Even If Vermont Yankee Wins the Lawsuit, Opponents Plan Direct Action to Shut It Down, But They Don't Commit Arson

This is a Youtube of a recent concert in Brattleboro. The concert was the main event at the Positively Charged Music Festival. The purpose of the festival is to kick off a citizen effort to be sure Vermont Yankee closes in March, as reported in the Brattleboro Commons. In that article, Dan DeWalt, the concert organizer, describes the current lawsuit as a blatant attempt by Entergy Nuclear of Louisiana to use the right-leaning federal court system to usurp Vermont law.

Well, so much for the Constitution and the balance of powers.

If you want to hear DeWalt's plans for Vermont Yankee, move the slider to about the 4 minute mark and listen. Amusingly, he talks about the recent demonstration at Vermont Yankee, and states that some people knew and some people didn't know about the activists who were arrested at that day. He doesn't note that the activists got very little publicity because they chose to hold a demonstration and be arrested the first day after the hurricane was over. Reporters and first responders were busy elsewhere! That day, first responders were evacuating people from dangerous situations, bringing supplies to areas that were cut off, and so forth. These activists made sure that some first responders were kept busy at the plant, arresting them.

Well, so much for caring about what happens to other people.

DeWalt and other activists also told about their plans in an early-summer article in my local paper, the Valley News.

What This Is About. What This Is NOT About.

This is about the fact that some plant opponents will keep up their activities no matter what. Neither law nor hurricanes will deter them from anti-Vermont Yankee activities. In response to this, plant supporters must encourage the rule of law, and must continue to be visible and present. In other words, we must write more letters to the editor and hold more rallies!

This is not about blaming plant opponents for the recent arson fires at the plant headquarters. Every plant opponent spoke out against arson in a recent Brattleboro Reformer article, and I believe them. We will have to wait for the investigation to find out who did it. Free speech against the plant is free speech. Arson is arson. Very very different. There's also a campaign of non-violent direct action to close Vermont Yankee, complete with an Action Camp for training. I don't think they train people to commit arson!

We also have to guard against the situation I might call: "The Usual Suspects." After the Oklahoma City bombing, many people were sure that some Islamic group had done it. Actually, of course, it was a home-grown terrorist, Timothy McVeigh. Similarly, in this arson case, despite all the heated rhetoric against the plant, I suspect that the person who did it was some odd and disgruntled person. I don't think this person was connected to the opponent organizations. Hopefully, the investigation will find out who did it, and lay to rest any knee-jerk accusations.

Just like the lawsuit outcome, at this point...we must simply await events.

No Criminal Charges: The Vermont Attorney General Announces Conclusions About Entergy

Today, William Sorrell announced that he was not filing criminal charges against Entergy. He announced this with as much anti-Entergy innuendo as he could manage. While newspapers describe a person caught red-handed as the "alleged" murderer, Sorrell speaks as if he is sure that Entergy is guilty of a crime, but he just couldn't find the evidence.

None of this innocent-until-proven-guilty stuff for Sorrell. He explains that perjury is SO hard to prove, he lacks "the smoking gun evidence"... "to prove that this untrustworthy behavior was criminal," and so forth. He goes on to say that the "active phase of the investigation" is over, "more evidence" may come to light in the future allowing him to file criminal charges against Entergy.

You can watch the whole thing on the video above; I don't have to repeat it here.

Sorrell's short report is also available. There's no new information in the report, as far as I can tell. If you want, you can compare it against the other three reports exonerating Entergy. (You can find links to those reports in my previous blog post.) Frankly, why bother? I have better things to do with my time than check whether, in 17 months of investigations, Sorrell found an email that I had not seen before.

Also, whatever emails Sorrell includes, he concludes that he does not have evidence to file criminal charges.

My Smoking Gun About Sorrell

According to AP, Shumlin "respected Sorrell's conclusions." Then Shumlin took his usual cracks at "Entergy Louisiana" whose "pattern of misinformation" is "not how we expect businesses to act here in Vermont."

Speaking of misinformation, how is a Vermont Attorney General supposed to act? I believe I have a smoking gun about serious inconsistencies in Mr. Sorrell's statements about the investigation.

Sorrell wants to convince us of two things, which are basically contradictory. He wants the people of Vermont to believe:

• He did a thorough, lengthy investigation (17 months, millions of pages of documents, interviews, etc.)
• His investigation cost the taxpayers very little money.

In his press conference, Sorrell declares that both these things are true, despite the obvious contradictions. He describes a year and half of legal investigations of a major company, in a complicated situation....but the whole thing cost---wait for it---$100,000.

That's right. As far as I can tell, $100,000 per year is less than a full-time State's Attorney would receive. (I moused around the Vermont state job board to determine this.)

How did Sorrell do such a lengthy investigation and spend so little money? Did he charge-back the investigation to Entergy somehow? I don't think governments can charge people or companies for investigating them. Governments can certainly charge fines, but that implies a trial and conviction.

There's a smoking gun here. Sorrell isn't saying everything about his investigation. In my opinion, this $100,000 number is part of Sorrell's pattern of misleading the people of Vermont. I'm a taxpayer in this state, and I don't like it.

Update: I recommend the post The Entergy Investigation by John McClaughry of the Ethan Allen Institute, newly posted at Vermont Tiger. In full disclosure, the Energy Education Project I head is part of the Ethan Allen Institute.

Vermont Yankee, the Vermont Attorney General, and the Completely Political Timing of Lawsuits

The Attorney General of Vermont, William Sorrell, is in charge of the state's defense against the Entergy lawsuit. Entergy filed for an injunction to prevent the state from shutting down the plant while the lawsuit is ongoing. The injunction hearings were June 23 and 24. At the end of the hearings, Judge Murtha said he wouldn't rule on the injunction before the July 4 weekend, though Sorrell doesn't expect the judge to rule until mid-July.

So, one might expect that we would all sit back and wait for the ruling?

Of course not. Not when Sorrell can muddy the waters by possibly bringing a criminal charge against Entergy, based on incidents that occurred approximately two years ago, and were thoroughly investigated more than a year ago.

Judges Read the Paper, Too

Last Tuesday, Terri Hallenbeck of the Burlington Free Press wrote that there would be an "announcement about whether or not there will be criminal charges filed against Vermont Yankee." Sorrell told Hallenbeck that the announcement would be made Thursday or Friday (just past) or this coming Wednesday or Thursday. Just in time to influence Judge Murtha.

Sorrell did not say whether there would actually be criminal charges: just that he would release the results of his investigation.

My Own Investigation

I have a blog post that is a year old, from June 2010, in which I report that the NRC says they received accurate information from Entergy.

What else was going on last summer? In May 2010, I described the extensive legal review of Entergy communications. This review, ordered by the Public Service Board, cleared Entergy of deliberately misleading anyone.

Or let's look at the to the Public Oversight Panel (POP) supplemental report, signed by Arnie Gundersen, no less, and issued in July 2010 of last year. This review was ordered by the Vermont Legislature. The POP also concluded that Entergy had not deliberately lied to anyone. Here's a quote from page 13

On the information presently available to us, we conclude that the first category (leading to NSA and Public Oversight Panel conclusions to the effect that no underground piping carrying radionuclides existed at Vermont Yankee) does not appear to have resulted from any deliberate effort to mislead on Entergy’s part.

And a quote from page 16

As noted earlier, the original error concerning the presence of underground piping does not appear to have resulted from a deliberate effort on Entergy’s part to mislead NSA or the Panel. We have not found other erroneous statements in our 2009 report. Nothing we have reviewed causes us to believe that other information from Entergy contains false statements.

Okay. Last summer. A year ago. Three reports (NRC, Public Service Board-ordered legal investigation, Legislative-ordered Public Oversight Panel). All investigated whether Entergy had lied. All cleared Entergy.

Last Year, This Year, All Around the Town

Three investigations cleared Entergy of lying by midsummer last year. Why is Sorrell making announcements about his investigation right now? A year later? While a judge is deliberating about the injunction?

What do you think?

• If Sorrell brings criminal charges against Entergy, he muddies the water and makes Entergy look bad, even though Sorrell will undoubtedly lose in court later.
• If Sorrell doesn't bring charges, but says that there was almost-enough evidence to bring charges, but not-quite-enough, he taints Entergy by innuendo.

This whole exercise is win-win for Sorrell.

Unless, of course, Judge Murtha is wise enough to notice when someone is pounding on the table. There's an old legal aphorism that goes: "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table."

Sorrell is acting as if Judge Murtha is an inexperienced fool who will be swayed by this sort of grandstanding. I think Sorrell is wrong. I don't think a person becomes a federal judge while remaining that naive.

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Photo of protesters outside of Brattleboro Court house June 23, courtesy of Howard Shaffer. Bob Bady of Safe and Green Campaign in center of picture.

Picture of Khrushchev supposedly pounding his shoe on the table at U.N. in 1960. According to Wikipedia, this photo is a fake. Apparently, Khrushchev did pound his fists on the table at that U.N. meeting, but not his shoes. There's no available picture of Khrushchev pounding his fists.