The Vermont Public Utility Commission has scheduled a status conference for 1:30 p.m. Friday regarding talks on the proposed sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
The conference date aligns with the request from the parties in their Feb. 16 motion, but two days later than had been requested earlier in the month. A status update on the discussions is due ahead of then to the commission, the state regulator that must approve sale of the retired plant from owner Entergy to NorthStar Group Services.
The settlement talks involve Entergy, NorthStar, three state agencies, and other mostly nongovernmental entities authorized to intervene in the commission’s review of the ownership transfer announced in 2016. While the parties largely have not publicly discussed the matters being negotiated, they are known to include a new financial assurance proposal from the companies and site restoration of the Vermont Yankee property.
“The Parties … have made substantial progress toward finalizing an agreement that some or all of the Parties may join that addresses financial assurances that the Joint Petitioners would provide in connection with the transaction proposed in the Joint Petition and that establishes proposed site restoration standards that would apply to NorthStar’s decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station site,” according a document filed on Feb. 9 with the Vermont PUC.
Vermont Yankee closed in December 2014 after more than four decades of operations. Entergy wants to sell the reactor site to NorthStar this year for $1,000. NorthStar would then decommission the plant and manage its spent fuel, keeping some portion of the site’s decommissioning trust fund when its work is done.
NorthStar says it can complete decommissioning as early as 2026 at a cost of just over $811 million, but other parties have expressed concern about its financial ability to meet that target.