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Vermont Yankee Advertising Campaigns Heat up

With a vote by the state Senate on the future of Vermont Yankee scheduled for this Wednesday, residents of the Green Mountain State have seen a steady increase in advertising campaigns about the plant. This print ad from the IBEW Local 300, and signed by 13 labor unions, has been running in newspapers for the last week.


The copy:
This week the state Senate may vote on whether to prematurely close a clean, reliable energy supplier that provides 1/3 of the state’s electricity without producing any greenhouse gases or air pollution. And despite what some might say, the Vermont Yankee nuclear energy facility is safe. The facility ranks at the best level in each of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 16 safety and plant performance indicators.

Members of the Senate should thoughtfully consider all of the issues surrounding operations of the plant and the long-term needs of Vermont’s residents– both the 250,000 residents that depend on the affordable electricity produced there and some 1,300 workers who are employed as a result of continued operations.

In addition to supplying reliable electricity, Entergy generates $100 million annually in economic benefits to the state and provides $400,000 to 100 local nonprofit organizations and the United Way. A vote to prematurely shut down Vermont Yankee sacrifices these benefits at a time when we can least afford it. Keep Vermont Yankee Working For Us.

In the online advertising space, Vermont Public Interest Research Group, a group opposed to Vermont Yankee, has been running a Google AdWords campaign. A Google search for "Vermont Yankee" returns VPIRG's ad [Retire VT Yankee On Time] at the top of the sponsored search results. Interestingly, they are not the lone buyers of this keyword: Vermont's Lt. Governor, Brian Dubie, a candidate for Governor, is also advertising. His message? "More Jobs for Vermont".


Comments

Anonymous said…
I think a nice, hideous, painful object lesson in brownouts and rate hikes would do the American nuclear industry more good than keeping any single plant open. I would also LMAO at the blue-state liberals shivering in the dark.
claire said…
i am so afraid we will be in the dark and freezing too! Can you imagine a world where we can be warm and toasty and safe? Imagine conservation and energy efficiency to save 40-50% and still be warm and toasty. Imagine everyone able to contribute to the energy grid through wind, solar, methane digesters and other sources. Imagine decentralized, local control . amazing isn't it.
Meredith Angwin said…
There's a full-page ad by Vermont Yankee in the Sunday paper today. The headline is "Why the Big Rush?" It ends "Act today and tell your senator to vote yes. Let the Public Service Board do its job..." (not a complete quote.) I think these ads needed to be there much earlier. This Wednesday is the Senate vote about the license extension, as I described in my latest blog post. http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2010/02/sound-and-fury-and-some-news.html

I went to a Sierra Club meeting tonight. It was a playreading, "Voices From Chernobyl," followed by a discussion about Vermont Yankee. Comparisions were made (of course!). Howard Shaffer tried to bring a little logic to the situation, but it was a lonely fight.

One of the anti-Yankee lobbyists was there, Chris Williams, and he said they had the vote sewed up. He is right.

Kind of a depressing evening. Did you know that people who think that Chernobyl didn't cause vast numbers of deaths--those people are the same as Holocaust deniers, and need to be confronted? Sigh.
Anonymous said…
No one (except Robert Byrd) is opposed to conservation or renewables, but if you want to run a 1000-watt microwave to heat your dinner, you need at least 1000 watts of power ready to go. "[D]ecentralized, local control" is a recipe for brownouts, especially when you depend overmuch on intermittent, non-baseload sources like wind or solar.

If you want 24/7 power, your choices are fossil fuels or nukes. (Or hydro, but that's maxed out in the US.) And I hardly think the land of Priuses would happily build a new fossil plant.
Phil said…
Claire - I can also imagine how amazing it would be to fly like Harry Potter. Reality is quite a different thing however.
Anonymous said…
I'd prefer to freeze in the dark than glow in the dark. And so would my child. We are quite cozy by woodstove and candlelight....
----Anti nuclear Luddite's unite!
Anonymous said…
You're much more likely to freeze than glow. Did you know that burning wood and candles creates PAHs, which are carcinogenic? You're exposing yourself to much greater risk of cancer from using wood and parrafin than you'd ever have from Vermont Yankee. Exposure to PAHs is thought to be the leading cause of lung cancer in third world countries (breathing wood smoke).
Anonymous said…
I haven't seen this ad in any of the papers, did they actually run it??
Anonymous said…
Burning wood causes terrible environmental harm. It produces large quantities of greenhouse gases. It is not carbon-neutral from a carbon transport viewpoint, since it removes sequestered carbon (trees) and generates mobile carbon (smoke). It removes CO2 sinks (living trees) and replaces them with CO2 sources (chimneys). It adds carcinogenic compounds to the biosphere in the form of PAHs. Its waste products are uncontained and move through the ecosystem in a chaotic and unpredictable manner. Your use of wood as a heat source causes far more environmental damage than anything Vermont Yankee ever does. Those who would use wood as an energy source in place of nuclear and still claim to be environmentalists are in fact hypocrites.

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