Community Utilities, facilities, and services
Radioactive Waste Management
The former Vermont Yankee (VY) Nuclear Power Station is located on the Connecticut River in the Town of Vernon and first became operational in 1972. Since it was first proposed, the WRC has been engaged in discussions about VY because of its regional economic, energy, land use, and emergency planning significance. The plant was owned and operated by the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation up until 2002 when it was purchased by Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee. In 2013, Entergy announced it would cease operations and close VY in 2014 due to economic factors. Entergy filed its Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report, its decommissioning activities plan, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in December 2014 and ceased operation fifteen days later.
In January 2019, ownership was transferred from Entergy to NorthStar for the purpose of decommissioning and site restoration after receiving approvals from the NRC and the Vermont Public Utility Commission. The approvals for the transfer of ownership were conditioned upon a decommissioning plan, related budget, and financial assurances. The WRC was a signatory to a Settlement Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding that were foundational to the Vermont Public Utility Commission (PUC) order.
Once the decommissioning has been completed and the site has been restored per federal and state standards and the PUC order, high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel will remain on the site, stored in casks in the on-site Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) until transferred to the US Department of Energy (DOE). The transfer to DOE is assumed to be complete by 2052 at which point the ISFSI will be decommissioned and the NRC license terminated. This assumption is made by the federal government which has thus far failed for decades to establish either a permanent or temporary high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel repository, thus how, when or if the spent fuel will ultimately be removed from the site is uncertain. The WRC has taken the position that the Vermont Yankee license holder should use its commercial best efforts to remove spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste from the site as soon as possible. The WRC has also commented on U.S. Department of Energy consent-based siting of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. While the footprint of the ISFSI is small, the Vermont Yankee site itself is also small (approximately 125 acres), and the presence of an ISFSI has historically contributed an impediment to redevelopment of decommissioned nuclear power station sites in the United States.