While interest is focussed on Governor-elect Peter Shumlin and his nascent administration, outgoing Jim Douglas (“Governor Sissorhands,” as he has been widely known) wanders the state in a sort of farewell tour, sloshing with jocularity and tepid humor.  According to the Messenger, at a Rotary toast in St. Albans today

“Douglas…joked that his next career goal is as a greeter at the St. Albans Town Walmart.”

It may look like the Douglas administration, now a “lame duck,” is backing harmlessly away from the table, but don’t count your giblets before they’re gravy.  Only today, we learn that a couple of Douglas appointees are hurriedly concluding negotiations on an obscure matter that may have greater influence over the fate of Vermont Yankee than either the determinations of the legislature or the will of the people.  Now this is pretty wonky stuff which, rest-asssured, both Entergy and the Douglas Administration very much hope will not engage the majority of Vermonters.  Vermont Digger has the story, and you’d best read the whole thing very carefully.

It seems that, back in 1998, when VY’s “sell-by” date was still fourteen years in the future, Vermont made a compact with Texas

“to establish a permanent repository for low-level radioactive waste generated by nuclear power plants and medical and research facilities in Vermont and Texas. The compact was set up for the two states’ exclusive use. (Maine was originally a part of the agreement but dropped out).  In 2009, Waste Control Specialists received a license to open a radioactive waste landfill in West Texas for the compact that is now under construction.”

Between 1998 and the present, I think we can fill in the blanks.  Time went by; the economy of both states got dicey; and someone decided it might be a good idea to offset the cost of constructing and operating the landfill by admitting a “few more” member states into the compact. Appointed by Douglas, Vermont’s only two representatives to the Texas commission, Uldis Vandis and Steven Wark, are among those supporting the move to admit more states.  Several Texas commissioners apparently disagree.

“Critics say the new rules could transform the landfill into a national repository for low-level nuclear waste and that it could fill up quickly because demand for landfill space is high. Thirty-six states are not currently part of a radioactive waste disposal compact.”

The upshot is that, after a 30-day period allowed for public comment that is set to expire on December 27, the commission will make its final decision before Peter Shumlin takes office and has the opportunity to replace  Vandis and Wark as Vermont’s only voices on the Texas commission.  If the commission votes to allow more states to join the compact and the predictions of critics are born-out, capacity at the landfill may be consumed before Vermont has had the opportunity to decommission Yankee and move all of its contaminated materials to the Texas site.  

This would be just fine with Jim Douglas and Co., who favored the so-called “SAFSTOR” alternative which would delay decommissioning for sixty years, keeping Yankee contaminants locally contained on the site at Vernon.  Why deal with nuclear waste in a timely manner when we can simply kick it down the road for another generation to deal with?  As explained in the Digger piece, there are plenty of reasons not to “love” this scenario; and the fact that the Texans, little-known for their environmental sympathies, are doubtful about the wisdom of opening-up the compact to more members should give anyone pause.

Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, who serves as a member of the Legislative Public Oversight Panel, believes that the SAFSTOR plan is not the most prudent way to deal with decommissioning, and maintains that VY should be decommissioned in just ten years, requiring access to the planned landfill space in Texas.  He fears that opening-up the compact to the 35 other states who would be likely to take advantage of the opportunity, would quickly exhaust the site and make it impossible to decommission Vermont Yankee.

Gundersen believes that Vanag underestimated the cost of decommissioning Vermont Yankee in his 2009 testimony to the Public Service Board, because his calculations assumed that decommissioning would be completed by 2020.  If the landfill site in Texas is exhausted by other states, Vermont would be forced to adopt the SAFSTOR approach which Douglas favors, and which would ultimately be far costlier and potentially damaging to the state.

A word to the wise: Douglas seems to have no intention of going “gentle into that good night.”  His appointees are stepping up the pace to ensure that everything is in place to perpetuate his agenda with regard to VY well-beyond his administration.  What a good friend Entergy has had in Gentleman Jim Douglas.