It’s too little and too late to prevent Vermont Yankee from continuing to operate past it’s designed-for lifetime, but it seems that the NRC is finally being forced to reconsider its position on nuclear waste:
One has to wonder whether this decision will have any impact on the ongoing Public Service Board review of Yankee’s extended license, but it seems unlikely that the NRC will budge on it’s own position:
But this I found particularly intriguing: voices representing the 23 organizations that collectively mounted the challenge against previous nuclear waste storage standards seem to agree that the possibility that the NRC will be forced to finally resolve the waste issue, is a game-changing conundrum.
David Lochbaum of the Nuclear Safety Project of the Union of Concerned Scientists observes that
The NRC almost has to decide that on-site spent fuel pool storage is acceptable, but what on Earth would be done if the NRC determined it was unacceptable?”
Speaking to Energy Matters, Peter Bradford of the Vermont Law School ventured that, should existing NRC storage standards be overturned, there might in fact be grounds for the state to demand VY’s license renewal be reconsidered:
it would not be a frivolous challenge. The industry will argue that until the court decision, the NRC’s Waste Confidence framework was valid. And, therefore, the actions that it took using the Waste Confidence policy were sufficient…On the other hand, people take the view that it is a simplistic defense and an updated form of the Waste Confidence Rule is not valid and, therefor, every action they took under that umbrella is vitiated. I don’t know how the courts are going to sort that one out.”
This gives Entergy something to worry about other than those pesky tritium leaks that continue to crop up here and there throughout their operations, despite assurances back in 2010 that tritium leaks were a thing of the past
I don’t know about you, but when Entergy has to worry, I sleep better at night.