Reposted from Brattleboro Reformer
By DAVE GRAM / Associated Press
Wednesday February 29, 2012
MONTPELIER — It looked a month ago like the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant was in the clear for continued operation after a federal judge ruled against the state’s efforts to shut it down.
Judge J. Garvan Murtha of the U.S. District Court in Brattleboro had ruled Vermont laws pointing toward a shutdown for the state’s lone reactor unconstitutional or pre-empted by federal law.
But now the Vernon reactor’s owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., is saying through its lawyers that it and the judge may have missed a legal trap, one that could force the plant to shut down on its 40th birthday, barely three weeks from now.
So the fight over Vermont Yankee’s future rages on.
…… Sandra Levine, a lawyer with the environmental group Conservation Law Foundation, said the company’s stance violated an earlier promise it had made to abide by the board’s decisions on waste storage post-2012.
“Entergy continues its streak of broken promises,” Levine wrote in an email. “Entergy now seeks to force Vermont to store additional spent fuel without approval and contrary to Entergy’s own agreement with the State.”
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