[S]tate regulators say they expect to decide on the proposed sale of Vermont Yankee by Dec. 7, signaling the end of a long-running debate about the future of the idled Vernon nuclear plant.
But even if the Public Utility Commission approves the sale from Entergy to NorthStar, the ruling will come too late for the companies to meet their oft-stated goal of closing the deal by the end of this year.
“If approval of the transaction is obtained from the PUC next week, we expect the sale to close in early 2019,” Mike Twomey, external affairs vice president for Entergy Wholesale Commodities, said Thursday.
It’s been more than two years since Entergy announced plans to sell Vermont Yankee and its decommissioning trust fund to NorthStar. The New York demolition and remediation company has pitched an accelerated decommissioning project that could result in most of the site being cleaned up as early as 2026.
By contrast, Entergy – which stopped power production at Vermont Yankee at the end of 2014 – has been following a decommissioning plan that could take up to 60 years.
The sale, which would be the first of its kind in the United States, requires both federal and state approval. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission OK’d the transfer of Vermont Yankee’s license to NorthStar in October.
Vermont officials initially had been skeptical of NorthStar’s ability to follow through on its plans. But in March, several state agencies were among the parties signing a memorandum of understanding in which Entergy and NorthStar pledged additional money to support decommissioning and new restoration standards.
That didn’t lead to a quick ruling from the state utility commission. Members of the commission first said they would wait for the NRC’s decision, then said they would not commit to a timeline for issuing their own decision on the sale.
On Thursday, however, the commission’s clerk issued an advisory to all parties involved in the case saying that the PUC “expects to issue its order in this case by the end of next week.”
That doesn’t leave enough time for the year-end sale deadline that Entergy and NorthStar have espoused since first announcing the deal. As late as the end of October, Entergy had said the sale still might close in 2018, but an administrator also acknowledged that “there’s a period of time that we would need once we get the approval … to physically facilitate the transaction.”
Twomey previously has said that the sale agreement between Entergy and NorthStar allows the companies to “work toward closing the transaction up until June 30, 2019.”
NorthStar’s plans call for the company to get started on decommissioning as soon as possible if the sale is approved. On Thursday, a spokesperson said NorthStar had no comment at this point on the timing of the state’s ruling or the finalization of the sale.
