Safety First, Entergy Lawyers Up

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 According to the Rutland Herald,

Entergy has lawyered up. Entergy Nuclear has hired a Washington, D.C., law firm to assist the company in its internal investigation over whether company officials lied to state regulators last year over the existence of radioactivity in buried pipes, which appear to be the source of increasing levels and types of radioactivity leaking at the Vernon reactor.

 This lawyering up comes after weeks of appearances and disappearances surrounding the aging plant.Underground pipes said by officials not to exist, proceeded to make their existence painfully evident to everyone.  

In a twist on this disappearing/reappearing process, Baruth’s Vermont Daily Brief points out that Vermont Yankee’s Chief engineer David McElwee has vanished from the iamvy.com feel-good webpage where he once appeared. McElwee said of the underground piping "We have none. Since this is not an item active in the review of … recommendations, we consider this issue closed,"    

Also performing a reappearance is Governor Douglas’ support for Yankee. After a week of criticizing the power plant operators, the Douglas team is back on point in their support for re-licensing.      

4 thoughts on “Safety First, Entergy Lawyers Up”

  1. Emphasis mine:

    Both Entergy and NRC officials stressed that while the high levels of the radioactive isotopes were found in water in areas where they shouldn’t be, they were in a contained, locked, underground building and posed no immediate risk to the public through exposure.

    Nice parsing of the language there.  

  2. in order to gain assistance in their internal investigation.  Yeah, sure; like it’s a big mystery whether company officials lied to state regulators.  They’re “lawyering up” because they smell litigation headed their way and want to have their first line of defense in play.

  3. Vtdigger has a good run down of the Governor’s press conference. It shows the hollowness of the noises he made regarding Yankee and Entergy’s telling response.

    Douglas said he made his concerns “quite clear” to a senior executive at Entergy last week. “I expect him to determine what happened and take action that is appropriate to rebuild the trust that has been breached with Vermonters over the inaccurate information that has been provided,” Douglas said.

    I guess Entergy took it with the gravity they thought appropriate for the source

    The governor’s call to a vice president of the Louisiana-based company last week has not yet generated a response. When asked if he was surprised that officials hadn’t yet gotten back to him, Douglas replied with a smile, “Perhaps they’ll have a thoughtful and detailed answer.”

    Cute! He makes a joke of it.A little humor for the public good .

    http://vtdigger.org/2010/01/21…

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