nuclear-news

State legislators passed laws in 2005, 2006 and 2008 making it harder for the Vermont Yankee plant to win permission to operate for another 20 years. They were concerned about the plant’s safety but tried to hide that because they were aware that nuclear safety is the sole province of the U.S. government under federal law, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.

There was “obvious coaching of Vermont legislators to avoid explicit statements about nuclear safety,” the court wrote.

A state board is expected to rule this year on whether allow the plant to continue operating, but the laws passed last decade injected the Legislature into the state’s decision-making process. They require that lawmakers vote to approve the plant’s continued operation.

Plant owner New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. has argued in court that the state has no say over whether to keep the plant open and points to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to extend the plant’s license to operate in 2011…….

Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell called the ruling disappointing. He said the state could ask the full appeals court to reconsider the three-judge panel’s decision, or, more likely, appeal the decision directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sandra Levine of the Conservation Law Foundation, one of several New England-based groups seeking the plant’s closure, called the decision “a disappointing failure to allow Vermont a stronger say in regulating this tired old plant on the banks of the Connecticut River.” http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/court-vt-law-close-nuclear-plant-19957625