CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

As tension builds about when the Vermont Legislature will vote to allow or deny a 20-year license extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, it's time to look at what's going on between the state of New York and Yankee's owners, Entergy.

Wrapped in with the license extension Entergy wants for the plant is a plan by the company to spin off Yankee and four other of its nuclear properties—Pilgrim in Plymouth, Mass., Indian Point and Fitzpatrick, both in New York State, and Palisades in Michigan—into a new company, Enexus.

Goldman Sachs is advising Entergy about forming Enexus, which would begin life with a debt of $3.5 billion—a fact that has ratepayers and officials in Vermont and New York worried that, especially in a shaky market, the new company would not be able to pay for proper maintenance and especially for the expensive future decommissioning of the plants. (Massachusetts and Michigan do not have laws giving them jurisdiction over the formation of the new company.)

And according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Enexus' instruments will not be investment-grade; that, as noted nuclear industry analyst Dan Scotto of Whitehall Financial Advisors told the Advocate, "after all is said and done, is not helpful."

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