Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Tearing down Vermont Yankee could produce more than 2.1 million cubic feet of crushed concrete.
And new documents show that more than half of that concrete - 1.1 million cubic feet - might be buried on site as part of a “rubblization” plan developed by NorthStar Group Services, the company that wants to buy the shut-down Vernon nuclear plant.
Both NorthStar and current plant owner Entergy pledge that only clean concrete will be used as fill. And administrators are touting the plan's benefits, saying it will save millions of dollars and keep thousands of trucks off local roads.
Vermont Yankee has “large quantities of uncontaminated concrete acceptable for reuse as fill that would provide economic benefits, with no health or safety risk due to residual radioactivity, and avoid unnecessary traffic, transportation and disposal offsite,” Steven Scheurich, an Entergy vice president, wrote in documents filed with the state Public Service Board.
Citing financial problems, a partner in the proposed cleanup of Vermont Yankee has suspended its plans for a high-level nuclear-waste storage facility in Texas. But that development apparently won't jeopardize Waste Control Specialists' role in the accelerated decommissioning of the shut-down Vernon nuclear plant. That's because Waste Control Specialists...
An anti-nuclear group is asking the state Public Service Board to reject several key requests made by the company that wants to buy Vermont Yankee. In a motion filed May 5, Brattleboro-based New England Coalition argued that several elements of NorthStar Group Services' decommissioning plan - including a controversial...
After learning of a grant recipient's pending closure, Vermont officials are seeking ways to strengthen the Windham County Economic Development Program. The changes will be aimed at making it easier to “recapture” state funding if a receiving company subsequently leaves the state as Bellows Falls-based Vermed reportedly is planning to do. “You can't foresee every situation, [but] we're trying to make sure everybody's covered,” said Fred Kenney, executive director of the Vermont Economic Progress Council. The Windham County Economic Development...
Gov. Phil Scott has been in public office for more than 16 years, including six as lieutenant governor. Until May 1, however, he had never been to the Brattleboro Retreat. Scott and Retreat administrators spent part of the chilly spring morning touring the hospital's sprawling campus, talking about addiction and mental health services while visiting with staff and patients. With Scott finishing up the fourth month of his first term as governor, his Retreat stop was more of a relationship-building...
The pending closure of a Bellows Falls medical products company means lost jobs and tax revenue for the region. Vermed's reported departure also represents a black eye for the Windham County Economic Development Program: Just two years ago, the company received $200,000 from that fund as part of an incentive package to grow in Vermont. Officials are smarting from the blow, since the economic development program is fueled by a Vermont Yankee shutdown settlement and is supposed to help the...
John Ragonese uses three words - lengthy, complicated and expensive - to describe the federal government's licensing process for hydroelectric dams. But he is promising that Great River Hydro, the new owner of the Vernon, Bellows Falls and Wilder stations, won't miss a beat in seeking Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license renewals for those Connecticut River facilities. In fact, Great River Hydro will be filing a license application with FERC on May 1 - less than two weeks after taking...
Having faced a long list of questions at a recent public meeting, a key player in the proposed Vermont Yankee decommissioning project is responding in writing. Areva Nuclear Materials - a partner of NorthStar Group Services, the nuclear plant's proposed buyer - has issued online responses to questions about the schedule, cost, and radiological safety of the cleanup job. Areva's answers aren't likely to squelch a debate about NorthStar's ability to carry out its accelerated decommissioning plans. But spokesman Curtis...
