DUMMERSTON — Activists seeking to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant are gearing up for a vote next month in the Vermont Senate on whether the state's top nuclear regulator - who many say has been too friendly to the industry - will get to keep his job.
A federal judge is expected to rule any day on whether Vermont Yankee can run after March 21, 2012. The state has ordered the reactor permanently closed on that date. Vermont Yankee's owner, the Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation, wants the judge to force the state to let the reactor run until at least 2032.
Entergy CEO Wayne Leonard said last month that the judge, Garvan Murtha, is likely to postpone making a decision by asking the Vermont Public Service Board to decide if Yankee will close in March 2012 or in 2032. The board's decision could then be appealed to Murtha.
The head of the Public Service Board, James Volz, was appointed to a six-year term by former Gov. Jim Douglas, who accepted campaign contributions from Entergy and who was widely seen as the company's tool. Douglas vetoed several legislative attempts to regulate Entergy.
The board under Volz has been friendly to Entergy, giving the thumbs up to construction of a nuclear waste dump and to boosting the 40-year-old, accident-prone reactor's power output to 120 percent of the limit its designers intended.
Gov. Peter Shumlin wants to reappoint Volz to another six-year term. Anti-nuclear activists aren't happy about that.
“The Public Service Board with chairman Volz at its helm has systematically granted this rogue corporation [Entergy] just about everything it requested: the uprate, dry-cask storage, and movement of Vermont Yankee's fence line closer to the Vernon Elementary School,” said Deb Katz, director of the Citizens Awareness Network. “We question whether Volz and the board can uphold the will of the people.”
Vermonters should contact their state senators and ask them to veto Volz. Senators' names and contact information is at www.leg.state.vt.us/legdir/findmember3.cfm.
A major accident or act of sabotage at Vermont Yankee would kill thousands of people and leave an area the size of New England uninhabitable. Such a disaster is so likely that no insurance company will insure the facility; taxpayers would pay the costs of a meltdown.
The hundreds of tons of nuclear waste at Vermont Yankee is the most toxic material on earth. The waste is so dangerous that it must be guarded 24 hours a day for the next 1 million years, according to the federal government.
The electricity from Vermont Yankee is not needed, according to the state's power companies.
Yankee should close immediately.