BRATTLEBORO-In March, Vermont Public Service Commissioner Kerrick Johnson stated on Vermont Public's Vermont Edition: "Vermonters should be able to determine [Vermont's] energy portfolio." Fair enough, though he and Gov. Phil Scott seem to have gone ahead and made that determination for us.
As reported in the Connecticut Mirror, on Sept. 30, at the National Governors Association's 2026 New England Regional Nuclear Policy Summit in Lowell, Massachusetts, after noting that other New England states don't want to be the first to use small modular reactors, the commissioner went for it.
"The community agrees, we and our department agree, the state, our governor agrees, and the region, initially, agrees," he said. Further, "The collaborative role we can serve - as Vermont has traditionally served - is to go first."
This is a rather large commitment to be making to the rest of the New England governors without first asking someone, somewhere in Vermont.
Johnson and Gov. Scott do seem to have their doubts, however, about the extent of the community's support for nuclear power, whichever "community" he may be referring to.
The Scott administration has repeatedly proposed legislation that would rebrand the Renewable Energy Standard as the "Clean Energy Standard," rebrand nuclear power as "clean," and thereby, with the stroke of a pen, rebrand nuclear power as "renewable" - a very imaginative solution to the many problems of nuclear power if wholly in contradiction to the laws of physics.
Just to make sure, though, that the community it claims supports nuclear power actually supports nuclear power, the administration has at the same time as its rebranding efforts repeatedly asked the Vermont General Assembly to remove the requirement that the Public Utility Commission obtain legislative approval before issuing a Certificate of Public Good for the construction of a nuclear power plant!
These shenanigans by the Scott administration are less about nuclear power than they are about its fundamentally undemocratic efforts to control the state's energy policy. The administration should stop working for the interests of the utilities and start working for the interests of Vermont citizens.
Schuyler Gould
Brattleboro
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