PLYMOUTH — An incident that exposed a worker at the shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to airborne radioactive contamination was confirmed on June 14 by Patrick O’Brien, spokesman for Holtec International, the company that has been decommissioning the plant since 2019.
An anonymous letter about the incident, claiming that the worker in the reactor building was exposed to enough radioactivity to set off the plant’s radiation detection monitors at the facility’s access and egress points for several weeks, was sent to advocates at Cape Downwinders and to the Mass. Dept. of Public Health last month.
It was the third anonymous letter describing problems with Holtec’s performance as it decommissions the Plymouth plant sent to the Downwinders over the last year, according to Diane Turco, the group’s president.
O’Brien said the contamination incident had been “promptly reported and entered into the facility’s Corrective Action Program.”
According to O’Brien, the worker was exposed by inadvertently coming into contact with the contaminated reactor vessel head while performing a radiological survey. But the dose received by the worker did not exceed allowed exposure limits, he said.
“Plant investigation into the cause of the event is ongoing,” O’Brien said.
The anonymous letter described other problems: a severed 480-volt power cable “almost electrocuting several workers,” and an incident Holtec had originally reported as a “heat event” but which was later reclassified as a “fire event” by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
“With the exception of the personnel contamination event, the assertions in the letter do not provide any new information or concerns that have not been fully addressed previously,” O’Brien said of the anonymous writer’s claims.
Exposure Versus Overexposure
A spokesman for the NRC, which provides oversight for the country’s nuclear reactors, confirmed his agency “is aware of the concerns involving the decommissioning Pilgrim nuclear plant raised in the recent anonymous letter sent to state officials.”
The spokesman, Neil Sheehan, continued: “At this point, we do not have evidence of workers at the site experiencing overexposure to radiation during the course of their work. It’s important to note that the worker discussed in the letter received an exposure to radioactivity versus an overexposure.”
The annual occupational limit for nuclear plant workers is 5,000 millirems. Exposure for the general public is limited to 100 millirems, according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy website.
“The worker involved is believed to have received a small fraction of the allowable amount,” said Sheehan, referring to the limit set for workers. But Sheehan conceded that the exact amount the worker was exposed to in this case is not yet known.
He went on to say the NRC has inspectors at Pilgrim several times each quarter, “including when risk-significant activities are taking place.” The agency can also dispatch its inspectors to conduct a review “if an issue or event warrants more immediate attention.
“However, we do not at this time plan to conduct a reactive inspection based on available information,” Sheehan said.
Sheehan said there were no additional reports or other documents related to this exposure incident. “Not at this point,” he said.
Distrust of the NRC
David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who spent two decades at the Union of Concerned Scientists and served as director of that organization’s Nuclear Safety Project, was provided a copy of the anonymous letter by the Independent.
“The letter was not addressed to the NRC, which is the cop on the nuclear beat,” Lochbaum said in an email. “It is the NRC’s regulations that the author(s) contend were violated. The omission implies a lack of trust and confidence in the NRC.”
Lochbaum said that during his tenure at the UCS he interacted with dozens of nuclear plant workers who had concerns related to safety and security. “The vast majority turned to me after going to the NRC and being unsatisfied with the NRC’s response,” he said.
They always asked Lochbaum to pursue a resolution without revealing that the information came from a plant employee.
While Lochbaum said it was hard to evaluate the whistleblower’s claims without knowing more, he wrote that “NRC inspectors in recent years have identified radiation protection violations at Pilgrim and at Indian Point.”
Both sites are owned by Holtec International, whose profits are tied to monies that might remain in a decommissioning trust fund after the process it is responsible for is complete.
Lochbaum currently serves as a technical expert for the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board.
He said the allegations made in the anonymous letter are “entirely plausible.”
“If valid, the allegations represent true threats to worker safety,” Lochbaum said. “The allegations aren’t inconsequential claims of deficient accounting or paperwork practices. The allegations are that workers are not being properly protected from radiation exposure.”
A Quiet Rewrite
Lack of public trust has been an ongoing issue for Holtec.
Last month, Holtec Senior Compliance Manager David Noyes presented a lengthy update of plant activities at a meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, which is charged with overseeing operations at the shuttered Pilgrim reactor.
What his report did not mention was that the company had submitted an amendment to its application to the federal Environmental Protection Agency for a wastewater discharge permit modification. The original application characterized the proposed discharge of one million gallons of radioactive wastewater as a “new” discharge. The company wants to reclassify it as “existing discharge.”
At that meeting, Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, who serves on the advisory panel, accused Noyes of “lying by omission.”
“They are now arguing it’s a modification to existing permitting,” said Gottlieb later in a phone interview. “It’s the same activity. They’re trying to breathe new life into Frankenstein.”
The state Dept. of Environmental Protection issued a draft denial of Holtec’s request for a surface water discharge permit last July, calling it a violation of the state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act, but hasn’t issued its final decision yet.
The EPA has also not yet issued its decision on Holtec’s request for an amendment to its so-called National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, which the state also weighs in on.
Noyes’s failure to mention the change in the permit application shows “contempt for the public,” Gottlieb said.
