January 5,2005- Montpelier VT.
In a quick 35 minutes today the Public service Board heard oral arguments about the PSB recommended fines against Entergy for their having circumvented required Board approval by beginning construction on aproposed temporary building in which to do uprate related work in Fall, 2003.
Ray Shadis, staff advisor to the New England Coalition, argued that the punishment should be more severe, including Entergy providing a remuneration to the Coalition for the distraction caused by this proposed building, moving of earth, and beginning site preparations without permission.
A staff person for the Board had already proposed fining Entergy $85,000 for this violation. An alleged secondary problem is Entergy's delay of turning over Discovery material for which Entergy had previously been fined $51,000. This left the Coalition woefully inconvenienced.
To then have this irrelevant temporary building issue arise, whih took hundreds of hours to prepare for as well as to litigate, Mr. Shadis argued that Entergy had created the issue intentionally as a distraction away from the more serious uprate issues.
Shadis argued that Entergy should receive more of a fine for two reasons- the prevous 51k fine apparently didn't deter Entergy from practicing behavior against state law. He noted that Entergy intentionally asked for expedited action on the part of the Board, yet Entergy knowingly began the site preparations without first getting the required permit from the Board. Mr. Shadis explained that this is no small issue. In contrast, Entergy's attorney repeatedly atempted to to convince the Board today that the $85,000 fine was enough because allegedly the entire temporary building should be seen as a small issue.
Shadis responded to Board Chairman Dworkin that there are two reasons why this is no small issue. " To call it a temporary structure... a slab on a sub-foundation and a 500 foot long utility trench...we (NEC)do not think this is a minor change." The second reason alluded to Entergy's hurry to perform these uprate related alterations to the nuclear station during a very short refueling outage implying that schedule driven maintenance was not done,thus endangering the nuclear facility prior to the proposed extended power uprate.
Shadis implied without words that this issue is no more minor than the parking lot, than the lost waste, than the 9600 hour search for the lost waste that was not 9600 hours which could have gone into maintenance.
While nothing was decided in the brief meeting , the PSB took the oral arguments under advisement.