the load so they could be serviced by barges. The new natural gas plants in general are far more distributed and out on the fringes of the gird. There are two large plants in ME (one in Veazie and one in Westbrook) that eat up a lot of the transmission lines capacity to the point where CMP is spending 1.4 billion dollars to upgrade the lines. Even with that upgrade there are numerous wind and biomass plants in eastern Maine that are unable to send power to southern NE when there is high demand due to lack of grid capacity. It is widely expected that when the new Berlin NH plant goes on line when the need is most critical that the net amount of power leaving northern NH will not change as the grid is already overloaded at times. Reportedly the Millsfield project is only rated at 50% capacity and has had to idle some days as there is no way to get the power out of the region. The recent push for wind farms in south and central NH is mostly due to some capacity being available on the grid although that rapidly will be eaten up.

There are a new generation of small nukes that are rolling out with less baggage than the older designs (but still are nuclear based). The reality is that given the current rate structure, as Entergy pointed out, there is no incentive for baseload generation and this no incentive for new nukes. Florida needed baseload generation and encouraged the utilities to build a new nuclear power plant, given the past when utilities were on the hook, to build power plants and eat the losses if the project is canceled (like Seabrook unit 2 which effectively bankrupted PSNH), the utilities extracted Construction in Progress (CIP)payments from the ratepayers. The project has now been canceled and the ratepayers are not particularly happy that they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to build a plant that will not be built and the utility is not out a dime and actually was rewarded with a profit. Currently the only niche that makes sense to investors is to build local "peakers" which are rather inefficient gas turbines that run on jet fuel that can start up rapidly (5 minutes or less) and take advantage of periods when the region needs power. Given the way the current market works, when there is demand for power in the region they can sell this power at rates that or 10 to 100 times the usual rate. Most of the time they just sit idle and get paid a "capacity payment" to be able to supply power quickly just in case. Anytime you see a wind turbine being built, expect that somewhere there is a peaker being installed to back it up. There have been numerous MW of these units installed in CT in the past two years.
 
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Northern Pass open house Holiday Inn Concord Wed 9/4 5:30-7:30 pm
 
>>A majority of Vermonters are breathing a sigh of relief. Vermont
>>Yankee was wildly unpopular.

Since VTY is located in the far SE corner of VT near the Connecticut River, it is not primarily Vermonters who will benefit from the closure but residents of MA and CT and boaters and hikers near the river who may have had their activities banned due to pollution.

Perhaps the plant could be run safely but not by the present management who a few years ago said there could be no [tritium?] leaks from the plant because it didn't have any [tritium?]. Well, guess what - it did and there were. It doesn't matter that much whether management were incompetent or just liars - neither group should be running a nuclear plant!

>Really? Not with the majority that I know. Nor the 600+ that are
>going to be out of work.

Certainly there will be a loss of jobs both at the plant and spin-offs. The town will lose a bundle in tax revenues - what if VTY quits paying taxes at all and dares them to foreclose on the property :)

But this is a few-vs-many situation, like Northern Pass tricked the Concord paper into an endorsement by promising that NH residents would get first pick of jobs. What they didn't say is that these are union jobs and if not enough union members from NH apply they will presumably take members from other states ahead of letting NH residents join.
 
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"Shill" or not, when the Forbes article's author makes statements such as this:

" ...an increasingly onerous regulatory environment brought on by unfounded fears from the Fukushima disaster..."

his credibility goes south fast. Really? Unfounded fears?!

Consider me one more Vermonter breathing a sigh of relief.
 
"Shill" or not, when the Forbes article's author makes statements such as this:



his credibility goes south fast. Really? Unfounded fears?!

Consider me one more Vermonter breathing a sigh of relief.
Having grown up with the seabrook plant here in nh,I was exposed to both sides of the debate.Correct me if wrong but was there not some issue of contaminated runoff water being flushed into the coastal waters when the plant first opened?Nuclear power seems to be dirty also imho along with the rest of them[energy sources].Interesting to see in twenty years what is considered clean energy.I guess burning wood makes me belong in the dirty camp:)
Stinkyfeet,welcome back to the right coast!
 
"Shill" or not, when the Forbes article's author makes statements such as this:



his credibility goes south fast. Really? Unfounded fears?!

Consider me one more Vermonter breathing a sigh of relief.

Yes, that's a pretty ridiculous statement (the Shill's statement that is) considering they are pumping thousands of gallons of water daily into the damaged reactors still to cool them (2 years later) that ALL gets contaminated. If they stop, possible continued meltdown. More than a thousand makeshift holding tanks are littering the area around the plant to simply hold the contaminated waste water. These of course, are now actively leaking radioactively contaminated water because they didn't bother making ones that had seals that would hold. Multiple fisheries have been shut down because their levels of radioactivity are too high. They are considering the ridiculous idea of FREEZING THE GROUND around the plant to try to contain the water!!! I'll go out on a limb and guess that Haliburton or some other greed-fueled monstrosity has an answer and a bid ready to go. This is absurdity.

Shill? Far worse. He and his attitude are dangerous. I'm sure PR at NU would love to hire him. He appears to "fit the suit."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/04/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-crisis-explainer/
 
Here's a link to an AP article by Dave Gram.

Two quotes from that article -

"Rich Sedano, director of U.S. programs for the Regulatory Assistance Project, said the nuclear plant’s small slice of New England’s power supply — about 2 percent — means the closure will have little effect on consumers. It will require more reliance on natural gas and may push the region toward more solar and wind production, especially as states try to meet mandated standards of energy from renewables."

"Vermont Yankee opened in 1972 in Vernon. In the past it has provided as much as a third of the state’s electrical supply but today nearly all of its power is shipped to electric companies in neighboring states." (emphasis mine).

From James Conca's piece in Forbes - "The power station was producing over 70% of the State’s power, carbon-free."

James Conca has been a part of the nuclear industry for his entire career, and his pieces are filled with self-serving references to his academic credentials and career highlights, his repeated emphasis on his ability to present information that's factual, blah, blah, blah. Yet, his pieces are riddled with errors and distortions.

Anyone remember the radio ads in which the CEO of VT Yankee made a few years ago after they were caught in any number of misrepresentations regarding the plant's safety issues, including denying tritium leaks? "Yeah, I know we lied and deliberately mislead Vermonters, but please, please, please - give us another chance".

Eventually jobs will be lost, but read the article - it will take years for that to happen, and workers have already had years to look for other employment.
 
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Northern Pass open house Holiday Inn Concord Wed 9/4 5:30-7:30 pm
I went to the Northern Pass info mtg in Concord, it was a lot more mellow than I expected. There were demonstrators for both sides but they didn't interact, pro in green T-shirts who left early, anti in orange T-shirts including a woman from Easton who was pleased at the number of honks at her sign. Yes, there were "armed guards" at the entrance but they were Concord police in uniform and I didn't see them evict or refuse anyone. I must look like a radical because inside someone quickly slipped me an anti brochure, she was talking to a NP rep who didn't say a word.

Several well known people in the PR world had NP badges and there were fancy displays and some computers so they are putting real money into this. There were coffee and cookies to get everybody relaxed. But NP still exudes an aura of secrecy which I think hurts their cause, as in the following:

Me: How come you bury the lines up North where there's nobody to see them but not in Concord where there are 80,000 people every day to see them?

NP rep#1: Burying the lines costs too much.

Me: How much is too much?

NP rep#1: You need to talk to a construction person.

NP rep#2: Burying the lines costs 5 times as much.

Me: How much in dollars per mile?

NP rep#2: I can't tell you that.
.
Me: How can you say how much more it is then?

NP rep#2: I know but can't tell you, you need to talk to a manager.

NP mgr: $2-3 million per mile above ground, $15-20 million buried.

I asked somebody else about union vs. non-union jobs, they said there would be both and hoped to post the project labor agreement with the unions which will be interesting if it happens. They also had a flyer saying they were negotiating with an ATV club for trail rights along the powerline, it's easy to be cynical about this too.
 
My main complaint was with the statement "a majority of Vermonters". I seriously doubt it. More likely it's a vocal minority that opposes nuclear power. The vast majority have no opinion one way or the other. No different than any other issue.

Of course nuclear power comes with risks, some serious. But so do all commercially viable power production methods. Acid rain, fracking, oil spills, flooding, global warming (ask noted "shill" Al Gore), you name it. In the end if you want to live in an electrical civilization you have to decide. Or else we have to all go Amish. Wind and solar are not commercially viable at this time (IMO). In the long run, we should be dumping as much research money as possible into fusion power.

Vermont Yankee should have been replaced years ago with a more modern plant. But ever since 1979 because of Three Mile Island (which in hindsight was not as big as it's made out to be) and the China Syndrome coming out around the same time we were too scared to build any new plants for over 30 years. Think of how much better almost everything made is now compared to 1979. The same could have happened for nuclear power too.

But we're way off topic. So to get back on topic. Northern Pass is a bad idea.
 
"...an increasingly onerous regulatory environment brought on by unfounded fears from the Fukushima disaster...
I, for one, am terrified of the risk of a tsunami hitting Vermont Yankee.


Vermont Yankee should have been replaced years ago with a more modern plant. But ever since 1979 because of Three Mile Island (which in hindsight was not as big as it's made out to be) and the China Syndrome coming out around the same time we were too scared to build any new plants for over 30 years. Think of how much better almost everything made is now compared to 1979. The same could have happened for nuclear power too.
Modern nuclear in the United States? Never! Also, "When the [Ford] Pinto was hit, the doors would crumble, trapping owners inside the burning car" therefore all cars are unsafe therefore we should never make cars again.
 
Modern nuclear in the United States? Never! Also, "When the [Ford] Pinto was hit, the doors would crumble, trapping owners inside the burning car" therefore all cars are unsafe therefore we should never make cars again.

Fear is not based on statistics; it's irrational. Even if people get over their existential crisis, they may still fear having no control over how they die, regardless of the actual risk. I don't recall driving past a death-o-meter in NH that told me how many people died from radiation poisoning related to power production. This is not to imply that there is no risk, but only to put that risk in perspective. Radiation is dangerous - around 10,000 people die each year from skin cancer.

The problem remains - if people depend upon electricity, then where do we get it. Certainly a lot of options to consider.
 
Final DOE Scoping Meetings Announced

The federal DOE has announced the final three scoping meetings for Northern Pass. It is very important if you feel strongly on this issue that you attend. These meetings are part of the process for granting the special permit required for the power transmission line to cross the White Mountain National Forest--and other issues related to the environmental impact of this project.
Note that the Colebrook meeting has been moved to a larger venue. Also note that if you want to speak you need to sign up IN ADVANCE.

Monday, September 23, 2013, 6–9 p.m., Grappone Conference Center, Concord, NH (map)
Tuesday, September 24, 2013, 5–8 p.m, Plymouth State University, Silver Center for the Arts, Hanaway Theater, Plymouth, NH (map)
Wednesday, September 25, 2013, 5–8 p.m., Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa, Presidential Room, Whitefield, NH (map)
Thursday, September 26, 2013, 5–8 p.m., Colebrook Elementary School, Colebrook, NH (map) (this meeting was moved from a smaller location in W. Stewartstown)

Good summary: http://www.clf.org/blog/clean-energ...-round-public-scoping-meetings-northern-pass/
Actual Federal Register listing: http://northernpasseis.us/media/documents/anoi_9-06-13.pdf

VT
 
I love the commercial on the radio, where the woman says " the project will bring in money to "Spruce up the place". That's the best they can come up with, what money? and what place? jees.
 
TJsName said:
"This is not to imply that there is no risk, but only to put that risk in perspective. RADIATION is dangerous - around 10,000 people die each year from skin cancer."
Although people surely die from skin cancer, it is usually due to the ultraviolet RADIATION from the sun. Yes, all electromagnetic RADIATION, be it from power lines, TV stations, radar, or you name it, may be dangerous to us critters, this has nothing to do with the ionizing RADIATION from nuclear accidents. Waving the RADIATION flag is like yelling FIRE in the movie theater. How many people in this country or anywhere else, died from exposure to radio active waste in the last year? Catching a dread disease from a child is more likely to kill most of us old people. At least I have a Geiger counter to warn me about RADIATION.
 
From the Union Leader:

Northern Pass application 'incomplete'

By DAVE SOLOMON
New Hampshire Union Leader
Northern Pass foes urge more research into burying lines

Three environmental groups and the trade association representing competitive electric generating companies on Wednesday urged the Department of Energy to reject the amended application for the Northern Pass hydroelectric project.

The revised application for a presidential permit, based on a new route for the project unveiled in June, will be the subject of upcoming hearings in the state by the DOE.

In their joint comments, the Conservation Law Foundation, Appalachian Mountain Club and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests say the amended application fails to offer a single alternative to the project; fails to provide required information on its environmental impacts; and is full of unsubstantiated assertions and improper legal arguments.

More: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20130919/NEWS06/130919210
 
Northern Trespass Playing Tonight in Franklin

Don't miss it: "Northern Trespass" screens in Franklin, where it all started almost three years ago.

Franklin Opera House, Saturday (9/21), 7:00pm. Q&A follows. $5 admission.

Late notice, but I just got an email reminder on this today.
 
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