DUMMERSTON — Many of us who are concerned about the safety and reliability of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee want to make sure that the legislature has ample time to study and discuss all the issues related to the relicensing of ENVY. You can be sure, though, that Entergy will wait until the last minute (having ignored the February deadline) to present a deal that might give some kind of break on rates to Vermonters. Then they will put extreme pressure on the legislature to vote in the last few weeks of the session, acting as if there is a crisis, when delaying to the last minute is a deliberate strategy on their part.
I therefore ask readers to contact your legislators and urge them not to vote on relicensing this year. Tell them not to be manipulated by Entergy, Governor Douglas, and the Department of Public Service. Tell them they need time to study if this is indeed such a good financial deal for Vermont and add that this is not just an economic issue.
Some other points:
• The legislature needs time to read the Act 160 studies about the economic risks and benefits and the health and safety concerns of relicensing ENVY. They need to hear testimony on these studies. The appropriate committees need to read the reliability audit and the comments of the oversight panel about what Entergy needs to do to make this plant reliable and to improve the management of the plant.
• Arnie Gunderson, who served on the oversight panel, testified recently that he believed it would be extraordinarily difficult for ENVY to continue to operate reliably after 2012 due to the corporate "cultural problems," like purposely understaffing the plant to save money. We should all be deeply concerned about this attitude, but it becomes an even scarier problem when we read that many of the staff at ENVY have been there less than three years due to so many staff leaving.
• If ENVY is relicensed, we will have a reactor staffed by those unfamiliar with the plant and its operating procedures with a management that will be trying to cut corners to increase profits.
• Ask your legislators if they have found the Entergy executives who testify in Montpelier to be open, honest, and trustworthy.
• Even if Entergy promises to make all the improvements recommended in the reliability audit, how can the legislature legally ensure that Entergy will carry out these improvements?
• Finally, any discussion of relicensing also needs to include these risks: the need to fully fund decommissioning, Entergy's continued wish to spin off ENVY into a limited liability company, and the 30-percent increase in radioactive emissions from the plant since the uprate.