While Vermont officials demanded full disclosure and discussed fining
Entergy Nuclear, the Louisiana company that owns the 40-year-old plant,
legislators now have to decide how to proceed with Entergy's request to
relicense the plant for another 20 years.
Currently the plant's license is set to expire in 2012. Vermont is the
only state in the country that allows relicensing to be determined by
the Legislature rather than Vermont Department of Public Service and/or
the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The relicensing issue is complicated by the fact that the
decommissioning fund that Entergy Nuclear has to disassemble the plant
and clean up the site is woefully short of the funds needed to do so
even if it were in pristine operating condition -- rather than failing,
leaking and dangerous.
This is a no-win situation for Vermonters, regardless of whether
legislators or utility regulators make the decision on relicensing. If
the plant is shut down on schedule in 2012, the decommissioning funds
are not in hand, and who knows now how much more it will cost to
decommission the plant in light of this new information?
If the plant is relicensed -- implausible as that may seem -- serious
doubts will remain about its safety as well as the trustworthiness of
its operators. Relicensing the plant for another two decades would
leave Vermont reliant on an aging and ill-maintained and potentially
toxic power source.
Shutting down the plant in 2012 will force the state to scramble for
the power it is producing, but perhaps that is better than the
alternative. At least that would lead to serious emphasis on renewable
energy sources.
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