A hearing on Vermont Yankee Tuesday evening drew some pointed criticism over the state’s agreement with Entergy on the plant’s upcoming closure and proposed decommissioning.
At the same time, others testifying before the quasi-judicial Public Service Board (PSB) argued the state’s agreement provides the best deal possible for when the 41-year-old plant closes at the end of 2014.
Entergy, the Louisiana-based plant operator, announced in August it would close the plant in 2014 for financial reasons — just days after a federal court ruled the Vermont Legislature could not block the relicensure of the aging nuclear plant for a 20-year period. Yankee had been scheduled in its original license to shut down in 2012.
The board is now deciding whether to grant Entergy a certificate of public good to operate its plant in Vernon until the end of the year under the conditions of the agreement.
But residents from across the state questioned whether the plant operator will keep its promise with the administration, which is backing the pending one-year operating permit through the agreement.
“I have seen nothing that would indicate Entergy can now suddenly be trusted, despite the state of Vermont’s recent public statements otherwise. We need an independent site assessment for radiological decommissioning, spent fuel management and site restoration,” said Ann Darling, a member of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, during Tuesday’s hearing.
The state reached an agreement with Entergy on the closing and decommissioning of Vermont Yankee last year.
Many residents also say the accord doesn’t go far enough to ensure a safe and quick phase out, some are calling for the plant’s immediate closure.
“Do you, the Public Service Board, really want to have any part in another ‘no underground pipes’ scenario?” Darling asked the board in its televised hearing, referring to the controversy that erupted after Entergy denied it had underground pipes leaking radioactive water at the site and was proven wrong.
Speaking from Brattleboro, Darling also said the council is not satisfied with the thermal discharge standards set by the state’s memorandum of understanding, which allows the plant to continue to discharge waste heat from cooling water into the Connecticut River.
“We must stop VY from heating up the river. Please make them use the cooling towers,” she said.
The memorandum of understanding, signed in December, allows Vermont Yankee to operate using current thermal discharge standards set by the Agency of Natural Resources-issued National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit.
Instead of using closed-cycle cooling, which includes using the plant’s cooling towers, Vermont Yankee will continue to mostly use river water to cool the plant, despite warnings that the water discharged is warming river water and may be killing off aquatic life.
However, using the cooling towers year-round could cost the plant millions of dollars, said Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer with Fairwinds Energy Education and a longtime nuclear safety advocate and critic of the plant.
He said that to stick this in the agreement would have stalled the deal Entergy made with the state.
“Keeping those cooling towers running all of the time likely would have been a deal-breaker. They don’t have the margins in that plant to give away 22 million (dollars),” Gundersen said.
Vermont Yankee dumps about two-thirds of the heat it generates into the Connecticut River, he said, while the remaining third is used to generate electricity.
“They don’t want to use the cooling towers because every cooling tower costs them about $1 million a year in electricity,” Gundersen said. “It would be about $22 million if they were to run the cooling towers full time. So basically, the rights of the fish to have water that they can breathe and the rights of Entergy to make 22 million bucks is what we’re arguing about here.”
In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Department of Public Service Commissioner Chris Recchia said the plant will apply for a new thermal discharge permit if the board approved its one-year operating license.
The permit will likely resemble the plant’s current discharge permit requiring the use of cooling towers if the river water exceeds certain temperatures. Entergy is required by state and federal law to comply with these guidelines, Recchia said.
Recchia said other components of the agreement would have been jeopardized if the state required Entergy to adopt a new thermal discharge permit.
“If you made them incur that expense there, there would have been other impacts on the agreement,” Recchia said, adding that ANR would have also needed more time to compose a new discharge permit.
Through its agreement with the state, Entergy has promised to decommission the plant sooner than required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an issue that has been a key concern of Gov. Peter Shumlin, a longtime critic of Vermont Yankee and resident of Windham County. The agreement also settles all pending federal lawsuits and includes a laundry list of payments to the state.
The payments include $5.2 million for the Clean Energy Development Fund, half of which goes to Windham County where the plant is located, and $10 million for economic development in the county, payable at $2 million per year for five years.
Guy Page is communication director for Vermont Energy Partnership. Speaking from Brattleboro during the hearing, he said the plant is a reliable source of low-carbon energy that should continue to operate through the end of year.
“Now, the other thing that I see, I look at this settlement, on which the CPG is a condition of this settlement, and I look at $10 million for Windham County and there’s going to be, everyone agrees, a real problem with economic development. And that money will be a huge help,” Page told the board. “Also, in your bailiwick, is the development of energy in Vermont: 90 percent renewable goal. And we all know that renewable power, one of its shortcomings – well one of its difficulties – is that it’s expensive to install. And this settlement has $5 million for the growth of renewable power in Vermont. And that money is how this stuff gets built.”
Still, many of the residents who spoke during the televised testimony called on the board to issue tougher conditions on the plant’s final year of operation and the cleanup during decommissioning.
Recchia said the board may not have the authority to amend the certificate of public good to include tougher conditions on spent fuel management and decommissioning, as many residents requested during the hearing.
The agreement will be canceled if the board does not issue Entergy a state permit by March 31.
Clarification: This story originally said Entergy would continue to operate under an existing thermal discharge permit if is granted a license for continued operation. In fact, Entergy will apply for a new discharge permit, which is likely to be very similar to its current one, according to Recchia. The story was updated at Jan. 16 at 8:20 p.m.
