Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance

2. Write letters to the Editor of your local paper:

Talking Points:
1.Why is Governor Douglas choosing to protect his corporate friends at Enetrgy opposed to the safety of Vermonters. The only way we will be certain to know that VY is safe by following the legislative safety assessment protocol that the governor signed.

2.The NRC has a long history of approving nuclear plant license extensions which is part of the reason Vermont passed a separate bill to ensure an independent audit was performed. This is the only way to know if the plant is even remotely safe to relicense.

3.Governor Douglas has already shown he has placed the interest of Entergy ahead of Vermonters when he vetoed a the decommissioning bill that did nothing more than ensure Entergy was held responsible for the waste they created.

4.The issues of the safety of Vermont’s lone nuclear power plant should be above politics but once again the Douglas administration has proven that they are willing to play politics with our safety. There is no other way to explain why his administration is denying the entry of an independent panel to explore the safety of Vermont Yankee.

It was a tough week for Vermont’s nuclear power plant and whichever owner it claims is responsible — Entergy? Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (ENVY)? Entergy Nuclear Operations (ENO)? (Think how tough it must be for Entergy staffers trying to remember which business cards to hand out.) A faulty bracket on a cooling tower support beam sent water spewing to the ground, forcing VY to drop power by 75 percent. Then the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) told ENO they couldn’t use money from the decommissioning fund to pay for onsite storage of nuclear waste. Two strikes.

Enter Gov. Douglas and the Department of Public Service (DPS) to avert a strikeout. They are refusing to let members of a special legislative oversight panel take part in an upcoming NRC review of Vermont Yankee. That access was supposed to happen as part of a bill Douglas signed into law calling for a top-to-bottom review of Vermont Yankee. This so-called “vertical audit” looks at the plant as a whole to determine if things are “safe” and “reliable,” rather than just isolating certain key components, as is the case with this week’s NRC review. Lawmakers asked for the more rigorous review because next year they will vote on whether Vermont Yankee should be allowed to operate for another 20 years.

Two top Democratic lawmakers claim the three-member panel was told by DPS officials that the NRC objected to the oversight panel’s participation in the inspection. That doesn’t square with what the NRC told the governor earlier this year.

In March, Gov. Douglas implored the NRC to conduct an “independent safety assessment” at Vermont Yankee after last year’s spectacular collapse of a cooling tower and a reactor scram — both of which were traced to shoddy maintenance programs. “I also request that the assessment include the participation of the Vermont State Nuclear Engineer and consultants, and [that] those NRC inspectors and contractors have independence from the Vermont Yankee operation,” Douglas added.

In April, the NRC responded in a letter: “The [reactor oversight process] is also flexible with respect to the timing and scope of some inspections,” wrote NRC Chairman Dale Klein. “The Vermont State Nuclear Engineer and a mutually acceptable consultant are welcome to observe any NRC inspection at Vermont Yankee in accordance with the existing Memorandum of Understanding between the NRC and the State of Vermont.”

When “Fair Game” asked about the contradiction over the weekend, we got this response from NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci (and a copy of the letter): “Typically, members of the public (or the media) are not able to accompany NRC inspectors on inspection. In this case, as the letter explains, the DPS could have designated an additional observer,” she said. So much for the Douglas administration’s “blame it on the NRC” excuse.

On Monday, President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin and Speaker Symington, who also received the NRC’s April letter, implored Douglas to let the panel have access to this week’s NRC inspection. Don’t hold your breath. It’s no secret that Douglas loathes two of the appointees to the panel — Arnie Gundersen of Burlington and Peter Brad-ford of Peru — claiming they are biased against nuclear power.

Shumlin picked Gunderson for the panel, while Symington tapped Bradford, who formerly served as a commissioner to the NRC and is now vice chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. For decades, Gundersen worked inside the nuclear power industry, and has been called on by NRC and state officials to testify in regulatory cases. He also served as an expert witness for a group opposed to Vermont Yankee’s bid to increase its power output by 20 percent.

Douglas’ sole appointment to the panel is Dr. Lawrence Hochreiter, a professor of nuclear and mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania State University who spent 26 years working for Westinghouse in its nuclear energy division.

While DPS officials, including its spokesman Stephen Wark, criticize Gundersen and Bradford for opposing nuclear power, Hochreiter’s 26 years of working for the industry make him an unbiased observer? Go figure.

Is Gundersen biased — or clairvoyant? He predicted that after VY boosted its power output that the cooling towers would weaken, and that additional cracks would be found in the reactor’s steam dryer. Both came true. He even predicted there might be a shortfall in the decommissioning fund. Damn, three for three.

Behind the scenes, DPS folks apparently hold Gundersen’s talents in high regard.Case in point: Wark inadvertently sent “Fair Game” an email Monday in response to a weekend query we made to DPS staffers about keeping the panel out of the NRC inspection. In this misfired email, Wark asked DPS Deputy Commissioner Richard Smith to provide him with a copy of a letter Gundersen had sent to Smith so Wark could use it for his “talking points.”

Whoa. So, the guy who trashed an appointee in public for being biased and an inappropriate choice for the job wants to use the words of said appointee as talking points for the media? And, beyond that, using information from a letter that was sent with the expectation it would be private?