Federal regulators have turned down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant’s plan to use some of the money from its decommissioning fund for management of the plant’s nuclear waste.
And they say the plant has been overestimating the fund’s likely earnings.
The plant’s owner had been hoping to use some of the money from its decommissioning fund – already hundreds of millions of dollars short of what it needs, by some estimates – to cover the costs of storing and disposing of highly radioactive spent fuel from the Vernon reactor.
But in a notice made public yesterday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Entergy failed to provide reasonable assurance the spent fuel management withdrawals would not inhibit the ability of the licensee to complete radiological decommissioning.
It ordered Vermont Yankee to "provide a revised spent fuel management plan within 90 days."