Sunday, November 27, 2016

Meeting on Entergy Sale of Vermont Yankee, December 1

Vermont Yankee and NorthStar and Decommissioning

Events are moving fast in the world of decommissioning decisions about Vermont Yankee.

Entergy announced that it hoped to sell Vermont Yankee to NorthStar, which is partnered with Waste Control Specialists for the decommissioning job. Waste Control Specialists already handle all the low-level radioactive waste for Vermont and Vermont Yankee. Waste Control Specialists have also applied to be an interim storage facility for high-level waste.

Dry cask
The sale of Vermont Yankee to NorthStar is intended to speed up the decomm process by decades.  I discussed the possible sale in a previous blog post.

But wait, there's more!

And then it gets complicated:


But wait, there's less!

Richard Saudek is a Vermont attorney who previously served as Chairman of the Vermont Public Service Board, and as Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service.  In other words, he is very knowledgeable  about utility issues in Vermont.  In a recent article that appeared in several local papers, Susan Smallheer reported:  Richard Saudek....said he didn’t think the anti-trust suit would have an effect on the proposed sale.

In other words, unless you own stock in EnergySolutions or Waste Control Specialists, the merger and the Department of Justice lawsuit and so forth.... may well be much ado about nothing.

Meanwhile, there's a meeting

The Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizen's Advisory Panel (NDCAP) will meet on the evening of  December 1 in Brattleboro. The main item on the agenda is the possible sale of Vermont Yankee to NorthStar.  Senior executives of Entergy and NorthStar will make presentations.  If you cannot attend the meeting in person, you can sign up in advance to attend it as a webinar.

For more information about NorthStar itself, I recommend this well-referenced blog post by Guy Page of VTEP, which describes many of NorthStar's previous decommissioning projects.

It turns out I won't be going to the NDCAP meeting, due to a commitment to be at a ISO-NE Consumer Liaison Group meeting the same day.  I think the NDCAP meeting will be very interesting, and I trust my friends to give me a full report.


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