[A]nother round of job cuts will hit Vermont Yankee later this year, further shrinking a workforce that once exceeded 600.
Only 10 to 15 employees will remain at the idled Vernon nuclear plant after the cuts, expected before year’s end – possibly as soon as October.
Though the timing is still to be determined, the layoffs are not a surprise. Still, the pending downsizing has spurred longtime employees like David Andrews to finalize plans for the future and take stock of a workplace that feels like a ghost town when compared with its heyday.
“It is very surreal how different the place has become,” said Andrews, a radiation protection technician who has worked at Vermont Yankee for 24 years. “And you do feel like a survivor.”
Entergy stopped power production at Vermont Yankee in December 2014. At the time, there were about 550 employees.
The first big cutback came the following month, when all fuel was permanently removed from the plant’s reactor. The workforce was reduced to 316.
The numbers have continued to tumble. The last major layoff occurred in May 2016, when Entergy said it was cutting staff to 136 as a result of federally approved emergency-planning changes taking effect at the plant.
Between then and now, more than half the plant’s remaining workforce has departed. On Thursday, while delivering a decommissioning update to state legislators, Entergy Senior Government Affairs Manager Joe Lynch said the Vernon plant still has about 60 employees.
That does not include security personnel. That service was contracted to a private company in 2016.
The next round of job cuts will follow the transfer of the plant’s spent fuel from a cooling pool to sealed casks. At that point, the site’s highest level of security and almost all of its operational functions will be focused on the two relatively small concrete pads where the casks are located.
The handful of employees left after the layoffs “would have responsibilities to maintain our obligations under our [federal] license to oversee the fuel, do certain maintenance work and monitoring work,” Lynch said.
It will be necessary to perform those functions regardless of whether the plant is sold to NorthStar Group Services. While NorthStar is promising accelerated decommissioning of the plant, Vermont Yankee’s spent fuel will remain on the property for the foreseeable future due to the lack of a federal repository for such material.
NorthStar is hoping to complete its purchase at the end of 2018. The company has pledged to retain the small number of Vermont Yankee staffers still be working at the site at that point.
In testimony filed with the Vermont Public Utility Commission, NorthStar Chief Executive Officer Scott State has said the company “will offer employment to all Entergy employees working at the VY Station at the time of (the sale) closing, keeping these experienced employees familiar with the site in a project-management role and also retaining the security contractors at the site.”
For those losing their jobs later this year, Lynch said Entergy is offering help finding positions at other nuclear sites within the company. The company also is working with the state Department of Labor to coordinate assistance for those who seek employment elsewhere.
“The same things that we did for the other staff reductions are being offered,” Lynch said.
For Andrews, the decision is already made: He’s planning to retire, saying he and his wife have been saving “every penny we could” in anticipation of the day his job would be eliminated.
“When this is done, we’re most likely going to move out of state,” Andrews said. “I don’t see anything in my future that says I’m going to be here, working this decommissioning.”
Andrews is part of a smaller subset of the plant’s staff: He’s a member of the South Burlington-based Local 300 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
At its peak, the union had as many as 180 members working at Vermont Yankee. That number consistently stayed around 160, with union members filling a variety of positions at the plant, said Jeffrey Wimette, the local’s business manager.
There are now just 11 union members employed at Vermont Yankee. After the next round of cutbacks, there will be none.
Andrews, who represents the union on the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, told lawmakers on Thursday that he’s a member of an “endangered species.”
In a later interview, Andrews said according to the most recent notice the layoffs will happen in late October. That date “could get pushed back. But it’s not going to be pushed back very far,” Andrews said. “Nobody’s expecting to be here past Christmas.”
Among his coworkers, he said, there are still many questions about the future. “That’s perhaps the most stressful thing for the workers – not having certainty on where you’re going,” Andrews said.
The coming layoffs are dependent on completion of Vermont Yankee’s fuel-storage project. That project was suspended in early March after Entergy was notified that a small cask component – variously described as a bolt or a shim support – had come loose at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California.
The same company that makes San Onofre’s casks, Florida-based Holtec International, manufactures the casks used at Vermont Yankee.
On Thursday, Lynch told lawmakers that Entergy has conducted “painstaking” inspections of its casks and has not found the problem that was discovered at San Onofre.
He added that Entergy remains “confident” that the company will meet its goal of storing all spent fuel by the end of this year. Crews must load 15 more casks to complete the project.
In statements issued Thursday, both Entergy and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicated that the Vermont Yankee fuel move is about to restart.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said Entergy “began cask-loading activities recently” but is still working through some issues. “The key point is that there were no issues identified with respect to the bolts and the stand-down on loading was ended,” Sheehan said.
Lynch added that Entergy is “going through the steps to recommence the fuel-loading campaign.”
“The work is progressing carefully and methodically, with safety as the top priority,” Lynch said. “We have taken initial steps but not yet placed any casks in the campaign onto the concrete pads.”
