Vermont Yankee moves closer to sale

MONTPELIER, Vt. – The sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant isn’t dead yet.

The plant’s owners said Monday they had reached a deal with Entergy Nuclear that would allow the sale to go forward. The agreement was designed to lessen the impact of a condition placed on the sale by state regulators that Entergy had said it could not accept.

“Our agreement today allows both the buyer and the seller to meet the conditions set by the [Public Service Board] and to move forward with the sale,” said Ross Barkhurst, Vermont Yankee’s president and CEO.

Monday’s agreement came after a year of negotiations and board hearings, and just 10 days before a previously agreed-to drop-dead date: If the deal didn’t close by July 31 it was off, parties to it had said.

But a critic of the sale immediately cried foul, saying the agreement with Entergy turned on a phrase in a board order that the board had later eliminated in a clarification.

“They are thumbing their nose at the board,” said James Dumont, lawyer for the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution. If Monday’s announcement from the companies is accurate, “then they intend to violate Vermont law,” he added.