Vermont's Fanatic Anti-Nuclear Movement

John McClaughry, president of the Ethan Allen Institute, wrote a commentary piece to the Rutland Herald about Vermont's Fanatic Anti-Nuclear Movement:

In the face of all science, reason, and experience, the anti-nuclear zealots fiercely maintain that the Vernon nuclear power plant [Vermont Yankee] is a standing death threat against the population for miles around, that its pall of radiation will produce deformed children, and that the plant's present owner, Entergy, is a reckless and sinister enterprise making enormous profits while scornfully dismissing the concerns of its likely Vermont victims.

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The attack on Vermont Yankee has escalated since 2003, and especially since 2007, when the champion of the anti-nuke/VPIRG forces, Windham County Sen. Peter Shumlin, returned to the Senate and again became its president pro tem.

In return for the state's non-objection to an increase of Vermont Yankee's electricity output by 20 percent, the legislators in 2003 demanded that the company pay $7.8 million to clean up algae in Lake Champlain, and another $2.1 million to subsidize low-income home heating.

In return for state permission to store its oldest and least radioactive spent fuel rods in dry casks instead of in a water pool, the 2005 Legislature required Entergy to pay $28 million into a "clean energy fund," from which subsidies would be distributed to wind, solar and methane projects.

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The great irony is that Sen. Shumlin and his VPIRG allies are pressing legislation (S.350) to force Vermonters to stop emitting greenhouse gases that supposedly threaten the planet with Al Gore's Heat Death. Yet they are also working hard to shut down the nuclear plant that produces dependable lowest-cost electricity without emitting any greenhouse gases at all.

This contradiction simply does not compute. The anti-nuclear activists will not be satisfied until every trace of Vermont Yankee is gone, and the Vernon site is returned to the peaceful wilderness it was when only the Abenakis roamed.

This constant warfare against nuclear energy is, to put it plainly, mindless fanaticism. The sooner it goes the way of anti-Masonry, Know-Nothingism, and Prohibition, the better off Vermonters will be.

Amen to that.