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Northstar Vermont Yankee,The spent fuel pool at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant holds 2,996 spent fuel assemblies, each measuring about 7 inches by 7 inches, that are awaiting a move to dry cask storage. Photo courtesy NRCby Mike Faher vtdigger.org(link is external) Entergy can eliminate a direct emergency data link between Vermont Yankee and the federal government, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided. By unanimous vote on Thursday, NRC commissioners denied Vermont’s appeal of Entergy’s deactivation of the Emergency Response Data System – also known as the ERDS – at the Vernon plant. While state officials argued that the system is important given the risk of radiological accidents from spent fuel stored at the plant, the NRC says the data system is required only at facilities with operating reactors. Vermont Yankee ceased producing power December 29.“Compared to a reactor accident, a spent-fuel pool accident is a slower-moving event with far fewer parameters…to monitor, fewer kinds of potential accidents and more time available to take mitigative and corrective actions,” the NRC decision stated, adding that there is a lower risk of accidents decommissioned plants.RELATED STORY: State slams Vermont Yankee emergency-planning changesVermont Yankee spokesman Martin Cohn said the ruling “confirms that our position on this issue is correct,” in an email statement.“We are pleased that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected the filing from the state of Vermont and affirmed the earlier ruling by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board,” Cohn wrote. “We remain focused on the safety of the facility and the community.”Vermont Public Service Board Commissioner Chris Recchia said he was disappointed, adding there was a “fundamental disagreement” between the NRC and the state over the danger presented by Yankee’s spent fuel.Internal alert systems Vermont Yankee aren’t enough, he said. “The problem is that, if something happens at the site, you don’t want to have to be at the site to figure out what’s going on,” Recchia said.Thursday’s ruling does not affect the ongoing dispute over other, more dramatic emergency changes proposed at Vermont Yankee.Entergy is seeking reduction of the Emergency Planning Zone – now a wide circle touching three states – to the boundaries of the plant site itself. Along with that would come the end of mandatory funding for emergency operations in the affected towns and states.Those changes are still up in the air, as Vermont officials have appealed Entergy’s proposals.Rather, the NRC decision on Thursday is strictly limited to the emergency system in question – which is a relatively obscure mechanism at Vermont Yankee, but one the state took issue with.The origins of the Emergency Response Data System can be traced to Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, after which the NRC “recognized a need to improve its ability to acquire accurate and timely data on reactor-plant conditions during emergencies,” according to federal documents.Hence ERDS was established by the nuclear commission in 1991 to create a “direct electronic data link” between nuclear-plant operators and the commission’s operations center for monitoring remotely. The rule, however, exempted “all nuclear power facilities that are shut down permanently or indefinitely” from participating in the emergency response system.That wording is key in the Yankee case, as Entergy maintained its was no longer needed after the Vernon plant ceased operations.The NRC’s staff has agreed with that stance, and the agency produced guidance saying administrators of a shuttered nuclear plant – after performing their own analysis of emergency systems – may retire the alert system without seeking commission approval.That’s what happened at Vermont Yankee: Entergy when it shut down the system in February.The state asked that Entergy either continue to maintain the system, or provide a similar, alternative one for as long as spent fuel remains at the site.In January, a majority of the licensing board – an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – rejected Vermont’s arguments as inadmissible. To require continued operation of the alert system at a reactor that’s been permanently shut down would be “inconsistent” with federal regulations, the majority opinion stated.Vermont officials appealed the ruling, reaching back to the NRC’s initial 1991 rule. The state argued that exemption from the alert system applied only to nuclear plants that were shuttered at the time that rule was made – not to plants that had yet to shut down in subsequent years.The NRC commissioners disagreed and, on Thursday morning, held a brief voting meeting to deny Vermont’s appeal. The commissioners’ written opinion finds that Vermont has raised issues that are beyond the scope of the current proceeding.Commissioners also say the state “misreads” regulations for shut-down nuclear plants. Given the decreased risk for serious accidents at a plant where the reactor has been de-fueled, the commissioners write, it makes sense that there would be no need for the emergency data alerts.“Without an operating reactor in the picture, the entire focus of the licensee’s staff can be on the spent fuel pool. And once a reactor has shut down, the potential for a release from a spent fuel pool will diminish with time as the decay heat of the fuel drops, given that no fresh spent fuel will be added to the pool. It is reasonable, therefore, to read the (ERDS) rule exemption as applying to facilities that have permanently shut down reactor operations and defueled their reactors.”While there was no formal dissent to Thursday’s ruling, there was a footnote: NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran said he does not necessarily agree with the government’s current ERDS regulations and urged a review as the NRC undertakes new rule-making for decommissioning nuclear plants.“I am sympathetic to the state of Vermont’s view that licensees should maintain those aspects of ERDS that transmit spent fuel pool conditions or are relevant to a potential spent fuel pool accident until the spent fuel is removed from the pool or there is no reasonable risk of a zirconium fire,” Baran wrote. read more