Uncertainty Grows On Vermont Yankee Future

DAVE GRAM

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Uncertainty continues to be the watchword on the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's future as lawmakers prepare to vote — or not — in their upcoming session on whether the plant should operate after its current license expires in 2012.

Vermont's is the only Legislature in the country that has given itself the authority to second-guess a federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision on whether a nuclear plant should get a license extension. The NRC has approved 55 such extensions at reactors around the country and denied none.

Leaders of the Democrat-controlled Vermont House and Senate had set a Nov. 1 deadline for Vermont Yankee's owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., to strike a deal with Vermont's retail utilities on how much power from the plant would cost post-2012. They said they wanted time to analyze the deal before lawmakers return in January for a session that typically lasts until May.

But the Nov. 1 deadline has passed, and participants in talks this week were offering no estimate of when they might conclude.

"It makes it very difficult to have a vote in the upcoming session," House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, said Wednesday. "Clearly the issue of what the purchase power price will be is critical to the decision about continued operation."