The state of Vermont--its state government and grass-roots--has been trying for years to force the closure of Vermont Yankee nuclear station. The campaign to close the plant has been frustrated by federal courts and Entergy, the plant's owner, and so plant kept splitting the atom and producing power.
But what Vermont's state government and its anti-nuclear campaigners could not do, shale gas and cheap gas has done. Cheap gas has slashed in half the price of wholesale electricity and made the plant uneconomic to run anymore.
http://johnhanger.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-closing-of-vermont-nuke-makes-2013.html.
This tale has plenty of irony. For example, Vermont bans fracking, but it is shale gas that closed Vermont Yankee, the result that Vermont state government wanted but could not accomplish. Then the closing of Vermont Yankee means more natural gas will be consumed, and the demand for fracking goes up.
The energy world is full of unintended consequences, paradoxes, and irony.
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