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Agreement reached on transfer of defunct Vermont Yankee plant

By PATRICK ADRIAN
[email protected]
VERNON, Vt. — State and local parties have finalized an agreement with companies to facilitate the transfer of shuttered Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to new ownership, which intends to complete decommission and restoration of the site by 2030. 

In a Memorandum on Understanding filed on Friday, state and local parties approved the transfer of Vermont Yankee from Entergy to NorthStar Group Services, a New York company that specializes in power plant dismantling and restoration.  Endorsing the agreement were the Vermont Department of Public Service; Agency of Natural Resources; Attorney General’s Office; The New England Coalition of Nuclear Pollution; The Town of Vernon; Windham Regional Commission; the Elnu Abernaki Tribe; and the Abernaki Nation of Missisquoi.

The Vermont Public Utilities Commission must still approve the sale. The memorandum will be submitted for review by the commission in further evidentiary hearings.  The last hearing, Jan. 18, was canceled due to winter weather and has not been rescheduled.  A timeline from Entergy states that the commission will render its decision in mid-2018.

Vermont parties want to ensure that the plant owners will assume the full expense and responsibility to decommission and restore the site, said Schuyler Gould, president of the New England Coalition. 

In 2013 Vermont Yankee operator Entergy announced it would shut down the plant at end of 2014, citing economic reasons.   Entergy stated the decommissioning would be too costly and timely for its company to manage, and elected to sell the plant to NorthStar, whose in-house resources allows them to demolish power plants more quickly and efficiently.  The agreement between companies, initiated in 2016, would transfer licenses, cleanup obligations and assets to NorthStar, including the plant’s decommissioning trust fund of $600 million. 

The trust fund is where NorthStar hopes to profit, Gould said. The accrued interest will grow by hundreds of millions over course of the decommissioning.  Whatever funds remain when the work is complete will go to NorthStar and its investors 

NorthStar estimates the cost to decommission at $811 million and states it will be able to begin work within three years of transfer.  By contrast, Entergy said its company would need several additional decades to begin decommissioning. 

Though still concerned over challenges to a nuclear site cleanup, Gould said he feels enough concessions were given in the agreement to support the public interest.  

To provide assurances to Vermont, NorthStar would provide a $30 million pollution liability insurance policy, an initial $55 million in funding for decommission costs, and a $140 million support agreement requiring NorthStar to fund the project to completion. Entergy would supply an additional $40 million in funds if certain project benchmarks are not reached by 2023. 

Ten intervening groups joined the companies in this discussion, and the agreement met the approval of eight, said Gould.  This was a group effort.

Two groups did not endorse the agreement.  One was a third Abernaki party that took part in discussions but did not participate in the signing, Gould said.

The other was the Conservation Law Foundation, a New England environmental group, who refused to sign the agreement.  The foundation remain dissatisfied by the agreement’s insurances and guarantees, and contend that Entergy should not be freed from its cleanup obligation.

“Vermonters are the losers in a recent agreement aimed to sweeten the deal for the sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant,” stated Senior Attorney Sandra Levine on the foundation’s website. “In a rush to secure a possible – and by no means certain – quick clean-up of the site, the settlement excludes reasonable protection for Vermont communities. The deal Entergy and NorthStar proposed leaves Vermonters vulnerable to picking up the tab if something goes wrong.” 

While indicating the foundation’s concerns are valid, Gould saw this agreement’s purpose to acquire as many insurances and guarantees for Vermont as possible.  Gould said he hopes to avoid a similar predicament as Connecticut Yankee, a nuclear plant in Haddam Neck, Ct., whose decommissioning expenses overran funds by $400 million.  The public utilities who owned the plant had to add a monthly surcharge to customer bills to pay down the balance. 

Gould said that the Public Utilities Commission has authority to amend or add terms to the agreement.  But Gould said he expects the commission to approve the Vermont Yankee transfer to NorthStar regardless.

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