Biomass and Gas Incinerator Proposed for Vermont Yankee Nuke Site

- by Mike Faher, June 3, 2014, Brat­tle­boro Reformer

Select­board mem­bers are tout­ing the poten­tial ben­e­fits of new bio­mass pow­er plant — with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a nat­ur­al-gas com­po­nent — that could be built at the Ver­mont Yan­kee site after the nuclear facil­i­ty shuts.

Offi­cials expect to orga­nize a pub­lic forum to dis­cuss the dee­tails of a plant with devel­op­ment costs esti­mat­ed at $350 mil­lion for bio­mass and upwards of $1 bil­lion for a hybrid facility.

Those involved with the pro­pos­al, includ­ing a Win­hall man who is pres­i­dent of Amer­i­can Gen­er­a­tion Part­ners LLC, acknowl­edge that the pro­pos­al is in its infan­cy and would have to over­come sig­nif­i­cant financ­ing and reg­u­la­to­ry hur­dles — not to men­tion acqui­si­tion of prop­er­ty from Yan­kee own­er Enter­gy Corp.

But there is clear excite­ment about the idea.

“The key is, this is bring­ing in jobs, tax rev­enue and sta­bil­i­ty to Wind­ham Coun­ty,” Select­board Chair­woman Pat­ty O’Don­nell said. “I think every­body in the coun­ty is begin­ning to under­stand the effects of the clos­ing of Ver­mont Yan­kee, and this would be a shot in the arm in Wind­ham Coun­ty to help turn things around.”

Since Enter­gy announced last sum­mer that Ver­mont Yan­kee would cease pro­duc­ing pow­er by the end of 2014, there have been two main top­ics of dis­cus­sion — the struc­ture of the decom­mis­sion­ing process and the eco­nom­ic impacts of los­ing vital tax rev­enues as well as hun­dreds of employees.

The state has nego­ti­at­ed a detailed agree­ment with Enter­gy that pro­vides for mil­lions of dol­lars for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and clean ener­gy as well as a more “time­ly decom­mis­sion­ing” of the plant. But there has bene no clear direc­tion regard­ing future use of the prop­er­ty, which lies between Gov­er­nor Hunt Road and the Con­necti­cut River.

The bio­mass idea is the first pub­lic, con­crete pro­pos­al for rede­vel­op­ing that parcel.

“There’s always been dis­cus­sion about what are we going to do, or what is the own­er going to do, about the Ver­mont Yan­kee site once the place is decom­mis­sioned,” said Steve Skib­niows­ki of Ver­non Plan­ning Com­mis­sion. “This is one of those possibilities.”

Skib­niows­ki was joined Mon­day night by oth­er mem­bers of the town Plan­ning Com­mis­sion and Select­board to hear a pre­sen­ta­tion from G. Don­ald Camp­bell Jr., who said he has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the finance sec­tor and has worked on large-scale util­i­ty projects.

Camp­bell and O’Don­nell already have writ­ten a let­ter to Jeb Spauld­ing, Ver­mon­t’s sec­re­tary of admin­is­tra­tion, out­lin­ing a pro­pos­al for “an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide an ener­gy strat­e­gy con­sis­tent with Ver­mon­t’s unique neds and goals while pro­vid­ing a mech­a­nism to repow­er state and local economies.”

In a nut­shell, Camp­bel­l’s plan is for a pow­er plant that, with “advanced envi­ron­men­tal con­trol tech­nolo­gies,” would uti­lize “woody and agri­cul­tur­al bio­mass and cer­tain munic­i­pal sol­id waste as pri­ma­ry fuels.”

He also sees poten­tial for “hybrid tech­nol­o­gy that would also per­mit use of bio­mass oppor­tu­ni­ty fuels, while also hav­ing the abil­i­ty to uti­lize nat­ur­al gas-fired com­bus­tion tur­bines in a com­mon facil­i­ty,” accord­ing to the let­ter to Spaulding.

Camp­bell and O’Don­nell say the Yan­kee prop­er­ty is an ide­al site for such a ven­ture. Their let­ter makes the pitch this way:

“Even after this Decem­ber’s clos­ing of the VY facil­i­ty, the resid­ual val­ue of the exist­ing infra­struc­ture rep­re­sents what is like­ly the best — if not only — site in Ver­mont from which to deploy a sig­nif­i­cant gen­er­a­tion project,” Camp­bell and O’Don­nell wrote.

“Access to elec­tric trans­mis­sion, rail and high­way trans­porta­tion, and land and water resources is unmatched; while improved access to nat­ur­al gas resources — either through rail deliv­ery of (liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas) sup­plies or by pipeline through neigh­bor­ing Mas­sach­setts — can serve elec­tric capac­i­ty, local ther­mal and Ver­mont Com­pre­hen­sive Ener­gy Plan trans­porta­tion objec­tives,” the let­ter says. “Final­ly, as Ver­non serves as a mar­ket epi­cen­ter for the New Eng­land forestry sec­tor, the phys­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al resources exist to sup­port the devel­op­ment of a scale bio­mass gen­er­a­tion facil­i­ty uti­liz­ing a range of oppor­tu­ni­ty fuels.”

On Mon­day evening, Camp­bell repeat­ed­ly com­pared the pro­pos­al to a new bio­mass plant oper­at­ing in Berlin, N.H. He also ref­er­enced Ver­mont plants oper­at­ing in Burling­ton and Ryegate.

Mike Faher can be reached at mfaher@reformer.com or 802–254-2311, ext. 275.