Future of Vermont’s only nuclear plant in balance as state Senate votes on relicensing

more images

more images

Future of Vt. nuke plant in balance in Senate vote

MONTPELIER, Vt. — As President Barack Obama and other national leaders push for building a fleet of new U.S. nuclear plants, Vermont may be poised to close an old one.

Vermont is the only state in the country with a law allowing its Legislature, along with utility regulators, a say in whether a nuclear plant should operate past its initial 40-year license. The state Senate was expected Wednesday to vote no.

Some of it is Vermont’s left-leaning politics. The only state ever to send a self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders, to the U.S. Senate also is home to one of the most vocal anti-nuclear movements left in America.

The hotbed of that movement is in the state’s southeast corner. Windham County is home to the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as well as its most powerful critic. Peter Shumlin of Putney is leader — president pro tem — of the state Senate. He orchestrated the vote that could lead to Yankee’s doom.

“America’s aging nuclear power fleet is tired, worn out and increasingly dangerous,” Shumlin, who is running to replace the retiring Jim Douglas as governor, said in an interview. “Since the NRC (federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission) appears to be cozy with the industry it’s necessary for state lawmakers to protect the public.”

Shumlin had his allies craft a bill that would allow the Vermont Public Service Board to issue a state license for Vermont Yankee to operate past its currently scheduled shutdown date in March 2012. The bill is slated for an easy defeat, meaning it wouldn’t advance, and that would block the House, the governor and the board from acting in the nuclear plant’s favor.

For anyone bent on Vermont Yankee’s demise, it may be the best time to strike. The plant has been wallowing in bad news since early January, when it was revealed it was leaking a radioactive substance called tritium, which has been linked to cancer when ingested in large amounts, into groundwater and likely the Connecticut River.

Within days of that announcement, plant officials acknowledged they had made misleading statements to state regulators and lawmakers — some under oath — about whether Vermont Yankee had the sort of underground pipes that could carry tritium. A state criminal probe is under way, and two environmental groups last week demanded a federal one.

But Vermont Yankee has been showing its age — at 38, it’s one of the nation’s oldest — at least since 2007, when a cooling tower collapse produced spectacular photos of a jagged, broken, 6-foot-wide pipe spewing thousands of gallons of water onto a pile of rubble below.

Despite the problems, the reactor gets high marks from the NRC and glowing praise from Entergy Corp., the New Orleans-based energy company that owns Vermont Yankee and eight other nuclear plants around the country.

NRC section chief Donald Jackson said this week that the tritium leak doesn’t threaten public health or plant operations. He pointed to the plant’s current period of continued operation — more than 400 days — as evidence it is well run.

Curt Hebert Jr., Entergy’s executive vice president, on Tuesday called Vermont Yankee “the gem of the nuclear fleet” in the company.

“It’s a manufacturing plant,” Hebert said. “Things happen at manufacturing plants. Things break. Things leak.”

If the Senate votes to close Vermont Yankee, that may not be the end of the story. The plant could hope for — even work for — a large number of nuclear energy fans to get elected to the Legislature in November and try again next year.

There also has been widespread speculation that Entergy, the NRC or some other entity might go to federal court and make a claim that federal law pre-empts states from closing a nuclear plant. Former and current state lawyers say Vermont is on solid legal ground.

On Tuesday, Hebert did not appear to object too strongly to the idea that the Vermont Legislature might have a say over the future of his company’s property in the state.

“I think the people have rights,” he said. “I think the Legislature is empowered by the people.”