Vermont Yankee nuclear plant faces last hurdle to extend federal license

Canadian Business Online: Vermont Yankee nuclear plant faces last hurdle to extend federal license
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant may have a renewed federal operating license in hand a full year before its scheduled shutdown date, though that isn't a guarantee it won't be shuttered.

The reactor's operating license expires on March 21, 2012, but a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman said Tuesday it could have that agency's permission to run for an additional 20 years as soon as next week.

The NRC's Neil Sheehan emphasized that approval isn't certain, but the agency has approved license extensions at more than 60 of the nation's 104 commercial reactors and has rejected none.

A federal license renewal doesn't guarantee smooth sailing for Vermont's only nuclear plant. Vermont is the only state in the country with a law giving its Legislature a say in a nuclear plant's relicensing. The state Senate last year voted 26-4 against allowing state utility regulators to issue a new state certificate of public good.

Legislation has been filed in both the House and Senate — the Senate bill was introduced Tuesday — to strip the Legislature of its power to decide the nuclear plant's future, but even backers were giving it little chance of passage.

Sheehan said the NRC had scheduled an "affirmation session" for Thursday afternoon at which it will review an agency panel's decision to reject an objection to the renewed license by a nuclear watchdog group.

The group, New England Coalition, had tried to raise concerns that Vermont Yankee wasn't properly managing cables submerged in water in underground tunnels. But the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled that the coalition's objection was filed too late and rejected it.

Sheehan said Tuesday that if the commission upholds that ruling, it would likely give the agency's staff the OK to issue a license renewal to Vermont Yankee and its owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. Sheehan said that could happen "within a matter of days."

Raymond Shadis, technical adviser with the coalition, said Tuesday the group plans to fight a final OK from the NRC for Vermont Yankee to continue operating. He said the group's objection was rejected because the time period for making public comments had expired in September, but that Entergy had filed three amendments to its license renewal application since then.

Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said the company was encouraged apparently to be coming to the end of a license renewal application process that began in 2006.

"It's another milestone, another part of the journey that started in 2006 and it's good news," Smith said.

The length of the application review has drawn the ire of some members of Congress. Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, both Republicans, recently wrote to the NRC complaining that license renewals that drew public opposition were taking too long.