Federal regulators on Monday put a temporary hold on a 20-year extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant after granting renewal of its license just a day before the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck Japan and triggered a tsunami that crippled a similar plant there.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Diane Screnci said the delay is necessary because staff at the NRC "are otherwise occupied and haven't been able to complete the paperwork" and not because of any "technical or legal issues." She said it will likely be several more days before the hold is lifted.

But opponents of extending the license are looking for more than just a temporary hold. They are pointing to the crisis in Japan and the similarities between Vermont Yankee and Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant as reason to close the Vernon, Vt., plant when its license expires in 2012.

Vermont Yankee went online in 1972, only a year after Fukushima Daiichi's first unit became operational, and both plants use the same General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor containment design. Japanese regulators approved a 10-year extension for Fukushima Daiichi just last month.

"The tragedy in Japan was not supposed to be possible, and that's the problem with this technology -- there is no foolproof method," said James Moore, clean energy program director for Vermont Public Interest Research Group. "Regulators in Japan said that those reactors were in safe conditions to continue operating, just like regulators say ours is safe."

In 2006, Vermont Yankee, owned by Entergy Corp., applied to NRC for a permit to operate past 2012, when its current license expires. Entergy had purchased the plant in 2002 and later added extra production capacity. The 40-year-old plant now generates about 650 megawatts of power.

NRC granted the extension last Thursday. According to local news sources, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told reporters then that the commission believed "that Entergy, through the exhaustive review that we've done through the license renewal process, meets all the requirements and standards to operate for another 20 years."

Those hoping for an end to a lengthy five-year review of the plant will have to wait longer now that the temporary hold has been put in place.

Even with approval from NRC, the Vermont Public Service Board still needs permission from the state Legislature to issue a required "certificate of public good" to Entergy. Vermont is the only place in the country where state regulators must get legislative approval for handing out a license to a nuclear plant.

"The law will be followed in this matter regardless of the NRC's jurisdiction," said Elizabeth Miller, state commissioner of public service.

In February 2010, the state Senate voted 26-4 to deny that permission, but the measure never made it to a House vote. As a state senator, Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) championed that measure and has continued to push for the plant's closure.

Before the temporary hold was announced, Larry Smith, a spokesman for Vermont Yankee, had said that Entergy offers its condolences to Japan but that issues regarding Vermont Yankee's safety have been answered by NRC.

"After the most thorough review of any nuclear plant in the country, lasting over five years, and an abundance of public input and scrutiny, the NRC has voted favorably for a new license for Vermont Yankee," Smith said on Monday.

Rethinking the worst-case scenario

While there is no possibility of an earthquake triggering a tsunami in Vermont, Andrea Stander, executive director of the Vermont League of Conservation Voters, said that the events unfolding in Japan are causing everyone to think differently about the worst-case scenario.

Vermont Yankee sits next to the Connecticut River and is "extremely vulnerable to an extreme flooding event," Stander said. The state is heading into its major flooding season and has had an especially large snowpack this year. Screnci said that NRC analyzes and designs plants for "all sorts of natural events," including flooding.

The lesson from Japan is that "nuclear power is so dangerous when something goes wrong, and we have so little control over the things that can go wrong," Stander said. "It begs the question that's been asked since the dropping of the atomic bomb -- is there any such thing as safe use of nuclear power?"

Vermont Yankee has had its share of problems. In 2007, a cooling tower collapsed. In January 2010, groundwater monitoring well samples contained radioactive tritium. Since then, other radioactive leaks have been detected. Entergy had considered selling the plant in November.

The company has been actively investigating the leaks, and Smith said that the presence of tritium has decreased over the past several weeks. The leaks' origin has not yet been identified, but Smith said the company is systematically checking any possible source and reporting daily to the state.

Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace, said that the failures at Fukushima Daiichi highlight the need to store used fuel rods in dry casks rather than in storage pools. In storage pools in Fukushima Daiichi and Vermont Yankee, used fuel rods are submerged in water for several years until they cool.

The storage pools at Fukushima Daiishi have been catching fire, prompting heightened concerns of a nuclear meltdown (Greenwire, March 15).

"We're hopeful that U.S. regulators now will finally do what they should have done years ago -- secure the waste so that you don't have 10, 20, 30 years of nuclear fuel going into an accident," Riccio said.

What happens next

Those closest to the issue expect the state Legislature to again deny permission for the license renewal should NRC once again grant the extension.

House and Senate bills, however, have been introduced within the past few weeks that would remove the legislative approval requirement. State Rep. Michael "Mike" Hebert (R) of Vernon, who introduced the House bill, said that he believes the decision to extend a plant's license should not be a political one.

"I believe that the continuance of the operation of Vermont Yankee must be decided by the people with the expertise to decide if VY is safe, reliable, efficient and in the best interest of the citizens of the state of Vermont," said Hebert in an e-mail to Greenwire. "The people with the needed qualifications to make such decisions are the experts at the NRC and the Vermont PSB [Public Service Board]."

He added he was comfortable with NRC's original decision to allow the extension.

"The nuclear plants withstood the earthquake as they were designed to do," Hebert said, "and it was the subsequent tsunami that caused the failure of the systems which were designed to control the reactor."

The situation in Japan, though, has already also suspended a planned expansion to the South Texas Project nuclear plant and has caused the German government to shutter seven pre-1980s plants.

"Given that the nuclear fleet worldwide is of a certain age, and most of these plants are hitting the outer limit of their design capability, and technology has changed, the idea that these plants can be operated safely is being called into question pretty severely," Stander said.