The parties to the planned sale of the retired Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant hope to secure state regulatory approval within a month after the federal government signs off on the deal, according to a filing this week.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to decide sometime in the third quarter of this year whether to approve the license transfer for the facility from current owner Entergy to prospective buyer NorthStar Group Services. The Vermont Public Utility Commission must also rule that the sale is in the public good for it to proceed.
In a filing with the state commission on Monday, the “Joint Petitioners” asked for a ruling no more than 30 days following notification of the NRC decision. The companies hope to complete the $1,000 transaction by the end of 2018.
“We believe it makes sense for the PUC to wait to see the NRC decision,” NorthStar CEO Scott State told RadWaste Monitor by email Thursday. “For example, if the NRC were to raise any new issues or impose any conditions on the transaction, the PUC would likely want to take such issues or conditions into account in its decision.”
The two companies still intend to close the deal by Dec. 31, Michael Twomey, vice president for external affairs at Entergy Wholesale Commodities, said by email. Should that fail to happen, their sale agreement gives Entergy and NorthStar until June 30, 2019, to seal the transaction.
Entergy closed the single-reactor power plant in 2014, and in 2016 proposed to sell the facility to NorthStar. If the sale goes through, NorthStar would be responsible for decommissioning the plant and management of its spent fuel. It says it can complete decommissioning as early as 2026 at a cost of about $811 million. The New York City-based company would keep some portion of the site decommissioning trust fund once the work is done. The fund was valued at $555.7 million as of May 31, along with $31.6 million in a separate site restoration fund. The companies also expect the federal government will make some liability payments for the Energy Department’s failure to meet its Jan. 31, 1998, legal deadline to begin removing spent nuclear fuel from U.S. power reactors.
NorthStar and Entergy, along with a number of Vermont government and nongovernmental bodies, in March agreed to a memorandum of understanding that established financial and site remediation terms for the deal. Any party was allowed to withdraw from the MOU if the Public Utility Commission does not rule on the sale by July 31.
Given their request to the commission, the companies pledged in their filing not to withdraw from the MOU any earlier than Sept. 28.
“The parties chose to push the date back two months to accommodate the additional time it now appears will be required in the regulatory process,” according to State. “If for some unusual circumstance, we have not received decisions from the NRC and VPUC at that date, we will consider the viability of continuing this process.”
A spokesman for the NRC said Wednesday there was no update on its schedule for reviewing the plant’s license transfer. The Vermont Public Utility Commission “has not yet made a determination related to any delay in the schedule pending an NRC ruling on the license transfer,” according to Deputy Clerk Holly Anderson.
This week’s filing from Entergy and NorthStar was among a flurry of briefs submitted to the VPUC in recent weeks by the parties to its review of the sale.
The Conservation Law Foundation, the only party not to sign on to the memorandum of understanding, continues to oppose the deal as “financially unsound.” It argues, for example, that Entergy is seeking to avoid any responsibility for decommissioning Vermont Yankee by offloading it to NorthStar.
“Joint Petitioners and others advance a far too narrow narrative by suggesting the proposal should be approved simply because it avoids a “status quo” that would leave the site without remediation for up to sixty years,” the Boston-based environmental organization said in a June 25 brief to the commission. “As shown in CLF’s initial brief, this is a false choice. The Commission should not accept a bad deal just because it is quick, or because that is what is currently being offered. Rejecting this proposal does not foreclose a better proposal from coming forward.”
In their own briefs, the other organizations rejected the criticisms levied by the Conservation Law Foundation and said they want the sale and cleanup to proceed as planned.
The request to reject the deal “is unwarranted as the MOU does not let Entergy or any other responsible party off the hook for releases of non-radiological contamination or from the obligations to investigate and remediate such contamination that otherwise exists under 10 V.S.A. chapter 159,” according to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.
