Re: Maine Yankee - managed by Entergy!

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 09:08 PM 1/8/97 -0600, you wrote:
>This "management agreement" raises many issues. It will be 
>interesting to see how this works out. Some questions:
>

A number of years ago, TVA got into negotiations with a company that wanted
to take over construction of Bellefonte Nuclear Plant, complete it, and
then operate it, selling the power to customers not specified at the time.
The deal never made it, largely due to one aspect - the NRC insisted
(rightly, IMHO) that all responsibility and liability rested with the
entity named in the license, i.e., the licensee. TVA wasn't willing to give
up the license, but didn't want to take the risks (and hits) flowing from
problems in the operating company.

I suspect that the NRC has been part of the contract development process at
Maine Yankee, and probably would be unwilling to permit the licensee to
require (by contract) the operator to pay NRC fines and take responsibility
for regulatory problems in general. The reason is simple: it would insulate
the licensee from the faults of the operator, but the NRC would have no
legal jurisdiction over the operator, just the licensee.


Bob Flood
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(415) 926-3793     bflood@slac.stanford.edu
Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.