The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday denied two appeals from the state of Vermont, where officials have argued the federal agency wrongly approved emergency planning zone exemptions at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station without allowing state input.
The NRC in December granted plant owner Entergy a license amendment and subsequent emergency planning exemptions, allowing Vermont Yankee’s 10-mile emergency planning zone to shrink to within the site’s boundaries starting in April of this year, about 15 months after the plant’s 2014 shutdown. The exemptions also meant Entergy did not have to pay millions to surrounding jurisdictions for future emergency planning and groundwater monitoring.
The Vermont Attorney General’s Office submitted comments arguing that Entergy maintain its 10-mile emergency planning zone, comments it said were never admitted to the commission when it issued the exemption. Vermont subsequently requested that the NRC allow public input on both Entergy’s license amendment request and exemption request through a public hearing. Thursday’s NRC order denied Vermont on both fronts.
“These are important matters, and this is an issue that is vitally important to the local communities, and one that I think the NRC has not been listening as much as it should to what local communities expect from even these decommissioned plants,” Vermont Assistant Attorney General Kyle Landis-Marinello said in a telephone interview Thursday.
The first board to deny Vermont’s request, NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP), found that while license amendment applications provide opportunity for public input under the Atomic Energy Act, exemption requests are not among the listed actions subject to a hearing under the act. In Thursday’s order, NRC stated: “We find that Vermont has not raised an admissible contention, and we therefore affirm the Board’s decision denying the hearing request.”
Commissioner Kristine Svinicki wrote in a separate opinion that she fully supports the NRC order, stating that while Vermont’s contentions are “germane to the exemption,” they are not germane to the licensing proceeding, which dictates the scope of the decision. In other words, the scope of the licensing amendment proceeding supersedes that of the exemption request.
“Ignoring this distinction would elevate form over substance and allow a petitioner to raise wide-ranging challenges to an exemption request, which the Commission has never allowed, based on the happenstance of a temporal connection between an exemption request and a following license amendment request,” Svinicki wrote.
Commissioner Jeff Baran, in his own opinion, agreed with the commission that the exemption request is sufficiently related to the license amendment request. However, he disagreed with the portion of Thursday’s decision that addressed the admissibility of Vermont’s contentions, as well as the portion upholding NRC approval of the exemption request. The ASLBP, he argued, had a limited inquiry into whether Vermont’s challenge was admissible, given that the NRC had already approved the exemption. Baran suggested remanding Vermont’s contentions back to the ASLBP to make a determination on admissibility.
Landis-Marinello said that while Vermont is disappointed in the ultimate decision, he’s glad the NRC agreed with the state that the exemption request and licensing action are related. He said this strengthens the argument that public input is warranted in the matter. He added that his office is still digesting the decision, and that an appeal is always possible, though not certain.
Entergy spokesman Marty Cohn said in a statement Thursday: “We are pleased with the NRC’s decision today, which denied the State’s appeals related to Vermont Yankee’s revised emergency plan. Entergy Vermont Yankee remains committed to the safe and efficient decommissioning of Vermont Yankee and adhering to all applicable NRC regulations.”
Entergy has opted for SAFSTOR decommissioning at Vermont Yankee, meaning the company has until 2074 to complete the project.
