Vermont Yankee: A Nuclear Battle Over States’ Rights
Source: In These Times
It was a 40th birthday bash attended by more than 1,000 people in three states–but the attendees came to demonstrate, not celebrate. The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, a poster child for anti-nuclear protests throughout its four-decade history, was the target. Only the day before, on March 21, its state permit to operate expired and the legislature voted to shut it down. But the power plant was still operating.
The protest brought demonstrators (“Hell no, we won’t glow”) to Vermont Yankee’s owner, the Entergy Corporation, and its offices in Brattleboro, Vt., White Plains, N.Y., and corporate headquarters in New Orleans. There, they put up a yellow crime tape outside the building and went inside to demand an interview with CEO J. Wayne Leonard.