The Vermont Public Utility Commission (PUC) on Tuesday canceled a public hearing and set of evidentiary hearings in its review of the proposed sale of the retired Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
The move is intended to give the various parties to the process time to review and discuss a revised financial assurance proposal for the deal from plant owner Entergy and prospective buyer NorthStar Group Services. No new dates were posted Tuesday for the second and final PUC public hearing on the sale, which had been scheduled for Thursday in Brattleboro; the pre-evidentiary hearing conference, previously due for Friday at the PUC hearing room in Montpelier; and the evidentiary hearings, no longer planned for Jan. 22 to Feb. 2.
‘All events will be rescheduled as soon as possible and notices will be issued,” according to the PUC notice. In a procedural order issued on Jan. 12, the commission said the public hearing would tentatively be rescheduled to Feb. 8, assuming the space in Brattleboro is available.
A new status report on the discussions has also been added to the PUC schedule, for Jan. 25 in Montpelier.
Details of the updated financial assurance proposal have not been released.
Three state agencies authorized to participate in the review – the Department of Public Service, Agency of Natural Resources, and Attorney General’s Office – last week requested the delay “to allow negotiations to continue and to ensure that all interested parties have enough time to consider the proposal,” according to a Jan. 12 procedural order from the commission. Entergy and NorthStar opposed the request, calling instead that the evidentiary hearings begin one week later than planned and that the public hearing proceed as scheduled or on Jan. 29.
Vermont Yankee closed in December 2014 following more than four decades of operations. The state Public Utility Commission, along with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, must approve the ownership transfer. The companies hope to seal the $1,000 deal by the end of 2018, after which NorthStar would be in charge of decommissioning and spent fuel management at the plant.
NorthStar says it can finish decommissioning as early as 2026 at a cost of $811.5 million, saving decades and millions of dollars from the timeline laid out by Entergy for its own cleanup plan. It would retain some portion of the trust fund for decommissioning when its work is complete. The trust fund held more than $580 million in late 2017.
However, the state agencies and other intervening parties, which include nongovernmental environmental organizations and Native American tribes, have questioned the company’s financial wherewithal to carry out the work.
Separately, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact for a request from Entergy for exemptions related to storage of spent fuel at Vermont Yankee.
Following the Jan. 11 finding, the last step in the process is completion of a safety review of the request, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said by email Wednesday. “We anticipate that the safety review will be issued by the end of this month. The issuance of the safety review would represent the end of our review of the exemption request.”
In May 2017, Entergy requested a multipart exemption from a certificate of compliance for Holtec International’s HI-STORM 100 dry-cask system for spent nuclear reactor fuel, which is being used for on-site dry storage of all Vermont Yankee used fuel assemblies.
If the exemption is approved, Entergy would be authorized to employ an “optional regionalized loading pattern” for the multipurpose canisters used in the HI-STORM 100 system; load fuel cooled for no less than two years into the canister, rather than the otherwise mandatory three-year cooling period; and ready a per-cell maximum average burnup limit of 65,000 megawatt days per metric ton of uranium.
NRC staff found that the exemption would produce environmental effects “no greater” than those already cited in the agency environmental assessment for the HI-STORM 100 system itself.
“This change would allow the loading of fuel assemblies from the plant’s final operating cycle and thereby allow the completion of the transfer of all fuel from the spent fuel pool to dry cask storage by late 2018,” Sheehan said. “The exemption calls for the placement of older fuel on the periphery of the dry cask storage basket to act as shielding for the newer, hotter spent fuel.”
Thirteen casks were already in place on the plant’s independent spent fuel storage installation. Another 23 casks have been placed on the storage pad since the current loading campaign began, according to Michael Twomey, vice president for external affairs at Entergy Wholesale Commodities. The remaining casks are expected to be in place by the close of this year.
