By DANIEL BARLOW VERMONT PRESS BUREAU
MONTPELIER – The Democratic leaders of the Vermont Legislature called on the Douglas administration Monday to reconsider its support for Entergy’s plan to sell the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to a spin-off company.
House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin said recent revelations about groundwater contamination at Vermont Yankee could double the cost to clean up the site when the reactor shuts down.
“It is not clear what the extent of the contamination is,” said Smith, a Morristown Democrat, at a Statehouse news conference Monday afternoon. “It’s also not clear what the true cost of cleaning it up will be. But it is inappropriate for us to allow Entergy to move that cost over to a different company that does not have sound finances.”
The two lawmakers also called on the state to establish a “transparent, independent process” to inform the public about the search for the leak that has contaminated a groundwater well and trench with radioactive tritium. Shumlin, a Windham County Democrat, said state officials knew about the trench filled with radioactive water at the plant for six days before alerting the public.
Shumlin told reporters last week that Entergy discovered an underground concrete trench that was filled with about 100 gallons of radioactive water with measurements of tritium, the isotope suspected of contaminating nearby groundwater, more than 100 times the federal limit.
Shumlin, a candidate for governor this year, said he heard of the tritium-filled trench through a “casual conversation with an administration official” and was frustrated that the state and Entergy knew about that discovery for nearly a week before he told reporters.
He also unveiled an Entergy document, given to him by an anonymous source at Vermont Yankee, that shows a November 2007 inspection of the underground radioactive pipes that the company told lawmakers last year did not exist.
Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell is now investigating whether Entergy officials, including Vice-President of Operations Jay Thayer, committed a crime when they told the Vermont Public Service Board that Vermont Yankee did not have these pipes, which are now suspected of being the cause of the tritium leak.
“In 2007, this plant inspected the underground pipes that we were told did not exist,” Shumlin said, adding that Vermonters can no longer trust the information that comes from the owner of the Vernon nuclear power plant because of this scandal.
The commissioner of the agency that represents consumers, David O’Brien of the Vermont Department of Public Service, defended his record on Vermont Yankee and his support for the plans to sell the facility and five other nuclear reactors to the new spinoff company, called Enexus.
Less than an hour before Shumlin and Smith held their press conference, O’Brien held his own press conference to declare that a renewable energy program jumpstarted by the Legislature last year would, in the Department’s view, increase energy costs and result in little job growth.
He said he would not reconsider the Department’s support for Enexus (O’Brien originally opposed the deal until Entergy agreed to change some terms), saying he sees the issue of decommissioning as separate from the ownership of the facility.
“We haven’t changed our position on the Enexus deal,” he said.
O’Brien also could not answer if the Department had on file schematic showing underground piping at Vermont Yankee, only saying he “rejects any notion that the Department looked the other way.” He also would not say if he believed Entergy deliberately misled the state.
“We don’t know the answer to that question,” he said.
O’Brien did say that the Department has been contacted by Sorrell’s office as part of the investigation into Entergy’s under oath comments, but was cut off from further explanation by Deputy Commissioner Steve Wark, who said they shouldn’t discuss the issue further in public.
However, lawmakers continued to press the case that Enexus – especially in light of the tritium contamination and accusations that Entergy misled the state – is a bad deal for Vermont. Shumlin said Enexus will start off billions of dollars in debt in a financial deal that is “similar to the Wall Street schemes that sank the world economy.”
Shumlin said he did not want to see Vermont in the same situation as Braidwood, Ill., a town of about 5,000 people whose groundwater is now contaminated after a number of tritium leaks from the Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station, an Exelon Corp. plant.
That company is now supplying residents with bottled water over contamination fears and the clean-up is anticipated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Shumlin said he got a phone call this past weekend from a Vernon resident who typically supports nuclear power but now is considering selling their home out of fear that the ground could be contaminated with tritium.
“We are not trying to paint a worst-case scenario, but there is history here,” Shumlin said.
This article appeared in the Rutland Herald
