Download Decommisioning VT Yankee

Nuclear Waste is Fun:
Solving the Problem of Decommissioning Vermont Yankee
Chris Giuffre
Jared Singer
Jessie Fefer
Trevor Michalak
Diane Hannigan
Jamie MacLeish
ENVS 295: Environmental Modeling and Systems Thinking
Lance Polya
Date of Submission:
May 2, 2011
Problem Statement
Vermont Yankee, the nuclear power plant located in Vernon, will
possibly be decommissioned in 2012 when its contract with the State of
Vermont ends. There has been ongoing debate between various public
and private stakeholders over whether decommissioning the power plant is
the best option for Vernon and for greater Vermont. There has been
extensive deliberation over what the future economic and social outcomes
of Vernon and Vermont will be if Vermont Yankee is no longer in existence.
The models we create will illustrate what economic and social
problems arise when Vermont Yankee is no longer a functioning entity of
Vernon. The municipality is split between the need to maintain jobs for
650 community members, to safeguard a healthy environment that is free
of toxic contamination, and to generate municipal revenue to
support schools and other public services. Policy decisions pertaining to
the decommissioning process will have short- and long-term implications
on Vernon's ability to recover from the loss, and will undoubtedly affect the
local economy, the local citizens' standard of living, and the State of
Vermont's commitment to a clean energy future.
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Behavior Over Time Graphs
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Causal Loop Diagram
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Stock Flow Diagram without Policy
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Documented Equations Without Policy
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Documentation Continued…
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Graphical Simulations
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Title: Vermont Yankee Amusement Park & Public Job Program
Description:
Within our model, when Vermont Yankee is decommissioned in 2012,
Windham County must deal with the economic impact of losing 950 jobs over
nine years. These jobs include the positions at the Vermont Yankee nuclear
power plant, as well as jobs within Windham County that are lost as a result of
the succeeding economic downturn. The public sector will be responsible for
providing immediate job creation in areas such as road construction and other
infrastructure maintenance. To mitigate the negative effect on the stock of jobs
and businesses over the long term, the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant site
will be transformed into an amusement park. With the creation of an amusement
park, people once working at Vermont Yankee can find a new job at the park,
and surrounding businesses once affected by the initial job loss, can be revived
by a new tourism industry.
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Stock Flow Diagram With Policy
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Policy Equations:
Graphical Simulation with Policy:
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Sensitivity Simulation:
Under our proposed policy of public sector job creation and the
construction of a tourist attraction in the form of an amusement park on the site of
the decommissioned Vermont Yankee power plant, we estimate employment
opportunities created to initially be around 800. The sensitivity of this number
was tested as follows, (with 100% job creation, as noted above, representing the
whole of the estimated 800 jobs created.)
As demonstrated by the graphs, it is clear that the number of jobs created by the
amusement park will have a large effect on the number of jobs in relation to
number of Vermont workers, due to the high percentage of employment of
Vermont Yankee (and subsequently the amusement park) in Vernon.
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Policy Implementation:
Upon decommissioning Vermont Yankee, Windham County will allocate a
portion of revenue earned from operation of the power plant to cover the
expenses of a new public sector job force. Also, Entergy (the electric power
company who owns the nuclear plant) must endow Vermont with approximately
$40 million for site clean up. A portion of this money will be invested in
purchasing amusement park infrastructure and outfitting Windham County for
tourism. At the initial construction of the amusement park, 800 jobs were
provided to the citizens of Windham County, and over the next six years, 100
jobs per year were provided to represent the subsequent economic growth that
will occur from the new tourism industry.
Policy Feasibility:
This policy lacks some feasibility because of the environmental dangers of
building an amusement park on a derelict nuclear power plant site. There has
been evidence of radioactive contamination of groundwater sources within
Windham County, as well as leaks of radioactive waste over recent years on the
power plant site. This does pose some dangers to young children and pregnant
women – a problem that may or not may not be able to be overlooked when
building a successful amusement park for families. Also, we make a large
assumption that the people who were once employed by Vermont Yankee would
have the interest or expertise to work at an amusement park. Since many
Vermont Yankee employees have been nuclear technicians for much of their life,
they may be unsatisfied with a career in tourism. The same issue goes for the
jobs created by the public sector. Many of the immediately available jobs would
be blue-collar jobs with limited income. Nuclear power plant employees would
probably be dissatisfied with the idea of earning far less per year than before.
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Conclusion
There are a few valuable lessons that we learned from this project. The
first is that it is very difficult to model real world economic and energy systems.
There are many variables to consider in pricing schemes and energy distribution
– variables that operate on multiple time and spatial scales simultaneously. We
changed our focus of the problem a few times throughout the semester and
subsequently had to change our model. We originally began with the project
topic of petroleum dependence in the United States. We then narrowed that
down to Vermont’s dependence on VT Yankee’s nuclear energy. After some
research on the topic area and analyzing system modeling dynamics we decided
modeling the economic impact of VT Yankee’s decommission would be the best
topic choice. The variables were tangible and the boundary was local enough to
keep the model simple.
When working with systems that contain more than two stocks, the
modeling dynamics display an exponential increase in complexity. We found that
it was also very difficult to match the STELLA model with the overarching causal
loop diagrams. Making the mechanical dynamics of the STELLA model such as
the stocks, flows, connectors and converters align with the relationship of the
stock flow diagram had its challenges. It turned out that matching the model’s
graphical simulation with what would logically happen in real life didn’t come on
the first try. It became apparent that there were many ways to model one system;
the variables you choose depend on what aspects of a system you want to
communicate. Based on the nature of this project, we had to make some
assumptions about how economic factors are interrelated, how they affect one
another, and also estimate some associated numerical entries. Eventually we
were able to change the system structure and identify the right equations to have
a logical simulation of the economic problem at hand.
It was very beneficial to apply the systems thinking and modeling skills to
a topic that is prevalent in our local community. We were able to gain insight
policy making in our country and how, given our current economic forces and
constraints, some of the most practical policy initiatives don’t make the most
subjective sense. No one in their right mind would build a theme park, where
kids play and grow up, on a nuclear-reactive sight. However, given our modeled
economic system, this policy makes the most sense. It is easy to see how our
government can make such illogical policy solutions, given the systems they
must work within.
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Bibliography
1) Consensus Economic and Fiscal Impact Analysis Associated with the Future
of the Vermont Yankee Power Plant. (2010, March 20). Economic and
Policy Resources, pp. 1-12. Retrieved April 3, 2011, from
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/
With the purpose of analyzing the situation with VY decommissioning, this article
provided different scenarios with graphs that displayed the impact of each
different policy initiative. This provided background information and examples
regarding different policy options that we had when implementing our own policy.
2) Heaps, R. (2008, February 15). The Economic Impact of VY station on
Windham County and Vermont. The Vermont Economy Newsletter, pp. 124. Retrieved April 6, 2011, from
http://www.rpc.windham.vt.us/energy/petition/Heaps-Ex1.pdf
This article provided specific information regarding the number of jobs supplied
by VY. It also had specific population counts for Windham County and for
Vermont as a whole. The article was a comparison of two different scenarios
regarding VY decommissioning. One was VY decommissioning, and the other
was the contract being renewed.
3) The VPR News Trail: Vermont Yankee (2011). Vermont Public Radio.
http://www.vpr.net/episode/47694/
This series of news stories following the debates around the decommissioning of
Vermont Yankee provided an overview of the economic and environmental
issues at hand. News articles shed light on the opposing viewpoints of Windham
County citizens, utility providers, environmentalists, and other stakeholders.
These stories helped to guide which important and interesting variables to
include in our model.
4)) US Census Bureau (2011). American Fact Finder.
http://factfinder2.census.gov/
The US Census Bureau database was used to determine statistics related to the
work force of Windham County, Vermont. Tables provided statistics of
unemployment rates, work force population, and total county population among
others. For simplicity, these numbers were rounded to the nearest thousand
when entered into our model.
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Appendix A
Outside Evaluator:
Gary Flomenhoft,Community Development & Applied Economics & Gund
Institute of Ecological Economics
[email protected]
Gary is an energy alternatives guru. He teaches a handful of courses in the
CDAE department on renewable energy and is a fellow at the Gund Institute of
Ecological Economics. He often contributes to legislation relating to Vermont's
energy portfolio and as extensive knowledge of the implications of economic and
regulatory policies on the state's energy production and markets.
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Appendix B: Complex Systems
System resilience is an important characteristic of dynamic and
complex systems. It is the system’s ability to come back from an
interruption or devastation within the system. The interruption to the
system in our model is considered to be the decommissioning of Vermont
Yankee. Without VT Yankee, Windham County loses economic stability.
As of now, there is no way for Windham County to escape economic
devastation when VT Yankee is no longer in operation. This is because
the economic system of the county is dependent on one, dominating
feedback loop between job availability and economic vitality. The economic
vitality of the county is dependent solely on the continued operation of the
power plant. Without multiple balancing and reinforcing feedback loops in
place to take over when one sector fails, the system becomes instable.
This policy is designed to add resilience to Windham County when
Vermont Yankee is decommissioned in 2012. The new policy is to create
both permanent and temporary jobs within Windham County that will add
to economic vitality and stability. Once this policy is implemented, if the
government’s temporary job program fails, the economy should still thrive
due to the amusement park, or vise versa. This policy clearly adds
resilience to a currently non-resilient system.
Another characteristic of complex systems is that of selforganization. This can be related to our model through looking at the
temporary jobs that will be created through a government program.
Through creating jobs such as road construction or building maintenance,
the system will likely organize itself into creating more permanent jobs.
This might happen after the new employees use their new knowledge to
either create businesses of their own, or inspire permanent government
funded positions. On a broader time horizon, implementing such a policy
can help structure Windham County’s economy and society in a way that
prepares them for future economic hardships. People will organize
themselves into work groups to solve the problem of job loss, learn what
solutions are successful and what are not, and thus build their own
capacity. This self-organization will yield heightened resilience. It is also
indicative of a societal system’s ability to change its environment to suit it
needs. Since Vermont Yankee is no longer operating, Windham County
must alter the physical landscape (i.e. build an amusement park) to
replace the loss of jobs and also redefine the its goals as a community
from producing nuclear power, to producing some other product or result.
The problems that arise from the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee
and the solutions that will follow are a result of this situation being both a
sub-system of greater complex systems, and complex within itself.
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