March 5, 2006

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Vermont Yankee Gets Green Light to Raise Power
WCAX, VT
March 2, 2006

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Vermont's nuclear power plant won permission Thursday to increase its output by 20 percent, a step advocates say is crucial to meeting the region's energy needs but critics claim will increase the risks of a nuclear accident at the aging reactor.

The green light from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission means the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant will start generating additional power within the next few days - and, if all goes well, reach its new output level of roughly 640 megawatts within a few weeks, a plant spokesman said.

"This is great news," said Rob Williams, spokesman for the Entergy-owned Vermont Yankee. "This is great news for us and it is also great news for the region's electrical energy supply."

Opponents of the so-called uprate fear the plant, in operation since 1972 and thus one of the nation's oldest operating reactors, cannot withstand the added stress from the increased power output, increasing the both the likelihood and consequences of an accident.

In announcing the approval Thursday, the NRC said the review was the most extensive ever done by the NRC in the more than 100 uprate applications.

"The staff at headquarters, our Region 1 office in Pennsylvania and the resident inspectors at the plant have thoroughly examined this uprate request," said Jim Dyer, director of the NRC's office of nuclear reactor regulation. "We've taken great care to identify and address technical concerns with safely operating the plant at increased power."

The review took more than two years and more than 11,000 staff-hours, the NRC said, adding that a related engineering inspection required another 900 hours of work.

Raymond Shadis of the anti-nuclear New England Coalition dismissed the statistics as meaningless. "Two years. So what?" he said.

"That is just a tribute to the bureaucracy; they are talking about a two-year paper chase, they are talking about 11,000 hours of sharpening pencils, 11,000 hours of going to the water cooler, 11,000 hours of putting on public relations events. The process has been a fraud and a sham demonstrating that the NRC will do whatever it takes to accommodate the nuclear industry."

Vermont Yankee has been preparing for the uprate for the past two years, replacing equipment and adding extra nuclear fuel even before the NRC completed its review. The plant installed a new high-pressure turbine and new feedwater heaters and rebuilt the electrical generator.

During last fall's refueling outage the utility loaded enough enriched uranium so that the reactor could generate the additional 100 megawatts of power as soon as approval came - without having to go through a shutdown.

At the higher level of 640 megawatts, Vermont Yankee will be producing enough electricity to power 60 percent of Vermont.

David O'Brien, the state commissioner of public service, said that his department "made sure that consumers could be assured that VY would remain a safe and reliable source of power that would benefit the state as a whole."

He also said the state's nuclear engineer would be on site as power is increased in steps at the Vernon reactor. "We will retain state oversight during the implementation period," he said.

Timothy Nulty, a public member of the state's advisory panel on nuclear power, said the uprate is a bad deal for Vermont.

"The NRC decision is no surprise because the NRC looks at the uprate from their own perspective and that perspective is focused on safety, narrowly defined," he said. "They are not looking at it from Vermont's perspective, and no one can say that this is a good deal for Vermont because right now there is only downside for Vermont."

Nulty said that's because Vermont doesn't have any claim to any of the increased power, yet must shoulder the possibility the ramped-up operations will decrease the reactor's reliability.

"Vermont is exposed to the downside but doesn't get any upside," he said.

Vermont Yankee, located in Vernon, sits just across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire and just a few miles north of the Massachusetts border.

Vermont Yankee was built by a consortium of New England utilities and was sold to Entergy in 2002. The company is seeking to extend Vermont Yankee's operating license 20 years past its current expiration of 2012. The NRC says the license review will take roughly 30 months.

In addition, the plant is asking the state for permission to store its nuclear waste in concrete and steel casks on its grounds. This move is crucial to the plant's continued operations because operating at the increased power means it will use more fuel rods and will run out of room in its existing fuel pool.

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On The Net:

Entergy Nuclear: http://www.entergy-nuclear.com