Vermont Supreme Court Asked to Shut Down Vermont’s Outlaw Nuke | NationofChange
December 8, 2012
The simple, and perhaps temporary reality is that the owner of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, the Entergy Corporation of Louisiana, continues to operate the 40-year-old facility illegally. A complaint presently before the Vermont Supreme Court seeks an injunction ordering the plant to shut down immediately and to remain shut down until it is in full compliance with the law.
The New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution (NEC) filed the complaint for injunctive relief against Entergy with the Supreme Court on Dec. 4, based on an earlier 30-page decision issued by Vermont’s Public Service Board (PSB) on Nov. 29. The PSB denied Entergy’s request to modify a 2002 agreement it had chosen to violate, pointing out that any hardship Entergy was suffering was of its own making.
Vermont Yankee has been controversial since before it went online in 1971 and grassroots efforts to shut it down have been joined over the years by the Vermont legislature, the governor, the attorney general and a variety of environmental organizations. Opposition increased after the meltdowns at Fukushima, where the reactors had the same generic General Electric design as Yankee.
This latest development in the legal entanglements of Vermont Yankee has its roots in the agreements Entergy made in 2002 when it bought the nuclear plant. At that time, the PSB’s final order in docket 6545 approving the purchase included several conditions, among which number 8 stated:
“Absent issuance of a new Certificate of Public Good or renewal of the Certificate of Public Good issued today, Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, LLC and Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. are prohibited from operating the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station after March 21, 2012.” [emphasis added]
At present, Vermont Yankee is operating without any Certificate of Public Good, since the PSB has neither extended the original one nor approved a new one. In its Nov. 30 order, the PSB noted that Entergy had chosen to continue operating Vermont Yankee even after the PSB pointed out that the explicit terms of continued operation had not been met. The PSB is expected to decide the Certificate of Public Good question in the latter part of 2013. (Read Full Article)
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