Decommissioning and Fence line Radiation levels at Vermont Yankee

Decommissioning Vermont Yankee
In 2002 the owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant promised to take full responsibility for the Decommissioning fund – a special trust of money that will be used to clean up the Nuclear plant whenever it closes down.

In 2008 Entergy changed it’s story – they now say that despite making billions in profits form this one plant, they have no responsibility for its Decommissioning fund and that a special ‘limited liability corporation’ is responsible.

That’s a big problem for Vermonters because Entergy shorted payments to the fund in previous years, and invested the money in the stock market. As a result the Decommissioning fund has lost value since 2002 – it contains about $350 million right now, less than half of estimated at $1 billion dollars it will cost to clean up the site.

If there’s not enough money in the fund to clean up the site Vermonters will be left with a toxic nuclear waste dump and need to come up with a plan to raise the $700 million.

Fence line Radiation levels
When asking permission to increase the amount of power produced at Vermont Yankee – Entergy nuclear (the plant’s owners) promised that radiation emissions from the plant would not increase.

But when the up-rate happened radiation emission broke legal limits. Instead of enforcing the law by addressing the increase in radiation, the State Health Department changed the rules for how radiation emissions are measured at the plant’s boundary or ‘fence line’. The fence in question is across from an elementary school – so the concern is a serious one.

The old standard measured how much radiation a person’s whole body would be exposed to at the edge of Vermont Yankee’s property. The health department wanted to arbitrarily reduce the exposure to 60% of a test-subjects body. That change is actually a violation of the law, however, and the Legislature and media called them on it

The Health Department is undertaking a rule making process now to decide what the proper level of radiation emission should be. But Entergy is still breaking the law by emitting too much radiation. And the Health Department is still trying to change the standard to allow Entergy to emit more radiation, rather than focusing on how much radiation is safe (none).