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By Guy Page
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean is warning that proposals to expand nuclear power and attract large-scale data centers risk creating long-term environmental and economic problems for the state.
In a letter published April 20 by VTDigger, Dean – a Burlington resident- argued Vermont is “being sold two bad ideas on energy,” citing concerns about radioactive waste and limited job creation tied to data center development.
While governor from 1991-2003, Dean oversaw the sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, then partially owned by Vermont utilities, to Entergy in 2002.
The plant closed in 2014, following a determined effort by the Vermont Legislature to not renew its operating license. It has been largely decommissioned. Casks of spent fuel fuel are stored on the former plant site in Vernon.
In his April 20 letter, Dean pointed to the existing nuclear waste stored in southern Vermont as evidence of an unresolved problem. Expanding nuclear generation without addressing long-term storage “makes no sense,” he said, warning of potential environmental risks if containment systems fail over time.
Dean’s letter does not reference the growing interest in recycling spent fuel, AKA radioactive waste, in the energy industry and the federal government.
For example, the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Nuclear Fuel Recycling program (May, 2025) looks to broaden domestic fuel supplies to accelerate the deployment of advanced reactors for national security and prove fundamental technological viability under DOE’s authority to faster research, development, and demonstration in nuclear material recycling technologies to reinvigorate the U.S. nuclear industry base.
Nor does Dean acknowledge the greatly reduced amount of waste generated by new, small, ‘modular’ nuclear reactors.
The former governor also criticized regional energy policy, including the role of ISO New England, which he said does not always prioritize Vermont’s renewable resources. He blamed rising electricity costs in part on broader system inefficiencies and federal policies he said have constrained renewable development.
Dean took aim at proposals to recruit large data centers to Vermont, describing them as land-intensive projects that generate relatively few permanent jobs. Drawing on examples from Loudoun County, Virginia, he said such facilities create short-term construction work but limited long-term economic benefit while placing heavy demands on energy infrastructure.
The debate comes amid growing electricity demand in New England, driven in part by electrification and the expansion of artificial intelligence technologies, which require significant computing power.
While Dean emphasized the risks of nuclear energy, some energy analysts and industry advocates argue newer approaches to managing spent fuel could change the equation. Technologies under development in the U.S. and in limited use internationally – notably in relatively energy-independent France – allow for the recycling or reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, extracting additional energy and significantly reducing the volume and longevity of high-level waste requiring permanent storage.
Supporters say such systems could address one of nuclear power’s most persistent challenges by turning what is now considered waste into usable fuel, potentially reducing the need for long-term storage near waterways like the Connecticut River. Critics, however, note that reprocessing raises cost, regulatory, and proliferation concerns and has not been widely adopted in the United States.
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Categories: Energy, Environment
Missed, as usual, in stories like this: what are the data centers actually for? What problem do they solve? Questions always revolve around things like environmental impact or noise but not around the elephant in the room, which is WHY? Why are they needed?
Hint: It’s not to make your download speeds or AI videos better. It’s to vacuum up every data point you create–you know, like they do in totalitarian China–to build a profile on you.
John Kirkby writes:
What are data centers actually for?
A better question is: Apart from artificial intelligence, do we need data centers?
If you bank online, you need a data center.
If you shop online, you need a data center.
If you have a retirement account through your employer, you need a data center.
If you have a smartphone, you need a data center.
And finally, if you debate online with an anti-data center Bernie sanders supporter via a website like the Vermont Daily Chronicle,
Wait for it…… you need a data center
Funny how Vermonters are able to bank, shop, plan retirement, and use their phones without any big data centers in Vermont. Doubly funny you think I actually support Bernie– but that’s the low-level binary thinking so many people are sadly trapped in.
Ever heard of Palantir? Stargate? Do some research.
Here, I’ll give you an appetizer. Is Newsmax conservative enough for you?
“Trump Pick of Palantir to Surveil Americans Sparks Concern”
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/palantir-surveil-americans/2025/05/31/id/1213075/
Thank you, Guy, for a full reporting on Gov Dean’s Digger commentary, and for bringing up some points that Dean did not. I often do not agree with Dean’s ideas, but I’m glad he said what he said, and I agree fully with him on this. While I support efforts to recycle nuclear waste, that is not yet a fully explored, functional, and tested technology, and it would be foolhardy to move ahead with plans for further nuclear expansion prior to knowing that this is a truly viable solution. And “reduced” amounts of nuclear waste is still nuclear waste. For a small state like VT, planning for further nuclear power with all the risk and expense that comes with it seems to me a misguided waste of tactical energy.
As for AI and data centers, there’s nothing that would convince me that expansion of this in Vermont (or anywhere) is a good idea. There seems to be some large hypocritical blind spots or some kind of circular thinking when a society that knows that resources such as water and electricity are limited, creates more and more intensive uses for and demands on electricity, including the need for an enormous amount of water for cooling, as all this new technology does. And for what actual NEED? We, as a society, keep literally buying a bill of goods from industries that profit handsomely from ideas that will be obsolete as soon as they are realized and the next big idea is thought up by industry. These ideas are short-sighted and dangerous in several ways, IMO.
I believe Dean is an opportunist socialist, that doesn’t grasp technology that is both creating energy demands like AI and individuals, industry. If VT relies on these sources, the future is will be bleak. Energy availability for all will be a benefit for a change in the state. There are major advances, people just need to observe the data.
It’s been bemoaned about Nuke Energy. This era isn’t of Chernobyl 40 years ago or Three Mile Island where there was problems, Russia’s Chemobyl was a design disaster from the beginning. VT Yankee put of of business due to thinking of people imagining this facility would destroy like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so not allowed.
Today there’s all new Nuke technology (Dean has no clue), Since the Navy’s sub Nautilus having the first nuke power to include all of Navy’s ships today, not one accident that I’m aware of, it news of that magnitude couldn’t be sealed very long. The power plants are small. It’s safe operating. Have read that Nuke plants today are small, very safe, use spent old nuke waste material, and more efficient. There’s been great tech advances and there are considerations to build them and renew the industry.
On a more small energy matter(s). Received an article a day or so ago
Ready to take charge: three innovative types of energy storage
https://www.positive.news/society/ready-to-take-charge-three-innovative-types-of-energy-storage/
New Energy Storage Breakthroughs Usher in a Sustainable Era
https://healthyhappynews.com/new-energy-storage-breakthroughs-usher-in-a-sustainable-era/
Forget inefficient solar panels, and wind generators. VT doesn’t want advertising bill boards, but seem to like beautiful fields loaded with all that shinning glass. This article describes
1) Liquid air sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it could have a place in the energy storage.
salt that is capturing a significant amount of attention. Storage expert Robert Barthorpe of the University of Sheffield Now the world’s first commercial-scale application is taking shape in Manchester, where liquid air specialists Highview Power are building a plant due to come online in 2027. It will make money by using electricity when it’s cheapest to create the storage solution, and then release the air to generate power when demand is high relative to available supply.
2) Molten salt, to be precise. In Spain, Morocco and elsewhere, concentrated solar plants use vast arrays of mirrors to heat thermal oil to the point where it can produce steam to drive turbines and so generate electricity.
3) Flywheels have been around for a while. Leonardo da Vinci conceptualised one. Three centuries later, Scottish engineer James Watt was using them to help his steam engines run smoothly. The basic principle is that a source of power – for example renewables – sends a rotor spinning, storing energy as motion that can later be released to generate electricity.
Independent energy consultant Eugene Bryce lists the flywheel’s advantages: it can last for decades, unlike batteries, which degrade much sooner; it’s super-efficient (up to 90%); and it can be charged and discharged very rapidly. The latter makes it ideal to deliver power as and when needed, which is precisely what today’s electricity grid requires.
A key part of the solution is to store surplus electricity. Batteries can play a vital role here, explains Ritson, both in the commercial and domestic space. Grid-scale battery storage is becoming increasingly common too, balancing supply and demand across the country.
But batteries aren’t the only storage game in town. Here are three emerging technologies that may well play a valuable supporting role in keeping our lights on in the future.
I have been experimenting using permanent magnets to cause rotation to generate electricity. The north ans south poles being used to attract and repell forces to cause rotation which in turn generates electricity. To be stored in batteries and used when needed. I’ve also created a windmill where the vanes are not stationary and the wind pivots them to cause rotation yet pivots to streamline the vanes so not to have drag when rotating into the wind. Regardless of wind direction. My models operate in very low wind, A flywheel rotates also damping the rotation fluctuations. I also have two US patents and have that mind set, to create. Will seek a patent. There are videos about permanent magnet rotation machines, do a simple search, amazing.
There have been cars that incorporate generators on the wheels that generate electricity to batteries that power a vehicle. Also devices to generate electricity when applying the brakes. Not yet insta;lled on cars, but can be.
On a lighter note, I have determined the volume of Chipmunck’s cheeks. They hold a lot. So I envision putting squirles in a rotating cage, feed them peanuts and they will rotate the cage trying to catch the peanuts generating peanuts. Just a fun inquisitive thing.
Conclusion, shouldn’t fear Nukes, grasp the technogoly that I’v mentioned. Electrical demand will be much higher, people are concerned. Need to believe in this technology, and it’s not the Atomoc bomb, or nuke plant disasters. It’s the future,can’t think in the past. Dean is a has been.
“…federal policies he said have constrained renewable development”. A Progressives way of subtly whining that the gravy train of federal subsidies to the green scam is over.
Howard Dean ? Yeehaw !!!!!!!!!
Who s this bozo? Definitely not anyone of importance
I remember Howie Dean, the Vermont first queen.