For some Baby Boomer New Hampshire-ites, the term “Clamshell Alliance” brings back the sort of memories that other folks associate with Woodstock or attending your first (Insert Minority Group Here) Rights Parade. In the late 1970s and early 1980s this group fought hard against the construction of Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant on New Hampshire’s coast; [...]

The Maine Yankee nuclear power plant shut down 14 years ago, but it still has a “dry-cask storage facility” - in other words, a place where drums of nuclear waste are kept - that nobody knows what to do with. The Portland Press-Herald has a story )read it here) about a committee meeting that [...]

In a non-surprising move, the owners of Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant have made a request to have their license extended from 2030 to 2050. Story here.

Seabrook is very much unlike the smaller, older Vermont Yankee plant, which is struggling to extend its state license (Vermont is unique in that the state also must OK [...]

The NY Times has a long blog post - really, it’s an article; I assume it will be in tomorrow’s paper - about the effect of the tritium leak at Vermont Yankee and similar problems at other sites. (Read it here) The essence of the posting, which came from a hearing called by the Nuclear [...]

The Keene Sentinel online is hosting an excellent graphic showing how tritium leaked at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. Check it out here. It comes from Entergy Nuclear, the company that owns the plant, so it should be approached with caution, but it’s still quite interesting - although it would be more interesting if the [...]

ADDENDUM: Big, follow-up story from Burlington Free-Press is here
A little robot in a concrete pipe has found the source - or, maybe, a source - of the tritium leak that has been plaguing Vermont Yankee, reports the AP. From the story:
Among the pipes housed in the concrete enclosure were two connected to Vermont [...]

The Vermont Senate has voted not to extend Vermont Yankee’s license beyond 2012, when it runs out. Free-Press story here. Two months ago, I would have bet a bazillion bucks against this happening!
Here’s the whole gallery of Free-Press coverage, if you need background.
Here’s the next-day NY Times story, which notes “Unless the chamber reverses itself, [...]

The Vermont Senate is slated to vote today (Wednesday) whether to extend the license of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant past 2012. Here’s a Free-Press story. All the recent bad news, especially the fact that the company didn’t admit to past leaks of radioactive tritirum, seem to have tilted the odds (which were once well [...]

There are plenty of reasons to be interested in and/or worried about the situation at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, where walls collapse and tritium escapes into groundwater, but the Burlington Free-Press offers a new one today: It might be harming the Vermont brand!
Cheddar cheese, maple syrup and craft beer are just a few of [...]

The  New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services’ Emergency  Services  Unit said Friday it will begin weekly tests of water samples along the Connecticut River, in response to the tritium leak at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, which is adjacent to the river. Some samples have already been collected since the plant admitted [...]

UPDATE: The Free-Press has a follow-up in Sunday’s paper (read it here) that tritium leaks are not uncommon: “At least 20 nuclear power plants around the country have reported tritium soil or water contamination, based on a Free Press examination of Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents and information gleaned from interviews with advocates and critics of [...]

A number of colleges built nuclear reactors in the ’50s and ’60s as part of their nuclear engineering programs but are closing them down. This includes Worcester Polytech, which has shut its reactor down, and UMass-Lowell, which still has its reactor. (Note: This article originally said, wrongly, that UML was also shutting.)
Among the schools with [...]

One of the many sub-debates inside the big debate about how to deal with greenhouse gas emissions concerns nuclear power: How big a part should it be of the world’s energy push?
Since it’s carbon-free and very large-scale (Seabrook can generate roughly half the total electricity output of all New Hampshire’s power plants), many people say [...]

It’s no real surprise, but this Reuters story about Seabrook Station nuclear power plant shutting down for a routine refueling notes that the owner, Florida Power and Light, plans to apply next year for a 20-year extension to Seabrook’s original 40-year operating license. Vermont Yankee, which is smaller but in worse shape than Seabrook, is [...]

An AP analysis of the finances of the companies that own nuclear reactors shows that the stock market collapse has left many of them with insufficient money to dismantle the plants when they get too old to operate.
During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because of [...]