Size of nuke waste facility scaled back

Published: Sunday, Mar. 13, 2005

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Entergy Nuclear has scaled back the size of a proposed high-level radioactive waste facility in Vernon, according to draft legislation proposed to the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee. <snip>

Only two states in the country have legally wrangled some kind of oversight on nuclear waste - Vermont and Minnesota - and Minnesota receives an annual payment of $12 million, Dostis said. <snip>

Entergy is running out of storage space for the highly lethal old nuclear fuel and says without legislative approval for the waste facility, it would have to shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in 2007 or 2008. The nuclear utility’s supporters say that the reactor provides one-third of all the electricity needed in Vermont, and at a relatively low price of just under 4 cents per kilowatt hour.

Entergy has maintained that it should be exempt from any legislative oversight.

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