Vermont officials have refused to grant Entergy the 20-year permit it needs to operate its nuclear plant past March, leading to Entergy’s lawsuit against the state.
(Jason R. Henske/Associated Press/File 2011)
Vermont and firm argue over N-plant
Executive testifies as trial begins
Vermont officials have refused to grant Entergy the 20-year permit it needs to operate its nuclear plant past March, leading to Entergy’s lawsuit against the state.
(Jason R. Henske/Associated Press/File 2011)
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. - An executive at the company that owns Vermont’s only nuclear power plant told a federal judge yesterday that he felt heavy pressure from state officials to sell power at a price favorable to Vermont utilities if his company wanted the state to allow the plant to continue operating.
Marc Potkin, an
Entergy says its federal license extension, granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March, preempts the state’s decision.
Yesterday, Potkin said that Vermont utility executives told him they needed bargain rates to buy nuclear power from Vermont Yankee or they would not expect the state to allow the plant to continue running.
Legislators and executive branch officials had said previously that a favorable agreement over power would be a condition of the state renewing the operating permit, but Potkin’s testimony provided the first public glimpse of how that demand played out in the secret talks, which never produced an agreement.
Entergy has come into widespread disfavor in Vermont, especially since it was revealed last year that radioactive tritium was leaking from underground pipes at the plant, pipes of a sort that Vermont Yankee officials had said the plant did not have.
A month after that disclosure, the state Senate voted against allowing the state to grant the plant a new license. Vermont is the only state with a law calling on the Legislature to weigh in on whether such a permit should be issued.
The plant’s flagging political fortunes influenced the talks on the power-purchase agreement, Potkin said. He was eventually told the electric companies would not sign a deal to buy power from the plant unless Entergy sold it.
Entergy put it on the market last year, but got no takers.
In her opening statement yesterday, Entergy lawyer Kathleen Sullivan said Vermont was trying to close the plant because of concerns about the safety of the reactor.
But, she said, the state is preempted from doing that because under federal law, nuclear safety is in the sole jurisdiction of the commission.
She said the state would offer other reasons - concern about the plant’s reliability and economic impacts, for instance - but that those were “pretexts for nuclear safety.’’
Entergy is also arguing that since it will be selling power from Vermont Yankee into the wholesale power market and not to Vermont utilities, the state should have little or no role in regulating it.
Assistant Attorney General Scot Kline, arguing for the state, said New Orleans-based Entergy signed an agreement saying it would agree to state oversight when it bought the plant from a group of New England utilities in 2002.
“This case is really about honoring commitments,’’ he said.
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