PLYMOUTH — After public pushback on the proposed release of radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, its new owner says it has decided to keep the water stored onsite for a year.
“No final decisions have been made,” said Patrick O’Brien, a spokesman for Holtec International, in a statement on Monday, Dec. 6. “In the near term the decision at Pilgrim has been made that the processed water will remain on site, safely stored, and that we will not discharge any processed water in 2022.”
At the Nov. 22 meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP), an official of Mass. Dept. of Environmental Protection said that the release of radioactive water from Pilgrim’s spent fuel pool and other systems could be the company’s next step. The imminent release seemed to be confirmed by an email from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to U.S. Rep. Bill Keating.
That email might have been a miscommunication. Or, as some members of nuclear watchdog organizations believe, it could have been that Holtec wanted to begin releasing the effluent far sooner than the company has been saying publicly. Those watchdogs now say they will fight any plan to release the water into the bay, regardless of the timetable.
The Pilgrim plant was permanently shut down in May 2019, after 46 years of operation. Pilgrim was plagued by frequent shutdowns caused by equipment failures during its final years and was categorized by federal regulators as the worst performing nuclear generating station in the country. Holtec International purchased Pilgrim after it was shut down and has begun its decommissioning, which it expects to complete by 2027.
Dumping the effluent from the plant into the bay is not the only option. Another is to truck it offsite to a disposal facility, as Northstar Group Services did while decommissioning the Vermont Yankee power plant. Some of the water, after filtering, could be disposed of through an evaporation process at Pilgrim.
Holtec’s spokesman Patrick O’Brien said at the Nov. 22 NDCAP meeting that a decision on the disposal method was six months to a year away. Less than two weeks later, Rep. Keating received an email from Carolyn Wolf, a congressional liaison at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, indicating that Holtec could be dumping water into the bay in a matter of weeks.
“Holtec has informed the NRC that it plans to discharge liquid effluents sometime in the first quarter of 2022,” wrote Wolf. “Holtec has verbally voluntarily committed to notify the NRC and provide details about planned release before discharging effluent from the decommissioning plant.”
On Dec. 4, activists reacted to the news with outrage, criticizing the environmental implications of the dumping plan, the apparent acceleration of the timetable, and Holtec’s lack of transparency.
The story quickly changed. Keating told the Independent that same afternoon that there had been “a new development.”
Holtec’s O’Brien had emailed the congressman, assuring him that no final decision had been made on releasing the effluent. O’Brien reiterated the timeframe of six months to a year for serious discussion of options.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan told the Independent on Sunday via email that “the statement about the restart of liquid effluents discharge from the plant was general in nature. Pilgrim has not done any such releases in 2021, and Holtec has not yet notified us of any firm plans to do releases in the first quarter of 2022.”
Sheehan said nothing had changed in the company’s plans for disposal of the water.
Keating called O’Brien’s email welcome news. “It will afford us an opportunity at the federal, state, and community level to discuss dumping and other options,” he said.
Keating wants the effluent trucked offsite. The increased cost, he said, would be covered by money ratepayers contributed to a decommissioning fund over several years to handle such tasks. That fund holds $1.05 billion.
Releasing radioactive water into the bay would affect water quality, marine life, and fishing and aquaculture, Keating said, and it could affect tourism.
When Holtec was negotiating to purchase Pilgrim, public concern focused on the company’s lack of experience in decommissioning nuclear reactors. Holtec is currently decommissioning the three reactors at Indian Point in New York and one reactor at Oyster Creek in New Jersey in addition to Pilgrim. All have been permanently shut down. Holtec has a purchase and sale agreement for the Palisades reactor in Michigan, which is scheduled to shut down in 2022.
“Holtec is a major player in a burgeoning industry,” Keating said. “People will be looking at how they approach this: Did they listen? Were they honest and acting in good faith?”
Bonnie Shepard, a member of the Down Cape Downwinders, called any plan to dump Pilgrim’s effluent in the bay “absolutely unacceptable.”
“This is the kind of cost-cutting measure that we feared when we heard about Holtec’s plan for decommissioning,” said Shepard in an email.
Fellow Downwinder Judith Cumbler said, “There is nothing that makes sense about the plan. It is obvious that that will kill the fishing and oystering livelihoods of many people.”
Diane Turco, director of the Cape Downwinders, is organizing a rally in front of the Plymouth Town Hall at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 24, just before the next meeting of NDCAP. Turco has asked the panel to put disposal of the plant’s effluent on its agenda for that evening.
“We must continue to be vigilant, as dumping is still on the table and Holtec is not to be trusted,” Turco said in an email to member of the Downwinders. “Nothing should proceed until an environmentally sound, agreed-upon solution is available.”
