Over the past several weeks, the proposal of the sale of Vermont Yankee has gained momentum through the passage of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) and the overwhelming support demonstrated for the project voiced at the April 12 Vermont Public Utility Commission meeting in Brattleboro.
While almost every other interested party sees the sale as an environmentally sound, well-funded, community-supported path forward to decommissioning the state's only nuclear power plant, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) sees only problems.
It's a decidedly minority opinion.
On March 2, four state agencies, the town of Vernon, the Windham Regional Commission, two Abenaki tribes, and the New England Coalition, a longtime anti-nuclear organization, all backed the sale.
The Vermont Public Utilities Commission (PUC) will soon hold its final public hearing on the proposed sale of Vermont Yankee to NorthStar . This will be the final opportunity for residents of Vernon, of Windham County, and of Vermont to publicly say whether the sale is - to quote...
If some in agencies of the Scott administration pursue their dream to restore the Vermont Yankee site to “residential standards,” they will be responsible for a deal-killer that makes little sense from the standpoint of past agreements and likely future use. If NorthStar is required to restore the site...
For four decades, schools and schoolchildren in Windham County benefited from having a major electric power producer, Vermont Yankee, right in their own backyard. Despite the plant's closure, it is encouraging to see that, via the Vermont Clean Energy Development Fund (VCEDF), the plant's owner continues to deliver benefits to the local community. Fortunately for local schools and for Vermont's forestry and renewable-power economy, a multi-million-dollar commitment by Vermont Yankee to the VCEDF has helped fund the installation of new...
It is clear the New England Coalition, a longtime antagonist of nuclear power, is skeptical of NorthStar's ability to decommission Vermont Yankee safely and on budget. An NEC spokesperson is quoted as decrying NorthStar's supposedly “untested method of managing decommissioning under new and unanalyzed circumstances.” Yet there is nothing technologically new or experimental about this plan. The applied science is all established and in regular use, and it has been proven both safe and economically successful. The only novel aspects...
Vermont's regulatory system works best when it expertly and promptly considers a project's economic benefits and environmental impacts. I have confidence the Vermont Public Service Board will act in this fine tradition in NorthStar's proposed decommissioning of Vermont Yankee. In this spirit, I am concerned by two significant misunderstandings in a recent Conservation Law Foundation op-ed about the NorthStar plan. The author claims “the money on hand is not sufficient to complete the task soon.” She also states that NorthStar...
Since the details of the plan to sell Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee to an expert decommissioning firm were made public earlier this month, there have been some misinformed media reports and public statements claiming that buyer NorthStar has no experience decommissioning nuclear power plants. This is simply untrue. Entergy has stated publicly since the closure of Vermont Yankee that it is in the business of generating electricity, not decommissioning. On the other hand, NorthStar's core business is decommissioning and deconstruction.
As a member of and communications director for the Vermont Energy Partnership, I have been vocal in my support for the continuation for Vermont Yankee. Regarding the negative impact of Vermont Yankee closure: what Gary Sachs [“As Vermont moves to green power, VY won't be missed,” Letters, May 8] dismisses as PR spin, I regard as prudent energy planning. VY provides something no other single, in-state power generator supplies: a large quantity of market-cost, low-carbon electricity. As Vermont progresses toward...