The
legal debate over the future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is heating up at
federal appeals court and at the state Public Service Board. The
state this week laid out a detailed case for why the plant should not get a new
20 year state permit to operate.
At the urging of federal regulators, technicians at Vermont Yankee are
inspecting the plant to assess risk from severe floods and earthquakes. The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has required nuclear plant operators to do a
series of inspections following the earthquake and tsunami that crippled
reactors in Japan.
Officials from the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be in Brattleboro today to talk about their annual safety assessment of
the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
Sen. Bernie Sanders says he’s "extremely
disappointed" that the chairman of the federal Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, who frequently clashed with other members as he pushed for reforms
in the nuclear industry, has announced his resignation.
In a report released Monday morning, a special task force calls for the creation of an economic growth and
mitigation
program to determine how to absorb the economic impact when Vermont Yankee
closes.
In the first day of a case that could decide whether a state can deny the license extension of an operating nuclear power plant, an attorney for the Entergy Corporation said Thursday that jurisdiction should fall to federal regulators.
The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it won’t intervene in the lawsuit against
the state over the continued operation of the Vermont Yankee plant. Yankee
owner Entergy wants a court to rule that only the federal government has the right
to control Yankee’s future operation. But
the NRC says Vermont has a regulatory role as well.
Two
dozen nuclear power plants around the country have leaked radioactive tritium
into groundwater. And now, a destroyed oil well is leaking oil into the waters
of the Gulf of Mexico. Senator Bernie Sanders says it’s enough to demand new
thinking on national energy policy.