Off the Hook!

Holy, cow, God!

Do you read the Keene Sentinel? Did you see yesterday's article? It is about all of that confusion over who owns Vermont Yankee and who will be responsible for the decommissioning costs.

Apparently, the press releases issued by Entergy a few years back (you know; the ones that offered assurances that it owns Vermont Yankee and will be responsible for dismantling and decommissioning) were not the only information that caused reasonable people to believe that Entergy owns Vermont Yankee and will be responsible for ... (I take it you know where the rest of that sentence is headed). Because Entergy also claimed the plant as an asset and claimed the decommissioning costs as a liability in its 2004 SEC filings. The Sentinel specifically says that those SEC filings are "heavily lawyered."

Whoooooieeeeee! And that, Lord, can only mean that this whole fiasco is not the fault of anyone in the PR department!!!!!

Let me quote directly from the Keene Sentinel:

Here’s Note No. 13 in Entergy Corp.’s 10-K filing for 2004 in which it reviews its $180 million purchase of Vermont Yankee:

"Entergy received the plant, nuclear fuel, inventories, and related real estate. The liability to decommission the plant, as well as related decommissioning trust funds of approximately $310 million, was also transferred to Entergy."

There’s similar language in Entergy’s other 10-K filings for prior and subsequent years. The message is pretty clear: Putting aside what the company’s press office was telling the public, Entergy’s lawyers told shareholders that Entergy Corp. owned Vermont Yankee and was assuming the responsibility for covering the decommissioning costs for the power generating enterprise.

There’s no question about who bought Vermont Yankee. And there should be no question about who’s responsible for covering the costs of shutting the place down when that time comes.

Damn! Whoever wrote that is good! Well, that takes a load of my conscience--and I can only suppose that my phone is about to stop ringing over the insanity of all this and the legal department's phone will commence to keen. In celebration, I do believe I'll have one of those funny brownies that the control room operators love so much.

Thanks, Lord, for another in a series of unbelievable lucky brakes.

Whoooooooieeeeee!

Fake-Rob