New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has put the weight of his office behind an effort by the Alliance for a Green Economy (AGREE) to challenge the financial ability of three nuclear power plants to continue operating safely.
Schneiderman recently sent the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) a 16-page letter essentially supporting and supplementing AGREE’s petition challenging the financial qualifications of the FitzPatrick nuclear plant in Oswego County, the Pilgrim plant near Boston, and Vermont Yankee.
“This is a huge development for us,” said Jessica Azulay, staff organizer for AGREE, a Syracuse-based coalition that includes the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club. While the attorney general’s action does not make his office an official co-signer of AGREE’s petition, “the letter provides all kinds of weight and additional information to our petition, and calls on NRC to do a very thorough investigation” of the Oswego plant’s financial health, Azulay said. “The letter is very detailed and includes a ton of useful information about Entergy’s convoluted corporate structure.”
Schneiderman asked the NRC to discover how much revenue FitzPatrick generates for its parent company, Entergy, and whether funds will be made available for long-term storage of spent fuel after the reactor is shut down.
The attorney general urged the NRC to undertake a careful, public analysis of the complex web of corporate entities involved in Entergy’s nuclear plants in the Northeast.
“Such an examination should be conducted in a transparent manner and, at the end of the proceeding, NRC should detail and explain for New Yorkers the financial ability of these Entergy subsidiaries to safely operate, maintain and decommission FitzPatrick,’’ Schneiderman said.
At AGREE’s request, last summer the NRC agreed to review Entergy’s financial qualifications to continue operating FitzPatrick and two other reactors. Shortly after, Vermont Yankee said it would close down for financial reasons.
Meanwhile, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard, U.S. Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and Bernard Sanders (Ind-VT) have expressed “grave concern’’ about reports that Entergy is putting pressure on the NRC to suppress the inquiry about its financial operations.