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For decades, Vermont Yankee, a nuclear power plant in Vernon, was the largest producer of electricity for the state.
The plant has been shut down since 2014, and the company that now owns it is in the process of deconstructing it. That company, NorthStar, has recently submitted a plan that describes in detail the final steps of decommissioning, which is projected to be completed ahead of schedule, by 2026.
However, national developments mean that radioactive spent fuel on the site is likely to stay where it is for the foreseeable future.
Host Sam Gale Rosen spoke to VTDigger environmental reporter Emma Cotton, who has been covering the decommissioning process.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Emma: Vermont Yankee is located in the town of Vernon, which is literally the southeast corner of the state. It’s got the Connecticut River and New Hampshire bordering it to the east and Massachusetts bordering it to the south.
So the plant began operating in 1972. And at that time, it was jointly owned and operated by a utility company called Central Vermont Public Service and Yankee Atomic Electric Company. It had a license to operate for 40 years, which would bring us to 2012.
In 2002, a company called Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, purchased the plant, often referred to as Entergy. In 2006, its capacity expanded from 450 megawatts to 650 megawatts. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) renewed its operating license in 2011 for 20 years, which would have taken us through 2032.
But it wasn’t always smooth sailing for the plant. Natural gas was becoming cheaper, and Entergy was struggling to compete with that market. And costs of the facility were high. Entergy spent around $400 million between 2002 and 2013 operating this facility. And the plant wasn’t popular with everyone in Vermont while it was running.
In 2010, Vermont lawmakers voted in favor of denying that 20-year license renewal. They had safety concerns, particularly after the plant had a tritium leak, which is a radioactive substance. That decision became the subject of a federal lawsuit about whether the state or the feds had authority over the plant. But soon enough, that issue was of little consequence. In 2013, citing the economic environment, Entergy announced that it plans to shut Vermont Yankee down
It officially disconnected from the grid and shut down on Dec. 29, 2014. And then the private company NorthStar — which decommissions nuclear plants and other energy facilities like coal plants around the country — they bought Vermont Yankee in 2019, and they are using funds set aside by Entergy to complete this decommissioning work.
Sam: So Emma, could you tell me about the latest developments? Why we’re talking about this now?
Emma: So NorthStar, which is the private company that owns Vermont Yankee now, has submitted what’s called a license termination plan to a federal body called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which, if you can’t tell by the name, regulates nuclear plants. Any nuclear facilities that want to completely shut down must submit this plan to the commission two years before the license is officially terminated.
So, in other words, Vermont’s only nuclear plant is about two years away from being fully decommissioned, at which point the site will look a lot like an open lot, with the exception of 58 spent fuel casks, which will remain there, likely, for a long time. And we can talk about that more later.
The plan, which is more than 1,000 pages long, describes how NorthStar will wind down its operations at Vermont Yankee. It’s open for public comment. And as long as the NRC gives the plan its preliminary approval, there’ll be a public meeting near the plant sometime in the future. The date on that is TBD.
Sam: This plan that was just filed, what can we learn from that about what’s going to happen going forward?
Emma: So, of course, this plan is 1,000 pages long and covers quite a lot. It talks about all of the different regulatory requirements that NorthStar needs to meet to be able to fully shut down. It describes the assessments that need to take place on site that will determine the site’s level of radioactivity and how it’s classified — how the different areas of the site are going to be classified. It sort of ticks through the remaining buildings and structures that need to be dismantled and decontaminated and goes through the environmental impact of decommissioning.
And being the environmental reporter, I was particularly interested in that piece of it, the environmental impacts piece, and according to this report, most of those impacts come from taking apart radioactive materials, as one would expect. But it even says that in a worst case scenario, if a truck transporting radioactive waste were to get into an accident, for example, the exposure to the public would still be fairly small.
So this report is claiming that the environmental impacts are small, in part, because of the regulatory environment that exists here. It’s very, very heavily regulated.
Otherwise, the environmental impacts of the plant have been reduced since the plant shut down. So for example, the plant is no longer using water from the Connecticut River to cool the spent fuel.
And then in general, when they purchased the property in 2019, NorthStar said that it planned to be finished with the decommissioning process by 2030. And now, they’re on track to have the facility completely disassembled before the end of 2026, so they’re ahead of schedule. And I interviewed Scott State, NorthStar’s CEO a while back. He also said that the company plans to stay within its $600 million budget and that the process has had no major regulatory or safety violations so far.
Sam: So they’re on track to have the facility disassembled before 2026. But the other thing you’ve been covering is what happens to the spent fuel, right?
Emma: Yeah, this is kind of the elephant in the room, I think, for Vernon, the town where this is located. So after the fuel rods were used to heat water, they were transferred to cooling towers, and the process of cooling brought their radioactivity down. For a long time nuclear plants around the country were designed to temporarily store spent fuel this way, in cooling pools, and then they would be transferred to one or more federally designated areas for permanent storage.
But the federal government has not found a permanent place to store spent fuel. There has been a lot of conversation about a site in Nevada — Yucca Mountain — but there has been strong local opposition to storing the entire country’s nuclear waste there.
So nuclear plant owners had to find another storage solution. And so they started storing spent fuel in what are called dry casks, which are metal or concrete cylinders that form shells outside of the fuel rods. And according to the NRC, that shell shields people pretty effectively from this highly radioactive spent fuel. So Entergy transferred all of their spent fuel into dry casks, and now there are 58 of those that remain on the site. It’s a 2-acre part of the parcel.
NorthStar does ship some radioactive material to a facility in Texas, but it doesn’t have anywhere to send its spent fuel. So according to Northstar CEO, Scott State, the fuel will remain there until the feds come up with another plan. And that could be a while. So NorthStar will own the spent fuel until it’s removed from the property.
Sam: And the other radioactive stuff, that’s going to Texas, is that just parts of the plant, which became radioactive over time via proximity to the fuel?
Emma: Exactly. So yeah, if you think about the building where the reactor is, taking that apart, you know, it has been exposed to that radioactivity.
Sam: And my other question is: The plan that doesn’t foresee much environmental impact, is that assuming that something does happen to find a place for this spent fuel, or is that even if the spent fuel remains where it is in those barrels?
Emma: So my reading of it is that even if the fuel remains there, in those barrels, they’re still predicting — because it is stable; it’s held in those dry casks — so it isn’t, you know, really causing radioactive risk to anyone at this point. That’s what the report is claiming. So it’s stable. It can be held there for an indefinite period of time, according to the folks who own it.
Sam: Because the feds haven’t figured out a solution for this, this must be happening in a lot of places over the country, not just here, right? Have other places found other solutions? Or is it just sitting in the casks on the sites of all these various nuclear plants that might have been shut down over the country?
Emma: I can’t say that I know the situation of all of the different sites, but my impression is that the dry cask storage method is the primary one across the country. So in most at most of these sites, there are just casks of spent fuel that are sitting there waiting to be sent somewhere else, and there was actually a facility that some folks hope to get licensed in Texas that would temporarily store spent fuel, but that went through a court proceeding and ended up getting tossed, and that is not an option anymore. So for right now, yeah, they’re just sitting there across the country.
Sam: And at least in Vermont, is it being guarded?
Emma: From what I understand, NorthStar is planning to continue the same kind of security that they’ve had at the site while they’ve been decommissioning it. So, you know, even reporters, when we went into the site, we couldn’t take photos and videos of the fuel from certain angles and that kind of thing to expose where it was. So they have a security presence there.
Sam: You talked a little bit about what it was like visiting the site and watching this. Can you tell me more about what that was like?
Emma: Yeah, so this was my first time on the site. So I don’t have first-hand knowledge of what it looked like before. But right now, there’s one big building that’s still standing. And that’s the building that held the nuclear reactor, and the reactor has already been removed.
So the day I visited, there were a number of sort of those big yellow machines, if you will, that were taking apart the building that held the turbine. So there was one particularly massive machine, they called a concrete cracker, that was just turning this building, the foundation of it into rubble, it was kind of like a pile of concrete.
And elsewhere on the property, there was a crane that was loading what looked like giant coolers of radioactive waste into train cars. That’s the stuff that’s getting shipped to Texas, not the spent fuel, but the other waste.
And, you know, what NorthStar did with this facility, taking ownership of everything, including the spent nuclear fuel and bringing in their own workforce and sort of taking the reins, that’s kind of a new model. Previously, you know, other plants have been decommissioned, in part, by utilities. So it’s sort of this private company model that goes in and does all the work. That’s kind of new.
And I think for a lot of people, particularly in Vernon, who have watched all of this unfold, they say that it’s going pretty well. They’re staying within their budget, and they’re, you know, ahead of schedule, and they haven’t had any major incidents so far.
Sam: And are the fuel casks in that one big remaining building?
Emma: They’re not. No. They are on a plot, like a paved plot of land. And they’re sitting sort of in these rows, just outside on a lot.
Sam: You said the model they’re using is kind of new in terms of they just take ownership of all the stuff. Is there anything about the actual process of decommissioning that they’re doing that is unusual or new that has led to it being so relatively quick for this sort of thing?
Emma: I think my best guess is that, you know, everything is in house. So I think there’s probably some red tape that they don’t have to worry about. And I think just it’s efficient because they’re all part of the same team. But other than that, I’m really not sure.
I’m pretty sure this is the biggest nuclear plant they’ve decommissioned or the first big one. So, you know, it isn’t like they’ve had a ton of experience doing this exact kind of work. And yet, they’ve managed to be really quick.
Sam: And you’re not waiting for the other shoe to drop and finding that they’ve just been like stuffing stuff in a tree like on the Simpsons or something, right?
Emma: I mean, gosh, the NRC watches this stuff pretty closely, as does the state. So you know, there’s people on site all the time. It would be surprising, although you never know.
Sam: And do we know what might happen to the land once the plant is fully decommissioned?
Emma: So I spoke with a few folks from Vernon and folks who serve on the Vermont Yankee Citizens Advisory Panel. And there’s a very informal agreement between NorthStar and Vernon that NorthStar would transfer the land over to the town to be developed once they’re finished with their work. So if that happens, the town has some options. Much of the site will be an open lot.
There was actually a study by Antioch University that looked at potential uses for the land, which is pretty interesting. And the study includes a list of existing infrastructure on the site, which includes parking lots, roads, a rail line, fiber-optic lines, storm drains, private wells, septic tanks, and it has a switchyard and transmission lines owned by Vermont Electric Company. So because of those transmission lines and the direct hookup to the grid, some folks have said this might be a good spot for another energy project of some kind.
The Antioch study suggested two scenarios for the site. One, which is focused on recreation and river access because the site is right on the Connecticut River. And there will be some business use involved there. And another would be more of an industrial park with one larger, several small businesses.
Both of the plans that they suggested said that they should restore some of the land, particularly along the river to allow the native ecosystem to heal. And then another piece of this is that a nonprofit group called Friends of Vernon Center has created a plan to develop a village center directly west of the site. So there could be some sort of interaction between what goes on that site and and the development that’s sort of in town.
Sam: And are people in Vernon concerned about the spent fuel if it’s going to remain there?
Emma: Yes and no. Folks in Vernon and a couple of people who serve on the advisory panel say that there has been a really strong relationship between owners of Vermont Yankee and the town. And I think people in Vernon largely see the closure of Vermont Yankee as a pretty significant loss.
You know, Vermont Yankee paid the surrounding towns a fee, and that has helped the town pay for recreation, infrastructure and schools. And it was the town’s primary employer. It gave jobs to 600 people, and those jobs were very specialized. So a lot of people left town when the plant closed to find similar work elsewhere. And that was a really big loss to the community. That was a lot of families that left.
And so you know, I talked to the town clerk, and he joked that I’m welcome to bring home a spent fuel rod or two. I think there’s no question that that’s a burden to the town having 58 casks of radioactive fuel, you know, but I think generally speaking, people are pretty comfortable with the past and present existence of this facility. It’s kind of been part of Vernon’s identity. And they seem to trust NorthStar’s process, at least the folks that I spoke with.
And so I think the big question for them is how to use that site to reestablish some of the economic activity and community and identity that Vermont Yankee brought to Vernon.
