Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
11/14/2014
Entergy and the state of Vermont are at odds over Vermont Yankee’s emergency preparedness plan, especially the shutdown of the emergency response data system (ERDS), but a resolution arbitrated by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will not occur until December, Board Chairman E. Roy Hawkens said last week. Vermont has alleged that Entergy’s plan for emergency preparedness following its shutdown of the plant would eliminate the necessary staff to work the ERDS, a radiological monitoring system that gives data to the state and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “The Vermont Yankee ERDS provides a clear safety benefit that would necessarily touch on public health, safety and environmental concerns embodied in the State’s Radiological Emergency Response Plan (“RERP”) if discontinued,” the state said in a filing. “State access to ERDS data is a cornerstone of both the Vermont Yankee Emergency Plan and the RERP, and provides a substantial benefit recognized by the NRC for over twenty years.”
Entergy, for its part, maintained its license amendment request (LAR) to its plan does not eliminate the system, rather it says it would not be operational, so it would not be involved in its staffing analysis. “The LAR proposes to ‘revise the site emergency plan for the permanently defueled condition to reflect changes in the on-shift staffing and Emergency Response Organization staffing,’” Entergy said in a response filing. “It does not request permission to stop transmitting plant data to the NRC via the ERDS. Rather, as part of the analysis that Entergy submitted with the LAR to show that the proposed staffing reductions would not reduce the effectiveness of the emergency plan, Entergy merely stated that: ‘The VY Emergency Response Data System (ERDS) link to the NRC will not be operational in a permanently shut down and defueled condition. The task of ERDS activation is therefore not included as an on-shift task requiring evaluation as part of this Staffing analysis.’”
Second Concrete Pad for Spent Fuel Storage Delayed
Meanwhile, Vermont Yankee hit a delay last month in its efforts to construct a second concrete pad to host dry cask storage containers. As part of the agreement between the state of Vermont and Entergy to guarantee an as-soon-as-possible decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee station, Entergy had pledged to move the spent nuclear fuel to dry casks by the end of 2020. According to the utility, more studies are needed to make sure the location is safe. “There has been a delay in the process to finalize the design for the second ISFSI storage pad, due to the need to conduct additional soil analyses,” Entergy spokesman Martin Cohn said this week. “The structural and seismic design of the storage pad will need to be revised to take the results of these analyses into account. Even with this delay, however, we still expect to be able to meet the planned 2019-2020 dry cask loading schedule that is assumed in the recently-issued Site Assessment Study, assuming that the Certificate of Public Good can be issued by mid-2016.”
Entergy is seeking a Certificate of Public Good from Vermont’s PSB that would enable construction to begin. Should regulatory approval move forward as planned, Entergy said, the new pad could be completed by 2017. Construction funds for the new pad would come from Vermont Yankee’s decommissioning funds. Entergy said it would seek an exemption from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that would enable Vermont Yankee to tap into that fund for spent fuel pool management, similar to the exemptions granted to the Kewaunee Power Station in Wisconsin and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California.
