MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont’s only nuclear plant stopped sending power to the New England grid Monday after more than 42 years of producing electricity.
The shutdown came just after noon as the Vermont Yankee plant completed its 30th operating cycle when workers inserted control rods into the reactor core and stopped the nuclear reaction process, the plant’s owner said.
In its decades of operation, the plant, in the southeastern Vermont town of Vernon, produced more than 171 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. During that same period, the plant provided 71.8 percent of all electricity generated within Vermont, or 35 percent of the electricity consumed in the state, the company said, citing information from the Energy Information Agency.
Bill Mohl, the president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities, said economic factors, especially related to the natural gas market in the Northeast, were the primary reasons for the shutdown. The decision to close the plant was announced weeks after the company won a protracted legal battle with the state, which had been pushing for the plant’s closure.
The plant will sit for decades while its radioactive components cool and its decommissioning fund grows. It’s expected to cost nearly $1.25 billion to dismantle the plant, which probably won’t occur until the 2040s or later.
