[T]he current and prospective owners of Vermont Yankee are pressing for a quick state decision on the Vernon plant’s future, but one watchdog group wants to put on the brakes.
Entergy and NorthStar are asking the state Public Utility Commission to rule on the sale of Vermont Yankee by next week. With federal regulators having already approved the transfer of the plant’s nuclear license to NorthStar, an attorney for the two companies argues that there is “no need for any further filings or process” in the long-running state review.
But the Conservation Law Foundation argues that state officials should take more time to consider the recent decision from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which imposed a few new requirements on the transaction.
“This is a major proceeding and a very significant project for Vermont,” said Sandra Levine, a senior attorney with the law foundation. “It is important to make sure the (state) is able to carefully consider all the information available, including the new provisions from the NRC.”
Entergy stopped producing power at Vermont Yankee at the end of 2014 and now wants to sell the idled plant – and its decommissioning trust fund – to NorthStar. The New York-based demolition and cleanup company says it can restore most of the site by 2030 and possibly as early as 2026, which is decades faster than Entergy had been planning.
The sale would be the first of its kind in the United States.
After 20 months of review, the NRC on Oct. 11 approved NorthStar’s takeover of Vermont Yankee’s federal license. Federal regulators said NorthStar “met the regulatory, legal, technical and financial requirements necessary to qualify them as a licensee.”
The NRC also imposed several conditions on NorthStar: The company must obtain a future performance bond for spent fuel management if necessary, and it must guarantee that it won’t cancel or modify $140 million in backup funding for the decommissioning job without prior consent from federal officials.
When the NRC decision was issued, executives with Entergy and NorthStar expressed confidence that they still could finish the sale of Vermont Yankee by the end of this year. That’s in spite of a regulatory process that has taken much longer than initially anticipated.
But that schedule is dependent on getting a relatively quick decision from the state Public Utility Commission.
In a Oct. 19 letter to the commission, attorney Sanford Weisburst – speaking for both Entergy and NorthStar – asked the commission to issue its decision by Oct. 31. No further testimony is needed in the wake of the NRC’s decision, Weisburst wrote, because those federal rulings “speak for themselves as legal documents and are binding … by virtue of the NRC’s regulatory authority.”
NorthStar Chief Executive Officer Scott State also filed several pages of new information with the utility commission in an effort to move the case along.
State says the NRC’s ruling does nothing to “remove or undermine in any way” a memorandum of understanding signed in the Vermont Yankee case earlier this year. That agreement – which included Entergy, NorthStar, several state agencies and other interested parties – featured new financial and environmental commitments for the cleanup project.
Some of the memorandum’s provisions later were adopted by the NRC. Furthermore, State is pledging to “comply with any and all requirements” imposed by the NRC if state regulators approve the transaction.
On Monday, the Vermont Department of Public Service, Agency of Natural Resources and the attorney general also agreed that additional regulatory processes before the state utility commission are “unnecessary” in the Vermont Yankee case.
But the Conservation Law Foundation says utility commissioners shouldn’t be too hasty.
The foundation refused to sign the earlier memorandum of understanding in the Yankee case, expressing financial, liability and transparency concerns about the transaction. The NRC’s decision addressed “some but not all of the concerns” the foundation has raised, Levine said.
“Some additional concerns include releasing Entergy from responsibility; lack of transparency and oversight; failure to demonstrate the monies available are sufficient to cover decommissioning and site restoration; failure to provide insurance to cover unexpected pollution; and the lack of enforceability of the (memorandum of understanding),” Levine said.
Even in light of NorthStar’s additional filings and assurances before the utility commission, “it seems unlikely that the decision could be issued by Oct. 31,” Levine said. “The additional testimony includes new information that would be helpful for the Public Utility Commission to rely on and incorporate into its decision,” she said.
For their part, state utility commissioners have not yet made any promises on the timing of a Vermont Yankee decision.
In a July order, the commission said only that it would “seek to issue a decision in a timely manner consistent with due process and its own evidentiary needs following any NRC ruling on the license transfer.”
