Lawmakers who heard about the progress on those plans this week said they were surprised at the number of years nuclear waste may be stored at the Vernon plant while the federal government tries to figure out what to do with it.
The question about where the state will get its electricity is becoming critical as the power contracts with Yankee and Hydro-Quebec - which account for the vast majority of Vermont's power supply - approach the end of their lives. Although the plant will seek an extension, Yankee's operating license expires in 2012 and the contracts with the owners of the massive network of Canadian dams begin to phase out a few years later.
Two years ago, lawmakers passed bills signed into law by Gov. James Douglas requiring that the Department of Public Service study how Vermonters feel about the future of their power supply.
But that presented a difficulty. Simply polling residents about a complicated topic like whether the state's utilities should buy power from wind projects, nuclear power, Hydro-Quebec of any of the other sources of electricity available when the current contracts expire would prove of limited benefit, experts and officials decided.
So instead the "public engagement process" requested by the Legislature and created by the department will have three parts. In all it is expected to cost roughly $520,000.
The heart of the process will consist of deliberative polling, in which roughly 200 Vermonters selected from a telephone poll of 5,000 candidates will spend a weekend hearing from experts about power sources from wind to coal. Their responses to the worthiness of different possible energy sources - and the expected cost of each - will then be part of a report that will give utilities and policy makers guidance as they seek new supplies.
Also included in that study will be the results of five meetings from around the state on energy supply issues, which will include polling of those attending. Finally there will be an Internet site that will also gather information on Vermonters' preferred electricity sources.
"This is about gathering relevant hard data on what can be a very mushy topic," said Stephen Wark, a spokesman for the department. Between the weekend of "deliberative polling" and the meetings around the state "this is, we believe, the largest sample of citizens ever taken in the country on the question of energy."
Lawmakers and members of the Douglas administration may be more or less in agreement about the public engagement process, but they are in a tussle over this year's energy bill. That is because the bill would establish a new efficiency program for heating fuels - perhaps funded with a tax increase on Vermont Yankee.
Douglas vetoed the bill, H.520, and lawmakers are expected to return to Montpelier in early July to vote on a veto override.
Although the bill was not on the agenda for Thursday's Legislative Joint Energy Committee meeting, Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien and lawmakers disagreed over the impact on future power rates of the proposal.
O'Brien warned that the proposal to increase the tax on Yankee's parent company could harm future negotiations with Yankee, Hydro-Quebec and other companies.
"Ratepayers will not see the best possible price," if the state is viewed as unreliable or predatory, he said. "If there is going to be another contract, it has already been undermined by the discourse of the last several weeks."
"The Legislature has to be accountable for that," he said. "It was clear to me today they don't want to acknowledge that."
But legislators bristled at that suggestion.
"You are giving them cover," said Sen. Mark MacDonald, chairman of the committee. Lawmakers questioned whether O'Brien had already made up his mind that Yankee should continue to operate past 2012 - something that will take both legislative and Public Service Board acceptance.
"By no means do we see ourselves here to protect Entergy or defend Entergy, that is not our jobs," O'Brien said. However, the economic benefit of 600 jobs and cheap power from the plant must be part of the consideration of the nuclear plant's future, he added.
"From an economic standpoint ... the state of Vermont would have a hard time making up for that" if the plant closed, O'Brien said.
Another question the four lawmakers who attended the Joint Energy Committee meeting this week raised was how long nuclear waste will be stored at the Yankee site in so-called "dry casks." Given the federal government's failure to prepare for such storage as soon as promised - the first loads of waste were originally slated to leave Vernon in 1999 - it may be many more decades than the 20 years they were originally told, MacDonald said.
"It is two years later and we are told that is not the case," he said. "Often the bill doesn't come due until long after you have used the electricity."
Meanwhile, money gathered by the feds from ratepayers to pay for long-term storage of waste sits largely unused. So far $143 million has been collected from electricity users in Vermont alone.
One place where his company agrees with nearly everyone - even anti-nuclear advocates - is that the federal government ought to fulfill its obligation to take care of storing or recycling spent fuel from the plants as promised, said Brian Cosgrove of Entergy
"The federal government ought to do the right thing," he said. "The ultimate solution is for the federal government to live up to its commitment."
In addition to the overall public engagement process, the Department of Public Service is starting on several studies about Vermont Yankee, including the economic benefit of the plant and other aspects of its potential continued operation. Those studies will likely cost between $60,000 and $85,000, and will in part form the basis of the discussion among lawmakers and regulators about whether the plant should gain a longer term to operate.
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