PLYMOUTH — State environmental officials won’t allow the company decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to dump one million gallons of filtered wastewater containing radionuclides and other contaminants from the plant’s spent fuel pool and other systems into Cape Cod Bay.

The Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) sent its final determination to Pilgrim’s owner, Holtec Decommissioning International, on July 18, denying a requested amendment to the plant’s surface water discharge permit.

But Holtec’s senior compliance manager, David Noyes, confirmed Monday that the company continues to view discharge of the wastewater into the bay as its best option and will likely appeal the state’s decision.

“Nothing has changed with our assessment,” Noyes said during the July 22 meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP).

The state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act provided the basis for DEP’s denial. The act prohibits the discharge of commercial, domestic, or industrial waste into a designated ocean sanctuary. Cape Cod Bay bears that designation.

While the Act exempts activities associated with active electrical power generation and transmission, the Plymouth nuclear plant stopped generating electricity in May 2019 when it was permanently shut down. A few “narrow exemptions” are listed in the Act, according to DEP, but “none applies to the proposed discharge.”

Holtec Plans Appeal

Noyes made it clear at the NDCAP meeting that Holtec will probably appeal the permit denial. The company has 30 days to file an administrative appeal with DEP’s Office of Appeals and Dispute Resolution. Noyes said that the company would file the appeal with DEP “as a first step in the process.”

Holtec will use the money in the decommissioning trust fund, which consists entirely of taxpayer money set aside for decommissioning, to pay for its appeal.

If Holtec is unsuccessful, it could then file suit in federal court, claiming federal preemption of state law. Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said in an email that the company is still evaluating the appeal and that it was “too early to say what the outcome will be and what the next steps might be.”

According to Noyes, the “uncertainty” related to the wastewater disposal will add about four years to the timeline for full cleanup and release of the site. Holtec had already added four years to its original site release date to allow time for interest to build in the decommissioning trust fund. The site release date is now 2035, according to O’Brien.

Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod and a member of NDCAP, told Noyes at the meeting that the state has given Holtec a determination that the water can’t be discharged into the bay. “You don’t like it? Too bad,” Gottlieb said. “It’s illegal.”

If Holtec appeals, Gottlieb said, the company is the one causing the additional delay of site release. “You’re asking the people of Plymouth and southeastern Massachusetts to bear the burden of your decision,” he said. Holtec has an opportunity, Gottlieb continued, “to play the better corporate citizen role, to take the answer you have been given, shorten the schedule, and get on with figuring out another way to dispose of this water.”

NDCAP member Jack Priest, director of the state Dept. of Public Health’s radiation control program, told Noyes an appeal of the permit denial would be a waste of time and money.

“It doesn’t make sense to spend money on an appeal when you could use it to ship [the wastewater] off-site tomorrow,” Priest said. “I’d like to see a breakdown of what the cost would be to ship and what it’s going to cost for a legal appeal.”

Holtec has estimated shipping costs will total $20 million. But Priest said that during the time spent on the appeal, costs related to decommissioning will also go up and could exceed the cost of shipping.

Noyes repeated Holtec’s position that shipping is environmentally irresponsible, based on the number of truckloads it would take to move the wastewater to an off-site facility.

NDCAP member Pine duBois, who has supported discharging the water into the bay, agreed with Noyes.

“There is a problem here that is environmentally difficult and managerially difficult,” duBois said. “If we would help the company rather than hinder the company, I think we could do it before sea level rise sweeps it all out to sea, and nobody gets what they want.”

Buying Time?

Discharge of the plant’s contaminated wastewater into the bay is not the only concern.

About two years ago, the company began running submerged heaters in the reactor cavity for several months at a time to evaporate the contaminated wastewater, sending it into the atmosphere through vents in the reactor building.

During that time, the 1.1 million gallons of wastewater initially at the plant dropped by 150,000 gallons down to 950,000, according to estimates provided by Holtec earlier this year.

Holtec said the use of submerged heaters was helping to warm the workers in the reactor building. The company has said the heaters are currently not running but the company plans to continue using them.

Of the possibility of a delay caused by an appeal, which he estimates would take a year or two, Gottlieb said at Monday’s meeting, “One might reasonably wonder that the delay is intended to be used to allow time for the water to be evaporated, solving your problem in another form.”

Asked whether Holtec is planning other measures in addition to the heaters to increase the rate of evaporation, Noyes said, “We don’t have anything planned that I’m aware of.”