Vermont Yankee cleanup nears the finish line in Vernon

After the demolition work is done, NorthStar must still satisfy NRC requirements before any partial site release can happen.

The former Vermont Yankee nuclear plant now looks much more like a construction site than a retired reactor complex. The tall pale green reactor building that once dominated the riverfront for nearly 50 years is gone, along with the other major industrial structures that stood on the 140-acre property.

NorthStar Group Services, which bought the site in 2019, says the physical demolition phase is almost over. Scott State, who recently moved from chief executive officer to executive chairman and chief nuclear officer, said during a tour last week that the project is about 99 percent complete. New CEO Jeffrey Adix joined him on the visit after his promotion from chief financial officer.

Most of the $602 million decommissioning trust fund has already been spent on tearing down the plant and hauling debris out of Vermont. State said about $8.5 million remains for the final stretch of work over the next several months. A separate restoration fund will cover later site work, and NorthStar still expects to wrap up physical decommissioning in 2027, well ahead of its 2030 target.

The company has also said the site cannot be cleared for possible reuse until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission finishes its review, a process State expects will take a couple of years. After the demolition work is done, NorthStar must still satisfy NRC requirements before any partial site release can happen.

A major part of the cleanup has involved the reactor building itself. Roughly 28,000 cubic yards of concrete from the foundation and above-ground structure were sent to Waste Control Specialists’ disposal facility in Andrews, Texas, the low-level radioactive waste site used for Texas, Vermont and other generators. NorthStar also agreed to remove concrete four feet below the surface, including sections of the foundation that were as much as 12 feet thick. Clean fill for the basement area came from a Vermont quarry, and the company expects to use about 28,000 cubic yards of locally sourced fill to restore the reactor site.

Workers were still active at the Vernon property last Tuesday, with NorthStar manager Corey Daniels estimating a crew of 50 to 80 people on site. One remaining job, expected to begin early next year, is removal of the plant’s water discharge structure, a non-nuclear concrete facility that once returned warmed cooling water to the Connecticut River.

The intake structure has already been dismantled, and NorthStar officials say the riverbank will be reshaped to its original slope. State emphasized that both structures were non-radioactive and unrelated to contamination concerns.

The long-running project is very different from the approach Entergy Nuclear originally considered when it shut the plant down in 2016 after losing money in the deregulated New England power market. Entergy had planned to place the facility into SAFSTOR and wait about 60 years before beginning demolition. NorthStar persuaded state officials to support the sale by promising a faster teardown. State noted that recently closed reactors elsewhere have not gone into SAFSTOR.

With the plant’s large buildings removed, one major reminder of its nuclear past remains at the north end of the site: a row of steel and concrete casks holding more than 42 years of spent fuel. Those containers will stay in place until the federal Department of Energy creates a national repository and removes them.

NorthStar and PowerTransitions, the Texas-based company studying possible future uses for the site, have not discussed development plans publicly as part of the tour restrictions. PowerTransitions is reportedly evaluating battery storage, a data center and even a small modular reactor, though Vernon officials have said the firm’s main interest appears to be battery storage because of the nearby VELCO substation.

State said the company expects to cover all costs tied to the project.