The battle over the fate of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant heads to court today.

Entergy Corp., which owns and operates the 39-year-old plant, filed a lawsuit in April arguing that the state's attempt to prevent the plant from operating past March 21, 2012, infringes on the federal jurisdiction of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (E&ENews PM, April 18).

Entergy wanted a preliminary injunction to keep the state from shutting the plant down until a final decision in the lawsuit could be made, but last month Judge J. Garvan Murtha denied the company's request (Greenwire, July 19).

When Entergy bought the plant in 2002, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Vermont that included a number of conditions, including that the Public Service Board would have jurisdiction to grant or deny the approval of the plant's continued operation and that Entergy would waive any claim it might have to federal pre-emption of actions taken by the board.

Now, the company is arguing that those two conditions are not valid because of two things that have happened in the meantime. First, the Legislature passed an act in 2006 giving itself the authority to forbid the PSB from issuing a certificate of public good. Second, the Legislature's discussion of whether to give the PSB authority to issue that certificate was based on the safety of the plant -- an area that falls solely to NRC (Josh Stilts, Brattleboro [Vt.] Reformer, Sept. 12). -- AS