VERNON – Entergy has filed official notice of the next round of layoffs at Vermont Yankee, telling state and local officials that 97 positions will be cut May 5.
That’s a smaller number than the 150 layoffs that initially had been estimated. But a spokesman said that’s only because employees have been leaving the shuttered Vernon plant, so overall staffing levels are lower than had been anticipated.
After the May layoffs, administrators expect roughly 150 staffers to remain at Vermont Yankee, which stopped producing power at the end of 2014.
The staff cuts are related to upcoming emergency planning changes at the plant. In December, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed to amend Entergy’s license to allow a drastic downsizing of Vermont Yankee’s emergency operations.
The change takes effect in April and allows Yankee’s emergency planning zone – which now covers all or part of 18 towns in three states – to shrink to the boundaries of the plant itself. It also allows Entergy to slash its workforce and maintain a much smaller emergency response organization.
Vermont officials have opposed the change, citing the continued presence of radioactive spent nuclear fuel on site. But the NRC asserted that “the risk of an offsite radiological release is significantly lower and the types of possible accidents significantly fewer at a nuclear power reactor that has permanently ceased operations.”
Of the 97 employees expected to be let go May 5, Entergy’s notice said 38 reside in Vermont, 34 live in New Hampshire and 25 in Massachusetts.
Vermont Yankee had been one of Windham County’s largest employers. When Entergy announced its plan to close the plant in the summer of 2013, it had about 625 employees.
That workforce had decreased to 554 at the time of shutdown in December 2014. The following month, the first round of layoffs shrunk the staff to 316.
On Thursday, a spokesman said 243 people still worked at the plant.
