Vermont Yankee sale faces scrutiny in N.E. 4 states could be denied share of surplus

MONTPELIER, Vt. – Prospects for the sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant were clouded again Tuesday as officials in four New England states promised to scrutinize a change made a day earlier.

Critics said the change could deny ratepayers in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut a share of a projected surplus in the plant’s decommissioning fund potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Instead of sharing in the projected surplus, six New England utilities that own shares in the Vernon reactor would split a $1.5 million pot now, under a deal announced Monday by the plant’s current owners and the company trying to buy it.

Vermont Yankee’s owners said in a statement Monday that they didn’t see any need for the state Public Service Board to make any further rulings in the case. But it appeared Tuesday that things wouldn’t go that easily for them.

Officials with utility commissions in New Hampshire and Massachusetts said those commissions would have to hold hearings. Connecticut’s attorney general said he might weigh in. And an anti-nuclear group in Maine said it would ask its state commission to intervene.

“It’s our money. They can’t have it,” said Raymond Shadis, executive director of Friends of the Maine Coast. “We’re going to our Public Utilities Commission.”

And in Vermont, the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution asked the board Tuesday to issue a temporary restraining order blocking Entergy Nuclear of Jackson, Miss., from closing on the $180 million purchase of Vermont Yankee from the eight New England utilities that currently own it.

The board told parties to the sale to respond to the latest twists in the Vermont Yankee saga by Thursday.

Meanwhile, the clock ticked: the deal has been in negotiations and board hearings for a year; the parties agreed last August that if the sale didn’t close by this July 31, it’s off.

Decommissioning funds are pots of money that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires reactor owners to set aside to pay for dismantling the plants and disposing of their highly radioactive components when they are retired.

Entergy is keeping secret its own projections for how much extra money there will be in the decommissioning fund when it’s time to retire and dismantle Vermont’s only nuclear plant.

Other estimates vary as to how much money might be at stake. One state witness told the Public Service Board in February that the surplus in the fund could amount to $100 million.

Vermont Yankee told the NRC in March it projected decommissioning to cost about $471 million as of the scheduled expiration of the plant’s license in 2012.

But Entergy has said it wants to seek a 20-year license extension. Arthur Woolf, a professor of economics at the University of Vermont and partner in an economics consulting firm, said Tuesday that if the roughly $300 million in the fund now were invested conservatively and brought a 6 percent annual return, it could contain $1.3 billion by 2032, when Entergy envisions closing Vermont Yankee.

Entergy has called its ability to keep at least some of the decommissioning surplus “fundamental” to the sale. After Vermont’s board refused to reconsider its requirement that any extra money be returned to ratepayers, Entergy last week said it would walk away.

On Monday, Vermont Yankee announced it had reached an agreement with Entergy under which Vermont ratepayers would get back any extra money they had put into the decommissioning fund.