Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance

From Rutland Herald

U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., is to introduce legislation today that he says would strengthen safety at nuclear reactors across the country.

Sanders said Tuesday he was introducing the bill on the anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island, the country’s worst commercial nuclear disaster, to draw attention to the need for improved safety at the country’s 104 nuclear reactors.

Sanders said the bill would give governors and public utilities commissions, such as the Vermont Public Service Board, the ability to require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do an independent safety assessment of reactors under certain conditions.

Those conditions include relicensing of reactors, power boosts, and problem areas in the operation of the plant.

“We’re trying to develop the strongest inspection system,” Sanders said Tuesday. “This is the most far-reaching legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate on plant safety.”

The bill would be patterned in part on the special inspection at Maine Yankee in 1996. That in-depth inspection revealed serious problems that its owning utilities decided were too expensive to fix and they shut down the plant. It has since been dismantled.

Sanders said he proposed the bill after hearing from many Vermonters concerned for a very long time about the safety of Vermont Yankee, the state’s only nuclear reactor.

Under Sanders’ bill, the governors of not just the host state, but any state that falls within the emergency planning zone would have the power to ask for such a safety review. In Vermont’s case, that would include New Hampshire and Massachusetts as Vermont Yankee is located in Vernon, near those states, in the southeastern corner of Vermont.

Sanders said so far there are no co-sponsors on the legislation, but he said he was hoping to gain sponsors in the Senate, as well as for a House version of the bill. He said the bill would face intense opposition from the nuclear power industry.

“The pro-nuclear industry is very powerful and they would certainly prefer to have all inspections done by the NRC. We have a president that is very, very sympathetic to nuclear power,” Sanders said.

The proposed legislation brought a guarded response from the owners of Vermont Yankee, and cheers from anti-nuclear activists, who have long lobbied state officials, and more recently, congressional leaders, for such a review.

“There’s no question, Bernie is the leader on this issue. We’ve got a rising tide of concern from officials in New Jersey and New York and Massachusetts and Vermont, asking for independent safety assessment, prior to putting a plant extended license,” said Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the New England Coalition, the state’s oldest and largest anti-nuclear group.

Shadis said there were “huge” differences between what Sanders was seeking, and the review done on Vermont Yankee by the NRC in 2004 at the request of the Vermont Public Service Board, which wanted the review before the plant boosted power production by 20 percent.

The NRC added 400 hours of work to its annual review in Vermont. In the case of Maine Yankee, more than 4,000 hours of onsite inspection, and between 10,000 and 12,000 hours of office work was added, Shadis said.

“Back in 1997, the NRC said ‘the more you look, the more problems you find,’” Shadis said.

Yankee’s owner, Entergy Nuclear, is taking a wait-and-see approach.

“The general consensus in the industry [is] that key parts of the Maine Yankee inspection process were long-ago incorporated into the present, routine NRC inspection program,” said Entergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams.

“We’re still reviewing the legislation,” he said, noting the company had received an advance copy of the bill from Sanders’ office.

From The Vermont Guardian

MONTPELIER - Vermont has joined six other states in a petition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission asking them to assess the vulnerability of spent nuclear fuel storage at reactors before they are allowed to extend their operating licenses.

The request is made in support of a petition before the NRC filed by the Massachusetts attorney general, asking them to set new national rules for how reactor safeguards are evaluated.

In recent weeks, anti-nuclear activists, a number of Windham County lawmakers - along with the entire Progressive Caucus - have been urging Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell to jump into the fight surrounding Entergy’s request to extend the operating license of Vermont Yankee beyond 2012.

“We’d love to see him actively involved as I think he’s a good advocate for the state’s positions and this is an issue of central importance to the people of Vermont,” said Rep. Dick Marek, D-Newfane, who penne the original letter that went from a number of county lawmakers.

“I don’t see a reason why the NRC would be unwilling to look at it this issue in a broader context, as it seems to me that it’s a set of fundamental questions that deserve answers,” added Marek.

Without any urging however, Sorrell had given the OK in December to join a multi-state letter of support to a petition filed by the Massachusetts attorney general.

None of the lawmakers, nor the activists urging Sorrell’s involvement, were made aware of this by the attorney general’s office.

While Sorrell considered sending a letter solely from Vermont, he opted for a multi-state effort.

“We often work with other states and the thought was if you get several states it’s not just a backyard argument, it’s a national issue and an issue based on the merits and not just the concerns of one state,” said Bill Griffin, chief assistant attorney general.

The Massachusetts Attorney General argued in a petition before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board - an advisory panel to the NRC -that officials needed to weigh the power station’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack due to the increased onsite storage of nuclear waste as a result of its recent power uprate and the additional storage needed to accommodate the proposed license extension.

The ALSB, and the NRC, rejected those arguments, with the final denial coming March 15.

Massachusetts then separately requested to have the NRC embark on a national rulemaking change. The deadline to file comments in support of their petition was March 19.

Sorrell joined six other attorneys general in a show of support. The letter had been circulated to all 50 attorneys general, but only Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont signed on.

“As you know, every nuclear power plant in the United States hosts a high-density fuel storage pool, and the inventory of spent fuel continues to mount without any clear prospect for removal and permanent disposal. Recent reports by the National Academy of Sciences, the NRC’s own technical staff and independent experts contradict the NRC’s assertion that high-density fuel storage pools pose no significant environmental risk,” the letter states. “Instead, these studies show that fuel storage pools are susceptible to fire and radiological release from a wide range of conditions, including natural phenomena, operator error, equipment failure, or intentional attack.”

The attorneys general contend in their letter that the environmental impacts of a fire in a spent fuel pool may extend over a larger area than a single state boundary, and may have an impact for decades.

“In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and other new and significant information, the NRC’s outdated conclusion - that fuel pool storage risks are insignificant - is no longer defensible,” the letter adds.

Late last year, the Ninth Circuit U.S Court of Appeals ruled that the NRC was responsible for addressing the impacts of an intentional attack. The ruling -which stems from a California case involving Pacific Gas & Electric - was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but was rebuffed.

NRC officials disagree with the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation, and have said it does not apply in the Vermont Yankee case. That is what prompted Massachusetts to request a rulemaking change.

The NRC has refused to suspend the relicensure hearings while it takes up the rulemaking change. However, if the NRC were to change rules they could apply to the Vermont Yankee application and its generic environmental impact statement (GEIS).

From The Rutland Herald

MONTPELIER - The Vermont Attorney General’s office has added its voice to six other states asking federal regulators to take into account the safety of on-site storage for high-level radioactive waste when they consider a license extension at Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, among other reactors.

Monday was the deadline for public comment on the petition originally filed by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, according to Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.

Rep. Richard Marek, D-Newfane, said he had been told by Attorney General William Sorrell that the state had joined Massachusetts, asking that the NRC change its own rules on the issue. Marek had written a letter on behalf of fellow House members seeking the state’s involvement.

The Massachusetts petition seeks an assessment of the vulnerability of the spent fuel pool, and whether it is a natural target of terrorists, and it also wants the NRC to change its rules about whether the regulators can consider this issue in relicensing dockets.

Sorrell, and a deputy attorney general also working on the case, didn’t return telephone calls Monday.

Marek said that he had received the letter from Sorrell last week, alerting him and other Windham County legislators that the state had already joined the debate. Windham County legislators and anti-nuclear activists had asked for the state to join Massachusetts on the issue.

The Pilgrim nuclear plant in Massachusetts, which is also owned by Entergy Nuclear, is also seeking a 20-year extension of its original 40-year license. In the case of Vermont Yankee, that license to operate expires in 2012.

Sheehan said that his office hadn’t tallied all the public comments that had been submitted on the issue, but he said the state of California had submitted a very similar petition to the Massachusetts argument. The other states already on record with Massachusetts are New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Kentucky and Louisiana.

At issue is the safety of the highly-radioactive spent fuel, which in Vermont’s case is still kept in a deep water pool on the fifth floor of the reactor building. Entergy Nuclear is in the process of building an on-site storage facility next to the Vernon reactor, where the oldest and coolest of the old fuel will be transferred into steel and concrete casks.

Sen. Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, president pro tempore of the state Senate, said the news that Sorrell’s office had joined the debate was welcome.

Shumlin said when NRC officials met with legislators in Montpelier a couple of weeks ago, legislators were “astounded” to learn that the NRC was not considering the issue of storage of high-level radioactive waste when making a decision about extending Vermont Yankee’s license.

Shumlin said he would consider approving a 20-year extension, but only if there was an independent safety assessment of the aging reactor, as well as the issue of disposal of high-level radioactive fuel.

“Vermont would never have taken that plant if they knew that high-level waste would be stored on the banks of the Connecticut River,” Shumlin said.

If Vermont Yankee does get a license extension, he said, it should be conditioned on different areas of the state hosting some of the high-level waste since it will be mobile in the concrete and steel casks.

“We’ve had it all in Windham County now for almost 40 years,” Shumlin said, noting the entire state benefited from Yankee and should share in its liabilities.

“If we’re going to create the waste, we should share in its storage and Windham County has done its share,” he said, adding that storage should start in the state’s most populous areas.

“It is appropriate that the issue be addressed at the commission level. We believe that the plant is protected by its very strong design and also by a comprehensive security program on site, but also by the resources of the federal government,” said Robert Williams, Entergy spokesman.

Sheehan said the Massachusetts attorney general’s office has been rebuffed by the NRC and the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on several related issues regarding the relicensing of Pilgrim and Vermont Yankee, which is only a few miles from the Massachusetts border.

Marek said federal regulators told the Vermont legislators a federal waste site would be available to nuclear plant operators by 2025, but Marek said that was unlikely, given the problems encountered at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.