In a 24-page brief to the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) April 30, 2010, Entergy and Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (ENVY) claim that their information belongs to them and to the NRC. Vermont and its intervenors do not have the right to look at information requested by intervenors, the PSB and the Department of Public Service, according to ENVY & Entergy attorneys.
"Entergy VY takes the position that the investigation itself is preempted by the NRC's federal jurisdiction,"
wrote Downs Rachlin Martin Attorney John Marshall in his MOTION TO MODIFY THE PREHEARING CONFERENCE MEMORANDUM AND TO ENLARGE THE TIME FOR ENTERGY VY TO RESPOND TO PENDING DISCOVERY REQUESTS. See the entire document below the fold.
"Discovery is needed to address the issue of preemption," wrote Sandy Levine, CLF's senior counsel, who also rejected Marshall's claim that Yankee's employees were too busy with the outage to respond to the requests.
"A company as large and well-funded as Entergy should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time," she wrote. "To the extent it is not able to do both, it should not be allowed to operate a nuclear facility in the state of Vermont."
Nowhere does federal preemption exclude Entergy and ENVY's obligation to meet NRC General Design Criteria 60 that states:
Criterion 60--Control of releases of radioactive materials to the environment. The nuclear power unit design shall include means to control suitably the release of radioactive materials in gaseous and liquid effluents and to handle radioactive solid wastes produced during normal reactor operation, including anticipated operational occurrences. Sufficient holdup capacity shall be provided for retention of gaseous and liquid effluents containing radioactive materials, particularly where unfavorable site environmental conditions can be expected to impose unusual operational limitations upon the release of such effluents to the environment.
Non-existent buried underground pipes that have leaked tritium into the Connecticut River, are none of our business according to Entergy's attorneys.
Writing for CLF, Levine stated that Entergy's request "perpetuates the continuing efforts ... to hide important information ... They are refusing to provide factual information that is necessary for the board to determine the scope of its authority."
Shut out during the shut down, as once again Entergy tries to control media access to a select few.
When independent documentary filmmaker and public television videographer Robbie Lepzer registered to film a public tour of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (VY), he expected it to be a rather standard process. After all, Entergy regularly admits the press and TV cameras for site tours. This tour, scheduled for Thursday April 29 is for members of the Public Service Board (PSB) and the media.
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Update #1
Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. (together, "Entergy VY"),have determined to allow credentialed media, including Tuming Tide Productions, to take photographs of or film the areas to be visited during the site visit.
[See complete Downs, Rachlin, Martin response to the Public Service Board in last attached document.] Turning Tide Productions is Robbie Leppzer's film company.
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Leppzer's shut out during shut down by Entergy has resulted in a PSB demand for information from Entergy as to why a journalist is not being allowed to film when other TV media is filming and has been filming. [Emphasis added.]
MEMORANDUM
To: Parties in PSB Docket No. 7600
From: Susan M. Hudson, Clerk of the Board
Re: Turning Tide Productions' Request to Film Site Visit
Date: April 27, 2010
On April 27, 2010, Robbie Leppzer sent the attached e-mail to the Public Service Board ("Board") requesting that the Board take action to allow Mr. Leppzer to bring television cameras to the site visit in Docket 7600 scheduled for Thursday, April 29. The Board requests that Entergy submit a response to Mr. Leppzer's request by noon on April 28. In particular, the Board requests Entergy to address whether Entergy is permitting news organizations to have television cameras, as Mr. Leppzer indicates. If so, Entergy should explain why Mr. Leppzer is being treated differently from those news organizations. The Board also requests that Entergy explain what, if any, restrictions on cameras are
necessary to ensure that Entergy fulfills its security and safety obligations.
Other parties may also submit comments by the same deadline.
cc: Robbie Leppzer
Leppzer has more than 30-years of documentary film making [see Leppzer's resume below the fold]. In preparation for a documentary film on the relicensing of VY, he has been filming testimony presented to the Legislature and its committees since January when discussion of both the leak and Entergy's request to relicense the nuclear plant began in earnest. Given that Vermont is the only state in the country to have the legal right to decide if VY should receive its Certificate for Public Good (CPG), it makes sense to me that someone would want to create a documentary about this subject. I also expect that Entergy would try to thwart such an effort.
At the very time Entergy is claiming a new policy of openness to Vermont State officials, boards, commissions, the legislature and the media, it has denied Leppzer permission to film the tour even though he is filming for CCTV Channnel 17 out of Burlington, VT in addition to his own documentary work. Leppzer may, as Entergy's Smith informed him, may take the tour, but without any film equipment, a predicament that is challenging for a filmmaker.
Entergy's action has once again put them in the spotlight in a negative way. After being shut out of filming, Leppzer contacted State Representative Sarah Edwards from Brattleboro, who is a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel. Edwards wrote to Entergy requesting that they reconsider their decision and give Leppzer equal access. Smith still denied Leppzer access, so at that time, Leppzer sent the entire packet of email correspondence, herein reproduced below the fold, to the PSB.
The PSB has given Entergy until noon today to explain why they are preventing Leppzer from filming.
More below the fold, including the entire email correspondence between Leppzer and Entergy's Smith.
The bill passed Tuesday evening 11-0. The full Vermont House plans to pass the bill soon and then it moves to the Senate, where lawmakers are also pledging quick action because for legislative leaders this bill is a priority.
"It is 100 percent the primary issue to protect Vermonters from having to pay the cost," said Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier.
"You have a promise to green field with not one penny in an account to accomplish that point. We now know that the waste is going to be stored there for decades if not 100 years and there is not one penny set aside to manage that waste, so that's why we need to do this bill," Klein said.
The decommissioning bill assures Vermonters that the corporate parent, whatever firm that may be, Entergy or if sold another firm, has enough money to decommission to NRC standards and also enough money to meet Vermont's more rigid greenfield requirements. This requires that the parent company post a guarantee covering decommissioning to a greenfield standard of Entergy's current estimate of $40 million. I personally believe this estimate is too low; discussion follows.
Fairewinds Associates testified on Friday April 5 to the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee regarding the discrepancy on decommissioning costs as projected by TLG Services, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Entergy. See report entitled Fairewinds Cost Comparison TLG Decommissioninghttp://www.leg.state.vt.us/JFO...
Entergy's Rob Williams just sent out the attached press release announcing that the recently labeled NRC workshop has been changed to an Entergy hosted tritium information night.
Brattleboro, Vt. -- Entergy Vermont Yankee will host a tritium information session for the local community at the Ramada Inn on Putney Road on Monday, April 12 from, 4 p.m., to 7:30 p.m. Vermont Yankee engineers who conducted the investigation will be available on a one-on-one basis for discussion of all aspects of how the tritium leak at the plant site occurred as well as how it was identified and stopped.
Jim Matteau, Executive Director of the Windham Regional Commission said he was invited and does intend to attend. Matteau said,
It's going to be Entergy telling its side of the story, and I want to hear it.
Some people have told me that they are confused since the NRC already canceled this April 12 meeting, but an NRC spokesperson informed me that this meeting
is something separate that they were already planning. We are still reviewing our public interactions and venue going forward.
Another public figure said,
I love the irony: Learn more about the leak of radioactive material at WWW.safecleanreliable. com
For me, I guess it is a matter of framing. At least that is what I call it. How many ways does one spin the fact that the underground pipes that were not buried actually began leaking at least one year before the leak was discovered. This information according to Dr. David Ahfeld, an expert in buried pipe and tank corrosion and leakage, who wrote to the state legislature just prior to the February Senate vote that the leak had been ongoing for at least one-year.
When Fairewinds Associates, Inc brought the matter of the allegedly non-existent buried underground pipes to the Legislature's attention last fall, our report was hotly criticized by Entergy. I guess it is a matter of framing because Rob Williams wrote,
While on the subject, we take issue with the entire tone of the consultant's report which leaves the impression that plant reliability is lacking at VY. Issues cited as "significant" are really routine maintenance/repair issues that are routinely handled in the normal course of business in running a steam generating plant. One fact that didn't appear at all in the reliability report was that Vermont Yankee's three-year rolling average of plant reliability is now in the top nine percent among all nuclear plants in the world.
According to the press release,
state and federal agencies that oversaw the tritium investigation have been invited to participate. Refreshments and handouts will be available.
Wow, it almost sounds like a party, except that I imagine the latest tritium science data will be missing, surely they could send some of the allegedly not unhealthful tritiated water home with guests. "Dilution is the solution to pollution," they say.
Dave Gram of the AP has the scoop on that Cesium-37 found at Vermont Yankee in February, which Entergy had tried to fob off on background radiation from 1950s nuclear tests, or Chernobyl, or anything other than that oh-so-reliable plant on the banks of the CT River (enphasis mine). Well, all I can say is "Surprise, surprise, surprise!":
The Health Department statement on Tuesday said the cesium-137 found in the Vermont Yankee soil samples was three to 12 times as high as the background levels attributed to the other causes, meaning it "appears likely the Cs-137 comes from Vermont Yankee reactor related sources."
Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said he was not surprised by the finding, and that plant officials believe the cesium can be cleaned up as part of their already planned effort to remove some of the soil around plant buildings and ship it off for treatment as low-level radioactive waste.
Two separate items in the "it would be funny but ..." category:
First, according to Susan Smallheeer over at the Rutland Herald, the new NRC resident inspector at the Vernon nuke plant should fit in easily to the Entergy corporate culture: he is one of its own former employees:
The new senior resident inspector from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission worked for Entergy Nuclear, the owner of Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor, until 2006, before he left to become a federal inspector.
But a spokesman for the NRC said David Spindler stopped working for Entergy Nuclear in 2006, well beyond the two-year hiatus federal regulations call for.
Oh, well, then, that's okay. Especially since the NRC spokesman, Neil Sheehan, added this admonishment:
"If an NRC employee faces a conflict of interest, we expect them to discuss it with their supervisors in a timely manner," he said.
Just like the NRC responded to the tritium leak "in a timely manner." Don't we all feel safer now?
Second, Ed Shamy, publisher and editor of The County Courier, a weekly paper out of Enosburg in Franklin County, has editorialized eloquently on a request for bids for a private contractor to make Vermont's license plates ... which are currently made by Vermont prisoners.
Shamy researched the Vermont prison hourly pay rate: 25 cents an hour ranging up to a max of $1.35 an hour:
The state is asking private vendors if they want to make our license plates, and how much they would charge. There could be cost savings to be had, and Vermont is looking beneath every rock and cow pie for cost savings these days.
Well, don't forget that these prisoners also get room and board, not reflected in the hourly wage.
Perhaps hiring a non-jailed Vermonter could be cheaper. Lots of us can only dream of 25 cents per hour. Another option could be a few thousand school-aged children from mainland China who are looking for work outside the fireworks factory.
Shamy's editorial was well done, and includes an explanation of what makes Vermont license plates special: debossing.
(Note: The Courier has limited online access without subscription, but Ed is working on providing a link for us to this editorial, which I'll add later if it works out. Otherwise you can read this week's free content at www.countycourier.com)
It's barely a month ago, but the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United could have a bearing on tomorrow's vote on letting Vermont Yankee's operating license expire on time.
Or maybe I should say that considerations of Citizens Unitedshould have a tremendous bearing on the vote, and here's why. You probably know what the Supreme Court did in Citizens United, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that they opened the floodgates to unlimited spending by corporations in political campaigns.
Corporations like Enexus, or Entergy, or whatever they're calling themselves to stay ahead of state scrutiny these days.
You probably get campaign solicitations from political parties every week. In fact, I just got one while I was writing this. If you're like me, whenever you get these calls you think about how important the cause is, what your budget happens to look like that week, and you decide how much you can afford to spend.
If you're Entergy, what's potentially at stake in November's election is whether they get to keep running their plant, so let's take a look at the numbers. On average, Vermont Yankee sells the electricity it generates at about a nickel a kwh, or $50 per Megawatt hour, so every hour their sales are about $31,500, and every day they're running it's about $756,000. In a year that puts their sales at about $276,000,000. Kind of a lot of money, huh?
Now, we have a state Senate (maybe) and five Democratic candidates for governor who are saying they should be required to shut down in 2012, which means shutting off the $276 million spigot. One might think it's worth a lot of money to them to stop that from happening. That's why they're buying all the full-page ads in the paper, running all the TV spots, flying their PR flack up from New Orleansto glad-hand the locals, and offering a sweetheart deal (what? Did you say bribe? I'm shocked!) if we let them keep running.
And their message? The same as Douglas's message: do nothing. They know that Douglas won't be around to carry their heavy water next year, but they can hope that Brian Dubie will follow in Douglas's footsteps, if only they can sit on the ball until November. That's why they are doing what they can to stall a legislative vote this year.
But remember Citizens United? That's the game changer in this fight. Say the Democratic candidate is Peter Shumlin, who has come out strong against relicensing. Or, for that matter, any other D, all of whom favor closing VY. And just say, just for the hell of it, that Dubie has come out in favor of relicensing. (He can't hide forever, right?)
Thanks to Citizens United, if the election in November is between a Democrat who favors shutting down VY and a Republican who favors keeping it open, how much is it worth it to Entergy to keep the plant running? Obviously not three quarters of a million a day, because that's their total sales, but definitely in the millions, right? Tens of millions? What does it cost to pay for a governor and sixteen senators?
If it's still an open question in November, we can expect to see possibly the most expensive election in Vermont history.
The vote's tomorrow, and the Senate should vote No and let VY close.
Okay...I'm going to play a hunch here and suggest that an effort may be afoot to convince our beleaguered legislators that it will be unnecessary to stick their necks out and participate in a vote on relicensing Vermont Yankee. The gist of this fanciful scenario is that, if our lawmakers can resist the impulse to bring the measure to a vote in the 2010 session, Vermont Yankee will make the first move to discontinue its relationship with Vermont, sparing everyone from the discomfort of having to "come out" against relicensing. Yeah, sure; and if you go for that one, I've got waterfront property in Death Valley that might interest you.
Update: A story in the The Rutland Herald identifies the engineer who gave the misleading responses to the Panel as David McElwee, Entergy's public liaison officer, and has VY officials admitting that they "should have been more thorough" in responding to the Public Oversight Panel's questions. The Herald quotes from an August 13 e-mail sent by McElwee to panel member Arnie Gundersen, state nuclear engineer, Uldis Vanags, and Sarah Hofmann, public advocacy director for the Department of Public Service:
As for your outstanding question on underground piping goes, Act 189 requested that an underground piping system carrying radionuclides be part of the inspection...we have none. Since this is not an item active in the review of ... recommendations, we consider this issue closed.
In a press release, Gundersen states that
The Panel was informed that there were no systems with underground piping that carry radioactivity at VY
It seems that Entergy just can't quit stepping all over its own feet in the effort to court approval for a VY license extension. In light of the recent revelation that there has been a tritium contamination of groundwater at Vermont Yankee, it appears that ENVY was less than forthcoming in its representation to the Vermont Yankee Public Oversight Panel in 2008 that there was no radioactivity in VY's underground pipe system.
Is anyone else tired of Entergy's rather lame PR push to gain support for relicensing Vermont Yankee?
If so, you will enjoy the entertaining and informative parody posted by VY challenger Fake-Rob Williams. You see, Fake-Rob Williams (a parody of VY official spokesman, Rob Williams) has discovered that the link provided on Entergy's "I Am Vermont Yankee" site for the public to post their presumably supportive comments about VY is, in fact, non-functional.
Leaping into the breach, Fake-Rob Williams has helpfully provided an alternative site for readers comments called "I Love Vermont Yankee." Against a bubblegum pink background, "I Love Vermont Yankee" echos the features on Entergy's "I am Vermont Yankee" website, offering smiling celebrity pics as stand-ins for the suspiciously homogenized representations of "actual" VY employees that appear on the Entergy site. Fake-Rob makes his own comments on Vermont Yankee; remarks that he repeatedly tried to submit on the "I am Vermont Yankee" site over the course of an entire day, finding that they NEVER appeared in the queue of that day's submissions. Fake-Rob's comments were a series of "helpful" reminders of the many embarrassing faux pas committed by VY and it's employees over the recent past.
(Bumped up, do to some fairly substantive updates below the fold. - promoted by JulieWaters)
Some time ago, I wrote about the fenceline limits at VT Yankee. Basically, we were looking at two different ways of interpreting the amount of radiation leaked by VT Yankee, one of which tried to look at the amount actually released, the other of which tried to look at how much the human body will absorb. This allowed Entergy to compare numbers under one formula, and then under another, and say it had only had a small change from one year to the next.
It's kind of like saying that someone grew around 61cm in a year, because one year they were measured in inches and the next in cm. Exact same size, but different measurement standards.
Per today's Rutland Herald, once again from Susan Smallheer:
Entergy Nuclear said the new standard would cut radiation limits by 30 percent to 40 percent.
Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said the state already had the most stringent radiation standard in the country.
"We have always committed to meet the state's 20 millirem limit not a 20 milli roentgen," he wrote in an e-mail, referring to the different measurements for radiation release versus radiation absorption.
See, here's the thing: the new ruling doesn't cut radiation limits. It eliminates a loophole that Entergy used (with the help of the Douglas administration) to bypass radiation limits. Now that there's a proposal to remove that loophole, Entergy is whining about it, and talking about their commitment, not to the actual law, but to what they think the law should be.
But the long and short of it is that this is really good news.
Missed this yesterday, so I am quoting today from yesterday's Prog Blog:
Entergy Resolution
Morgan Daybell February 9th, 2009
Yesterday, the State Committee of the Progressive Party voted unanimously to support the following resolution, modeled after the resolutions being warned across the state for town meeting day:
The State Committee of the Vermont Progressive Party requests the Vermont Legislature to:
1. Recognize that the 2% of our New England region's power grid supply that is provided by Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plantcan be replaced with a combination of local, renewable electricity and efficiency measures, along with the purchase of hydro generated electricity, and excess power already in the New England electricity market;
2. Given the viable alternatives and the risks posed by continued operation, ensure that Vermont Yankee will cease operation in March 2012, after having completed its 40 year design life by not granting approval for operation of the plant after that date and by not determining that further operation will promote the general welfare;
3. Hold the Entergy Corporation, which purchased Vermont Yankee in 2002, responsible to fully fund the plant's clean-up and decommissioning when the reactor closes, as the corporation pledged to do when it purchased Vermont Yankee.
Progressives in attendance pledged to support the town meeting resolutions, and the broader effort to close Entergy's Vernon plant in 2012.
I work as a paralegal specializing in nuclear safety litigation. What does that mean? I work with lawyers and nuclear safety experts all over the country and in Canada to hold the nuclear industry to federal and Canadian statutes and to make sure that the NRC and Canadian government are meeting their primary mission to protect public health and safety. I am also a former nuclear industry employee.
When my firm Fairewinds Associates, Inc wrote the two white papers last year that alerted the Vermont Legislature to the shortage in the decommissioning fund, my work was criticized quite heavily in the press and in public by the Douglas Administration, Commissioner O'Brien and Entergy spokespeople who vehemently denied my firm's concerns.
I worked all legislative session to help legislators understand the magnitude of the lack of money within the decommissioning fund, and while the Bill did pass the legislature, it was not veto proof. Check out the legislative record. See how your legislator voted and if they voted against the bill, ask him or her why he or she voted against protecting Vermonters from financial usury by an out of state corporation.
Did you know that Entergy makes at least $150 million in profit per year from Vermont Yankee. Quite a tidy sum to send to headquarters in Louisana, where CEO, J. Wayne Leonard earned a hefty $40,000,000 during the past five years, making him the 11th most highly paid utility executive in the country according to the May 2007 Forbes Magazine.
My concern has always been that without adequate money in the decommissioning fund, Vermonters will get stuck footing the bill.
The NRC claims,
"that if there is a shortfall in the VY decommissioning fund, Entergy is on the hook,"
according to Fair Game columnist Shay Totten in this week's Seven Days (http://www.7dvt.com/2008l-word).
"If we determine that the growth of the funds would be insufficient to properly decommission the plant when the time comes, we can require the company to address that," NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said.
May I remind you that NRC spokesperson Neil Sheehan is the same NRC spokesperson who initially told Vermonters that the cooling tower collapse, was only a slight deformity in the wood, that is until a nuclear whistleblower slipped out the infamous pictures that told Vermonters the whole story.
And ratepayers in other states like Connecticut and Massachusetts have been forced to pay the bill left behind when Connecticut Yankee and Massachusetts Yankee Rowe were decommissioned and dismantled. The NRC did not make the utilities clean up their own mess. In Connecticut, for example, the ratepayers fought a court suit to try to force payment by the utility, and they still got stuck for the $500 Million shortage.
Technicians were in the process of moving the cask from the reactor's spent fuel pool to a concrete storage pad outside the plant when the cask dropped to the floor.
The crane had operated with no problems during demonstration runs that were performed for the NRC during the past month, said Williams.
But wait: it gets better:
The fuel assemblies are being moved out of the spent fuel pool because it is has no room for any more.
Without the fuel transfer, the pool would remain full, forcing Vermont Yankee to shut down.
Sometimes I just can't believe that we rely on this stuff for anything
Is anyone else tired of Entergy's rather lame PR push to gain support for relicensing Vermont Yankee?
