The Vermont Public Utility Commission this week issued a new schedule that extends by several months its review of the planned sale of the shuttered Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station from owner Entergy to decommissioning specialist NorthStar Group Services.
The schedule updates specific dates for document filings and hearings through the week of Jan. 29, 2018. However, some activities by parties to the sale are not yet scheduled, and the plan does not say when the commission will decide whether to approve the deal.
Entergy and NorthStar are the joint petitioners to the sale of the nuclear power plant that closed in 2014, which they hope to wrap up next year. NorthStar would then be responsible for decommissioning Vermont Yankee and management of its spent reactor fuel until the Department of Energy finally meets its legal obligation to build a permanent repository for U.S. commercial and defense nuclear waste.
The Vermont Public Service Department requested in May that the PUC extend the discovery process, in which organizations authorized to intervene in the review are seeking access to documents from the two companies, according to Joseph Lynch, Entergy senior government affairs manager for decommissioning. The commission agreed, after which Entergy and NorthStar last week asked for a revised schedule.
The majority of the outside intervenors in the sale did not object to the update, the Public Utility Commission said in a July 24 procedural order. These include the state Attorney General’s Office and Agency of Natural Resources, the nongovernmental New England Coalition and Conservation Law Foundation, and the Elnu Abenaki Tribe. A handful of others did not reply or were still considering the update.
“The schedule has been revised in response to the discovery process extending out beyond initial expectations. All of the dates in the schedule were moved to account for a nearly three-month discovery production period by Joint Petitioners that concluded last week, Stephanie Hoffman, special counsel for the Vermont Department of Public Service, said by email Tuesday. “The State Agencies to this docket aimed to preserve the same time periods for review that were provided in the original schedule. All parties consented to the new schedule before it was submitted to the Commission.”
The next scheduled milestone is now the Aug. 3 deadline for the petitioners to file their responses to certain requests in the discovery process, followed by initial testimony from non-party petitioners on Aug. 30. Depositions are scheduled from Oct. 2 to 13 and Jan. 8 to 18. The commission has scheduled its second public hearing on the proposed sale for Jan 4 in the town of Vernon, followed by a pre-technical hearing conference in Montpelier on Jan. 19. Technical hearing will be held during the week of Jan. 22, along with the following week if needed.
In an earlier scheduling document, issued in February, the commission (then still called the Vermont Public Service Board) had depositions scheduled for June and September, with the public hearing in September and the technical hearings the following month.
NorthStar has said it hopes the three-member Public Utility Commission will issue its ruling by the first quarter of 2018, but Hoffman said the panel has not committed to any specific date for its decision. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission must also approve the transfer of Vermont Yankee’s license.
NorthStar would receive a $1,000 payment upon completion of the sale, but would keep roughly half of whatever remains in the plant’s decommissioning trust fund when cleanup is completed – which the New York City company says could happen as early as 2026 at a cost of $811.5 million and $30.6 million in pre-closing costs. As of June 30, there was just under $571 million in Vermont Yankee’s decommissioning trust fund, and another $24 million in a separate site restoration trust.
Separately, Entergy and NorthStar this week filed an objection to a request from the New England Coalition to intervene in the NRC’s review of the license transfer application. It filed a similar response to the state of Vermont’s intervention request on July 10.
In the latest document, the companies dismissed both of the New England Coalition’s contentions against the current license transfer application: that it does not feature an environmental report on possible radiological contamination at Vermont Yankee, and that NorthStar has not proven it has the financing to carry out decommissioning and spent fuel storage at the plant.
The first contention is “unfounded” and outside the scope of the NRC staff review of the application, while the second “lacks factual support and fails to controvert any portion of the Application,” according to NorthStar and Entergy.
The New England Coalition “has not proffered a contention that satisfies the contention admissibility requirements in 10 C.F.R. § 2.309(f)(1),” their response says. “It also has not demonstrated standing to intervene in this proceeding either as a matter of right or as a matter of discretion under 10 C.F.R. § 2.309(d) and (e). Therefore, the Commission should reject NEC’s Petition in its entirety.”
