Attorney General Bill Sorrell has announced that he will not prosecute Entergy Corp. for misleading statements made by employees who were testifying to the state about underground pipes at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
At a July 6 press conference, Sorrell said the state lacks “the smoking gun evidence to prove to our satisfaction” that the misstatements constituted perjury.
“Perjury is a tough crime to prove,” Sorrell said.
Sorrell's office issued an eight-page report on the criminal investigation that outlined the dozens of interviews and email searches conducted.
Over the course of the investigation, which began in January of 2010, the attorney general's office reviewed two million pages of documents from Entergy, the Department of Public Service, and several consultants.
The probe, Sorrell said, cost $100,000.
At issue was the existence of underground radioactive pipes at Vermont Yankee.
Entergy officials in May 2009 told the Vermont Public Service Board there were no underground pipes at the plant. In January 2010, Entergy announced that tritium was leaking from pipes located under the subsurface of the plant compound.
The misleading statements boiled down to the definition of what an underground pipe is.
Entergy, and consultants who advised the state, defined underground pipes as “buried piping,” or pipe that is in direct contact with soil. Entergy claimed that the pipes at Vermont Yankee, which were in concrete chases, did not qualify as underground piping.
“For us to try to prove what was in the mind of the speaker when the speaker said, no, there are none [...] is a tall order indeed,” Sorrell said. “Absent smoking-gun evidence, we're not going to make a charge.”
Sorrell couldn't establish that there was a conspiracy to cover up the existence of underground pipes at Vermont Yankee.
He characterized statements made by Entergy officials at several Vermont Public Service Board hearings in 2009 as misleading.
“I did release a report and reached the conclusion this wasn't just a misunderstanding,” Sorrell said.