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Entergy trying to sell Vermont Yankee nuclear plant

State lawmakers have reacted vehemently to a series of misstatements and missteps by Entergy and leaks of radioactive tritium at the plant, in Vernon, Vt., on the banks of the Connecticut River near the Massachusetts border….

Vermont Nuclear Plant Up for Sale,  NYTimes.com, By MATTHEW L. WALD  November 4, 2010 Entergy Nuclear, evidently convinced that the Vermont legislature will not allow the company to run the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant for another 20 years, announced on Thursday that the plant was up for sale.
The company acted two days after Peter E. Shumlin, a prominent opponent of the plant and the state Senate’s president pro tem, was elected governor…..
State lawmakers have reacted vehemently to a series of misstatements and missteps by Entergy and leaks of radioactive tritium at the plant, in Vernon, Vt., on the banks of the Connecticut River near the Massachusetts border….

The reactor has been on track to receive a 20-year extension to its initial 40-year license from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But as a condition of Entergy’s acquisition of the plant from local utilities in 2002, the state of Vermont required the legislature’s approval for continued operation.

In February the Vermont Senate voted down an extension.

It was reacting partly to testimony before two state panels from plant officials on the question of whether Vermont Yankee could leak radioactive material from underground pipes, as other reactors around the country had. The executives replied that Vermont Yankee had no such pipes. Then tests found radioactive tritium that had leaked into the groundwater from an underground pipe.

Mr. Shumlin, a Democrat, was a leading force in the February vote……

“The problems are bigger than ownership,” said Sandra Levine, a senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in Vermont. “The problems at Vermont Yankee come from it being an old plant that’s leaking radioactivity into the environment. That would not be corrected simply by changing ownership.”

Entergy Puts Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant Up for Sale – NYTimes.com

November 6, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, radiation, radioactive, reactor