BRATTLEBORO — Entergy Nuclear changed its mind Wednesday and agreed to let a documentary filmmaker attend today's visit by the Public Service Board to the Vermont Yankee reactor.

But late Wednesday afternoon, Entergy issued new guidelines for all media attending the tour, in which the company said it reserved the right to review all film footage and still photography, with the right to delete any shots the company deemed a security risk. The company said it would determine at what point cameras would be used and what angles and subjects would be photographed.

"Entergy VY's policies regarding access to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station are grounded in Entergy VY"s fundamental obligation to protect the safety and security of the company's employees and the people of Vermont and areas surrounding the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station," wrote John Marshall, attorney for Entergy Nuclear.

Robbie Leppzer of Turning Tides Productions of Wendell, Mass., said he was glad with Entergy's decision to recognize documentary filmmakers as having the same media access rights as more traditional media. Until Wednesday, Entergy said Leppzer could attend, but without a camera.

Leppzer had appealed to the Public Service Board, which issued a memo to Entergy late Tuesday afternoon, asking for its reasons excluding the filmmaker's camera, while allowing traditional news crews. Rather than explain its reasons, the company agreed to let Leppzer film – but with the new restrictions.

"I feel this decision is an important recognition," said Leppzer, whose work has appeared on PBS, the Sundance Channel, and others. He has produced films and radio documentaries about both the 1977 Seabrook protests involving the New Hampshire nuclear plant, as well as a 1980 two-hour public radio "oral history" about the people living around Three Mile Island nuclear plant, a year after that crisis.

Leppzer said that while he didn't agree with the new restrictions, he could live with them.

Thursday's site visit by the Vermont Public Service Board is an important aspect of the documentary on the future of Vermont Yankee that he started in early January, about the same time the plant announced it had discovered radioactive tritium was leaking from the plant, said Leppzer, who had made films about a variety of subjects, not just nuclear power.

In fact, the site visit deals with the tritium leak, as the Public Service Board initiated an investigation into the causes and effects of the radioactive leak, which the company says has been stopped and is now being cleaned up to a certain degree.

Under the new guidelines, an Entergy "caddy" will control all cameras and videocameras, and they will be handed back to the journalists or filmmakers at times determined by Entergy. The company then reserved the right to review all shots and film taken before giving the cameras back to the journalists.

The new restrictions, issued at the close of the work day Wednesday by Entergy Nuclear lawyers, are unacceptable to the Rutland Herald, the paper's editor said Wednesday. The Herald and the Brattleboro Reformer are the only news organizations signed up to cover the site visit.

"We will not be sending a photographer under the rules as presented by the company. We have shot under security restrictions at Vermont Yankee before. But the idea that a 'camera caddy' would be deleting images before handing our equipment back is unacceptable. What happens if we get a photo of something embarrassing and newsworthy but not sensitive from a security standpoint? We're not going to put ourselves into the position of giving a censor control over our work," said Randal Smathers, the Herald's editor, who said a news reporter would cover the PSB visit.

"It's one thing to have people put cameras away for parts of the tour. We shoot selectively all the time: in schools, for instance, where some parents give permission for their children to be photographed and others don't," he said.

Larry Smith, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said that 30 people were participating in the site visit, which will go within restricted areas at the plant, but not inside the plant itself. Those people attending include members and staff of the Public Service Board, the Department of Public Service, and various environmental organizations and individuals involved in the pending Vermont Yankee case.

The tour comes as the plant has just started a four-week refueling and maintenance outage, with about 1,000 extra workers on hand at the Vernon plant.

In a letter to the Public Service Board, Entergy Nuclear's attorney John Marshall said the new guidelines were necessary to make sure that security breaches did not occur.

susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com