Since the 2016 announcement that NorthStar intended to buy and decommission Vermont Yankee, Windham County community members have expressed their understandable concern how this accelerated decommissioning will affect the community.
Many of these questions regard NorthStar's capability to complete the project within budget and on schedule, the approval from the state and local community, and the status of Vermont Yankee's spent fuel.
Now, more than a year and a half later, Vermont Yankee and NorthStar await a decision from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Vermont Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
Early in 2017, NorthStar submitted a plan to the PUC and its intervenors detailing how to complete decommissioning on budget. While this satisfied many interested parties, NorthStar later provided several-million-dollar contingency assurances in the event the project exceeds its budget.
Regulatory delays, while frustrating to developers and other interested parties, sometimes signify that a process is working correctly. Such is likely the case with the regulatory timeline for the approval of the sale of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to NorthStar. The project to expedite decommissioning of Vermont Yankee...
If you believe that climate change is caused by man, then the shutting down of nuclear power plants in the recent past may have validated that assumption. The year 2015 has gone down as the hottest year on record. A large number of nuclear plants worldwide were temporarily or...