In the absence of a federal budget bill to keep the government running, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is stripping down to a skeleton crew.
More than 90 percent of nuclear regulators nationwide were furloughed late last week.
“Only about 300 of the normal 3,900 NRC staffers will stay on the job until the shutdown is over,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said in a statement. “Our Resident Inspectors assigned to each operating nuclear power plant will be among those who will remain on duty.”
Sheehan says the NRC website “will essentially be static” after Wednesday. Daily reactor status reports and event reports will not be accessible to the public until after the shutdown, he added.
Entergy Corp.'s newly amended petition to run the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant past its initial 40-year licensing period is giving the Vermont Department of Public Service pause. Chris Recchia, commissioner of the department, said there are two main moves his team is considering. “The options are to support...
Entergy Corp. will grant the wishes of many Vermont officials by closing its 41-year-old Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in 2014, but the company's relationship with the state is far from over. The Louisiana-based company and the state are embroiled in four separate lawsuits, and the specifics of those cases...
Three justices from the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City have decided that the Vermont Legislature is federally preempted from shutting down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. After U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha made the same preemption ruling in January 2012, Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell appealed to the higher court. In a 56-page decision, the appellate judges upheld the crux of Murtha's ruling in favor of Entergy Corp., Vermont Yankee's parent company. On Aug. 14,
The anti-nuclear organization New England Coalition and the Vermont Public Interest Research Group are asking the Vermont Public Service Board to take into account new information about layoffs at Vermont Yankee as part of the board's decision to approve or deny the nuclear plant a new 20-year license to operate. Last week, Entergy Corp., which owns Vermont Yankee, announced that it would cut about 30 jobs at the nuclear plant by the end of the year. Both nonprofits are parties...
Entergy plans to cut about 30 jobs at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant by the end of the year, a vice president at the Louisiana-based corporation said Tuesday. The news comes on the same day Entergy reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the company would eliminate about 800 positions from its nationwide workforce of 15,000. Entergy employs about 650 workers at Vermont Yankee in Vernon, meaning layoffs would affect about 4 percent of employees. “It's really across...
Entergy Corp., which owns the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, is preparing to cut back its labor force in an effort to reorganize the company. “We do expect workforce reductions to be one result of this initiative,” national spokesman Chanel Lagarde said in a statement last week. “We don't have final specifics at this time regarding who or how many employees will be affected. We remain focused on all our key stakeholders throughout this process, and we will deal fairly and...
The Public Service Board has finished up two weeks of hearings on whether the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's continued operation is in the best interest of the public and therefore merits a new license. The rebuttal hearings roamed in topic from decommissioning to the plant's economic status to thermal discharge into the Connecticut River to the trustworthiness of the plant's operator, Louisiana-based Entergy Corp. Parties to the case are slated to file briefs to the board by mid-August and reply...