Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant was a

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...

built at an 820-acre site on Bailey Peninsula of

Wiscasset, Maine Wiscasset is a New England town, town in and the county seat, seat of Lincoln County, Maine, United States. The municipality is located in the state of Maine's Mid Coast region. The population was 3,742 as of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 ...

, in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It operated from 1972 until 1996, when problems at the plant became too expensive to fix. It was decommissioned and dismantled between 1997 and 2005, though some of the plant's nuclear waste is still stored on site, pending final disposal.

History

The Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company formed in 1966 with plans for a

pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water reactor, light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary ...

in Wiscasset, Maine, and a 40-year operating license. Construction of the $231 million ($ today) plant ran from 1968 to 1972, whereupon the plant became Maine's sole operating nuclear power plant. From then until 1996, the 900

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units, International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), ...

reactor produced about 119 terawatt-hours of electricity, most of the state's energy. In Maine Yankee's most productive year, 1989, it produced 6,900 gigawatt-hours of electricity.

Opposition

Initial opposition for constructing the plant was led by Citizens for Safe Power, the Audubon Naturalist Council, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, and Maine’s Governor

Kenneth M. Curtis Kenneth Merwin Curtis (born February 8, 1931) is an American attorney, Democratic politician, and diplomat. He was the Maine Secretary of State from 1965-1966, the Governor of Maine from 1966-1974, and the United States Ambassador to Canada fr ...

, in the form of a petition to the Atomic Energy Commission, asking for the suspension of the plants operating license due to the concern with environmental and safety issues. The group failed to stop construction but succeeded in persuading the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operat ...

to impose stricter environmental standards and monitoring. After the malfunction of the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania, citizens Raymond and Patricia Shadis of Wiscasset led a 1,000 people in a march to the Maine capitol to propose a statewide anti-nuclear petition. The initiative to eliminate nuclear power in Maine was voted on several times between 1982 and 1987, but never passed. Finally in 1987, after narrowly missing a vote to shut down the power plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC), decided to investigate the power plant for safety violations.

Closure

A lengthy

investigation started in 1995, following allegations of safety problems at the plant. The NRC staff identified so many problems that Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co. decided "it would be too costly to correct these deficiences to the extent required by the NRC and decided to shut the plant down".

Stephanie Cooke Stephanie S. Cooke is a journalist who began her reporting career in 1977 at the Associated Press. In 1980 she moved to McGraw-Hill in New York as a reporter for Nucleonics Week, NuclearFuel and Inside N.R.C. In 1984 she transferred to London a ...

(2009). '' In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age'', Black Inc., p. 301. The $500 million decommissioning process ran from 1997 to 2005. In 2000, the first structures were gutted out by workers. In 2003, the reactor pressure vessel was shipped to

Barnwell, South Carolina Barnwell is a city in and county seat of Barnwell County, South Carolina, United States, located along U.S. Route 278. The population was 4,750 at the 2010 census. Geography Barnwell is located east of the center of Barnwell County at (33.244 ...

via

barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels ...

. Finally, in 2004, the facility's

containment building A containment building is a reinforced steel, concrete or lead structure enclosing a nuclear reactor. It is designed, in any emergency, to contain the escape of radioactive steam or gas to a maximum pressure in the range of . The containment i ...

was brought down by explosives. As of 2022, questions remain about the final disposal of the plant's nuclear waste, following the scrapping of the planned national depository.

References

External links

Barnhart Promotional video about the Decommissioning process

{{Authority control Energy infrastructure completed in 1972 Nuclear power plants in Maine Decommissioned nuclear power stations in the United States Buildings and structures in Wiscasset, Maine 1972 establishments in Maine 1997 disestablishments in Maine