Meeting on Entergy Sale of Vermont Yankee, December 1

Vermont Yankee and NorthStar and Decommissioning

Events are moving fast in the world of decommissioning decisions about Vermont Yankee.

Entergy announced that it hoped to sell Vermont Yankee to NorthStar, which is partnered with Waste Control Specialists for the decommissioning job. Waste Control Specialists already handle all the low-level radioactive waste for Vermont and Vermont Yankee. Waste Control Specialists have also applied to be an interim storage facility for high-level waste.

Dry cask

The sale of Vermont Yankee to NorthStar is intended to speed up the decomm process by decades.  I discussed the possible sale in a previous blog post.

But wait, there's more!

And then it gets complicated:

• Almost as soon as the proposed Vermont Yankee-NorthStar deal was announced, EnergySolutions announced that it hopes to buy Waste Control Specialists.  EnergySolutions is the decomm company that is decommissioning the Zion plants, among other things.
• Almost as soon as the EnergySolutions-Waste Control merger plan was announced, the Department of Justice sued to block the merger, saying such a merger would combine the only low-level waste disposal facilities for 36 states, and therefore eliminate competition and raise prices. 
• Almost as soon....oh well, getting on with it....EnergySolutions issued a press release saying that it would fight the Department of Justice suit.

But wait, there's less!

Richard Saudek is a Vermont attorney who previously served as Chairman of the Vermont Public Service Board, and as Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service.  In other words, he is very knowledgeable  about utility issues in Vermont.  In a recent article that appeared in several local papers, Susan Smallheer reported:  Richard Saudek....said he didn’t think the anti-trust suit would have an effect on the proposed sale.

In other words, unless you own stock in EnergySolutions or Waste Control Specialists, the merger and the Department of Justice lawsuit and so forth.... may well be much ado about nothing.

Meanwhile, there's a meeting

The Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizen's Advisory Panel (NDCAP) will meet on the evening of  December 1 in Brattleboro. The main item on the agenda is the possible sale of Vermont Yankee to NorthStar.  Senior executives of Entergy and NorthStar will make presentations.  If you cannot attend the meeting in person, you can sign up in advance to attend it as a webinar.

For more information about NorthStar itself, I recommend this well-referenced blog post by Guy Page of VTEP, which describes many of NorthStar's previous decommissioning projects.

It turns out I won't be going to the NDCAP meeting, due to a commitment to be at a ISO-NE Consumer Liaison Group meeting the same day.  I think the NDCAP meeting will be very interesting, and I trust my friends to give me a full report.