VERNON — Does Entergy Nuclear really want to continue operating Vermont Yankee?
The Vernon nuclear-power plant is not profitable, Entergy recently told financial analysts. Other Entergy businesses are subsidizing it.
The cost of repairing leaking buried pipes and cleaning up tritiated radioactive groundwater currently is unknown, but is likely to be tens of millions of dollars, not chargeable to ratepayers or the decommissioning fund, but subtracted from Entergy's bottom line.
Since the Vermont Senate voted not to authorize extension of the operating license beyond 2012, Vermont Yankee may be worth more to Entergy as a write-off than as an operating power plant.
When it soon is shut down for scheduled refueling, a first step will be removing and securely storing the spent nuclear fuel, as it is for mothballing.
If Entergy opts to close and mothball Vermont Yankee now:
• It can be written off against other earnings to reduce corporate income-tax liabilities, adding to Entergy's bottom line in the current fiscal year.
• Its ongoing unprofitability will not subtract from the bottom line in subsequent fiscal years.
• When the water pumps are turned off for good, the leaks of radioactive tritiated water will stop and will not have to be repaired.
• The cost of cleaning up the tritiated groundwater will become chargeable to the decommissioning fund instead of the bottom line.
• The cost of removing and securely storing the spent nuclear fuel will become chargeable to the decommissioning fund instead of the bottom line.
• The cost of mothballing the plant will be chargeable to the decommissioning fund.
• Entergy can stop subsidizing an investment that has turned bad.
• The decommissioning fund will pay Entergy's decommissioning business, TLG Services, to do the work.
Is there any other information or question that we have not considered?
Is it more or less likely that Entergy will close and mothball Vermont Yankee now instead of refueling it as scheduled?
Long live Yankee?
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Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee may never be demolished. With permits, land-use, transformer yard, transmission lines, infrastructure, and impacts already there, it is the ideal site for a renewed, base-load power plant fueled by American coal (via the adjacent railroad), Canadian natural gas, or a next-generation nuclear reactor.
The existing nuclear reactor will have to be dismantled eventually, but savvy investors could pay a good price for the rest of the plant, as they did for the Vernon hydro plant, recently renewed for its second century by owner (and leading natural-gas pipeline operator) TransCanada of Calgary, Alberta.
Electricity generated by renewable hydro, sun, and wind will be available only when they flow, shine, or blow in our changeable weather and seasons. Vermont and neighboring states will always need large-scale, base-load generation. Vernon is the place for it. Now is the time to design and renew it so that it can be phased in when the existing nuclear reactor is phased out.
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When I wrote and published the preceding paragraphs nearly two years ago, I assumed that others would think similar thoughts, but could not have imagined the current context when Entergy has lost its credibility in public, editorial, and political opinion.
Proposing that Vermont Yankee's operating license be extended just until a new nuclear reactor can be built on the site, Rep. Patricia O'Donnell (R-Guilford-Vernon) and Sen. Robert Starr (D-Essex-Orleans) have made a brilliant political move to redivide the Vermont House and Senate into anti- and pro-nuclear legislators to facilitate arm-twisting.
They assume, however, that a possibility considered by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission five decades ago justifies a new nuclear-power plant here and now so that financing, design, permitting, construction, and licensing can be complete five years from now.
If not Entergy, the builder could be GDF SUEZ of Paris, France, one of the international owners of Green Mountain Power and Vermont Gas Systems, and the owner of Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage and Mount Tom coal-fired power plants not far from Vernon in Massachusetts).
Yankee is dead; long live Yankee?
This is a much bigger game in a much bigger league than Vermonters believe it to be. Writing off old Vermont Yankee could be very profitable for Entergy and create an equally profitable opportunity for Entergy and/or other savvy investors to build new Vermont Yankee with U.S. Government permission and encouragement.