VERNON, Vt. — Among provisions in the proposed sale of Entergy Nuclear’s Vermont Yankee to NorthStar Group Services is allowing the new owner to dispose of concrete rubble from the building on the site.
It’s a provision to which the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution — an intervenor in the shuttered Vernon nuclear plant site’s proposed sale — has objected in a recent filing with the Vermont Public Service Board.
A motion filed last week with the VPSB seeks affirmation of the formal Board Orders, issued in 2002 and 2014, discouraging onsite disposal of the non-radioactive material.
The motion seeks to “put judicial teeth” into memoranda of understanding between the state and Entergy Corp., as Entergy bought the plant and renewed its operating permits.
Those memoranda contain an agreement to work toward no on-site burial of concrete demolition debris, a practice termed “rubblization.”
The Public Service Board and federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission are reviewing the proposed license transfer as a precursor for New York-based NorthStar to purchase the plant, which closed in December 2014.
NorthStar, in its application to the VPSB for a needed state Certificate of Public Good, said it will not abide by the no rubblization agreement because it does not fit the company’s “business model.”
But Clay Turnbull, a spokesman for the 45-year-old Brattleboro-based coalition pointed out that NorthStar’s license transfer application to the NRC “said projected savings from rubblization were not part of their cost estimates.”
“These contradictory statements notwithstanding, NorthStar cannot unilaterally decide which agreements and which board orders it will comply with and which ones it will flout,” said Turnbull.
Entergy is studying the motion and “will respond when appropriate,” according to Joseph R. Lynch, senior government affairs manager for Entergy Vermont Yankee.
Coalition attorney James Dumont says the issue revolves around whether all parties have to respect the law and advance their interests by following the rules.
“The Public Service Board has made clear since the very first case involving Entergy that at the end of the decommissioning process, there must be a return to green field conditions, which does not include demolishing concrete structures and leaving the rubble on the site,” Dumont said. The VPSB “reiterated this minimum standard in the 2014 license extension case. One of the shortcuts built into the new deal is that NorthStar plans to save money by doing what the board said in 2003 and 2014 cannot be done.”
The coalition considers this a “fundamental change” that would require reopening the license extension cases.
The coalition’s senior technical adviser, Raymond Shadis, outlined the anti-nuclear organization’s concerns over burying more than 1 million cubic feet of uncontaminated concrete on the Vernon site, calling it “too precious to besmirch with a granular concrete landfill.”
He added, “One big problem with rubblization is the temptation to mix clean and contaminated concrete so as to bring the radioactive intensity down to clearance levels. This can happen purposefully or inadvertently as major radioactive dose contributors such as Strontium-90 and Plutonium-239 may be completely shielded from field instrument detection by a cardboard-thin layer of concrete.”
The VPSB is expected to decide by April 2018 whether to grant a certificate.