In 2003 Entergy made a deal with the state of Vermont. The Louisiana-based nuke speculator said that if it could buy and operate the decrepit Vermont Yankee reactor under certain terms and conditions, the company would then agree to shut it down if the state denied it a permit to continue. The drop dead date: March 21, 2012. In the interim, VY has been found leaking radioactive tritium and much more into the ground and the nearby Connecticut River. Under oath, in public testimony, the company had denied that the pipes that leaked even existed. One of Yankee's cooling towers has also collapsed...just plain crumbled. One of Yankee's siblings---Fukushima One---has melted and exploded (VY is one of some two dozen Fukushima clones licensed in the US). In the face of these events, the legislature, in partnership with Vermont's governor, voted 26-4 to deny Entergy a permit to continue. But the company is determined to continue reaping huge profits on a 35-year-old reactor -- long since amortized at public expense -- with very cheap overhead based on slipshod operating techniques where safety always comes second. Along the way Entergy has also tried to stick Vermont Yankee into an underfunded corporate shell aimed at shielding it from all economic liabilities. To allow VY to continue fissioning, Judge Garvin Murtha latched onto Entergy's argument that the state legislature committed the horrible sin of actually discussing safety issues. These, by federal law, are reserved for Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He chose to ignore the serious breach of contract issues involved. As Deb Katz of the Citizens Awareness Network puts it: "Entergy's lawyers cherry-picked legislators' questions about safety" from a previous debate relating to nuclear waste. "Judge Murtha supported the corporation over the will of the people." Please continue reading at:
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2012/1918
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2012/1918
