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Holtec International

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Nuclear Plant Owner Appeals Denial of Permit Change

    Holtec argues that Ocean Sanctuaries Act doesn’t apply in this case

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Looking for a way to gain approval for disposing of a million gallons of contaminated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay, Holtec International, the company decommissioning the Pilgrim nuclear plant in Plymouth, requested an amendment to its water discharge permit. The state denied that request in July, but Holtec has now appealed that decision.

    The Dept. of Environmental Protection’s denial was based on the state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act, which prohibits such industrial discharges into Cape Cod Bay. While the act exempts discharges associated with active electric power generation and transmission, Pilgrim has not generated electricity since it was permanently shut down in 2019.

    Holtec argues that decommissioning a nuclear plant is simply another step in the production of electrical power, so the discharge should be permitted.

    Holtec has asked MassDEP’s Office of Appeals and Dispute Resolution, which is an independent entity, to reverse the denial or to rule on the permit modification request under the Mass. Clean Waters Act rather than the Ocean Sanctuaries Act.

    In its filing, Holtec argues that the discharge would be consistent with the Clean Waters Act, given the characterization of the effluent pollutants in the wastewater. “MassDEP’s reasoning for denying the permit modification is mere pretext for an improper attempt to regulate radioactive byproduct materials, which is squarely preempted by the [federal Atomic Energy Act],” Holtec says in its appeal.

    The appeal was expected, but Mary Lampert, a longtime plant watchdog and member of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP), said the expense related to it would only impede a proper cleanup. “All Holtec’s legal fees come out of our decommissioning trust fund,” she said. The money in the fund came from ratepayers, and “Holtec did not put a dime into it,” Lampert said.

    Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod and also an NDCAP member, called the appeal “good for Holtec’s bottom line.”

    Buying Time for Evaporation

    “The longer they pursue this meritless appeal, the more time they have to induce evaporation of the contaminated water into the air while slowing their spending,” said Gottlieb in a written statement.

    What Gottlieb is referring to is Holtec’s evaporation of the radioactive wastewater through vents in the reactor building. The company has submerged heaters in the water stored in the reactor cavity for several months at a time, claiming that it helped to dry components and warm workers in the building. But a significant amount of the contaminated wastewater has been released into the atmosphere as a result, and opponents have argued that from there it would eventually come back down. Holtec removed the heaters for the summer but intends to submerge them in the wastewater again as the weather cools.

    The 1.1 million gallons of wastewater at the plant dropped by 150,000 gallons thanks to the evaporation, according to estimates Holtec provided earlier this year. “What does the public get from this?” said Gottlieb. “Increased exposure to radiation released from evaporation and an eight-year-longer wait for the site to be cleaned up.”

    The cleanup was originally to be finished by 2027. But Holtec has moved the projected date to 2035 and placed much of the blame for the delay on public opposition to the proposed discharge into the bay. Opponents have lobbied to have Holtec ship the contaminated water off-site for disposal at a licensed facility.

    Gov. Maura Healey’s spokesperson released a statement in response to the appeal that reads: “DEP’s permit decision is clear that Holtec cannot discharge wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. It’s time for Holtec to move forward, dispose of the wastewater in a safe and acceptable manner, and stop delaying our real goal — decommissioning of the site and returning the property to productive use. We’ll continue to monitor Holtec’s role in decommissioning and any potential impacts on the environment and human health.”

    The Office of Appeals and Dispute Resolution has not yet set a date for a hearing or decided whether it will be held at DEP headquarters in Boston or the regional office in Lakeville, according to DEP spokesman Edmund Coletta. But the process will include a hearing open to the public.

    Once the appeal is heard, the presiding officer from the appeals office will issue a recommended final decision. Commissioner Bonnie Heiple will then review and make the final decision on the case. That decision could then be appealed in Superior Court.

    ‘RISK-SIGNIFICANT’ EVENTS

    Holtec Confirms Pilgrim Worker Was Contaminated

    Reactor’s owner downplays incident while revising wastewater permit wording

    By

    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.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    State Says Holtec Must Report on Chemicals in Vaporized Wastewater

    DEP wants to assess whether Pilgrim releases should require air quality permit

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Holtec International, the company that now owns the shuttered nuclear power station here, has so far not received permission to pursue its initial plan to discharge 1.1 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.

    But while it awaits decisions by state and federal regulators, the company has gotten rid of some 200,000 gallons of that wastewater laced with radioactive and nonradioactive contaminants by placing submerged heaters in the reactor cavity and evaporating it.

    The state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), prompted by letters asking about the state’s ability to oversee such discharges, has decided to direct Holtec, which is now decommissioning Pilgrim, to “calculate and submit an analysis” of the potential emission of contaminants known to be in the plant’s wastewater based on sampling last April. DEP asked that Holtec’s analysis factor in any additional pollutants that may have been released in reactor system water since those samples were drawn.

    Seth Pickering, deputy regional director of the Mass. DEP’s Bureau of Air and Waste, told the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP) at its Jan. 29 meeting that if any contaminant exceeds the threshold of one ton per year, Holtec would need a state permit to release it under air quality regulations.

    Holtec’s initial plan to release contaminated wastewater stored in the spent fuel pool and other systems at the plant into the bay included treating the water first to bring radioactive contamination levels down within federal limits.

    But in order to pursue that strategy, the company was required to apply for discharge permits from both the DEP and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. DEP issued a draft denial of the state permit in July, saying the discharge would violate the Ocean Sanctuaries Act because Cape Cod Bay has been designated an ocean sanctuary. The agency has not yet made a final decision.

    The EPA is still conducting its review of the federal permit application.

    The evaporation, the company has said, has been incidental to heating the water to keep the building warm for workers and to help shorten drying time for boxes containing irradiated pieces of the reactor after they are removed from the cavity.

    But some NDCAP members, along with activists and area residents, point out that Holtec’s radioactive wastewater problem is quickly vanishing through the reactor building’s unfiltered vents.

    During the advisory panel’s Jan. 29 meeting, its chair, James Lampert, asked how much wastewater was in the plant when Holtec purchased Pilgrim after its 2019 permanent shutdown. David Noyes, Holtec’s senior compliance manager, said there were about 2 million gallons.

    Nearly 1 million gallons of that evaporated before January 2021, Noyes said, due to the heat being generated by the radioactive fuel assemblies stored in the spent fuel pool. Those assemblies have since been moved to large concrete and steel casks.

    It’s not possible to project how long it might take to evaporate the 900,000 gallons now remaining in storage because there are too many variables, according to Noyes.

    Lampert and his wife, Mary, also an NDCAP member, wrote to state officials recently, arguing that the evaporated water, laden with contaminants, ultimately ends up in Cape Cod Bay, carried by prevailing wind and falling in the form of precipitation. If discharging the wastewater into the bay is a violation of the state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act, then evaporation would also be a violation, the Lamperts wrote.

    When Mary Lampert pointed out during the NDCAP meeting that Holtec had agreed to abide by state laws in the settlement agreement with the attorney general, Noyes said the agreement doesn’t mention the Ocean Sanctuaries Act.

    The agreement simply states “applicable laws,” argued Noyes. To that, Lampert responded, “Well, they weren’t talking about speeding.”

    Pine duBois, an NDCAP member who was formerly the chair, praised Holtec’s practice of heating the reactor building with wastewater. “I applaud your ingenuity in this heating system, and I wish I could do it at my house,” duBois said.

    DuBois went on to say, however, that she preferred Holtec’s option of discharging the water into Cape Cod Bay over evaporation. “I relate your million gallons of water to the 1.7 million gallons a day that Plymouth releases into the bay,” she said, referring to the town’s wastewater. That water, she said, “has all kinds of contaminants in it, including the stuff we’re talking about here.”

    Mary Lampert disagreed. “Saying the bay is already screwed is not an argument for why we should add more,” she said.

    Holtec is meanwhile fighting an unrelated battle in New Jersey, where the company is decommissioning Oyster Creek, another of its nuclear plants.

    New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a statement to the press on Jan. 30, announcing that the state and Holtec had reached a multimillion-dollar settlement following a criminal investigation into the company’s attempt to exploit the state’s tax credit program.

    The investigation involved a 2018 application for $1 million in tax credits that Holtec and its sister company, Singh Real Estate Enterprises, claimed was due to them. Under the settlement, Holtec must pay a $5 million fine and retain an independent reviewer approved by the state for any submissions for state tax credits, loans, or other benefits during the next three years.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    State Says Holtec Must Report on Chemicals in Vaporized Wastewater

    DEP wants to assess whether Pilgrim releases should require air quality permit

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Holtec International, the company that now owns the shuttered nuclear power station here, has so far not received permission to pursue its initial plan to discharge 1.1 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.

    But while it awaits decisions by state and federal regulators, the company has gotten rid of some 200,000 gallons of that wastewater laced with radioactive and nonradioactive contaminants by placing submerged heaters in the reactor cavity and evaporating it.

    The state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), prompted by letters asking about the state’s ability to oversee such discharges, has decided to direct Holtec, which is now decommissioning Pilgrim, to “calculate and submit an analysis” of the potential emission of contaminants known to be in the plant’s wastewater based on sampling last April. DEP asked that Holtec’s analysis factor in any additional pollutants that may have been released in reactor system water since those samples were drawn.

    Seth Pickering, deputy regional director of the Mass. DEP’s Bureau of Air and Waste, told the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP) at its Jan. 29 meeting that if any contaminant exceeds the threshold of one ton per year, Holtec would need a state permit to release it under air quality regulations.

    Holtec’s initial plan to release contaminated wastewater stored in the spent fuel pool and other systems at the plant into the bay included treating the water first to bring radioactive contamination levels down within federal limits.

    But in order to pursue that strategy, the company was required to apply for discharge permits from both the DEP and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. DEP issued a draft denial of the state permit in July, saying the discharge would violate the Ocean Sanctuaries Act because Cape Cod Bay has been designated an ocean sanctuary. The agency has not yet made a final decision.

    The EPA is still conducting its review of the federal permit application.

    The evaporation, the company has said, has been incidental to heating the water to keep the building warm for workers and to help shorten drying time for boxes containing irradiated pieces of the reactor after they are removed from the cavity.

    But some NDCAP members, along with activists and area residents, point out that Holtec’s radioactive wastewater problem is quickly vanishing through the reactor building’s unfiltered vents.

    During the advisory panel’s Jan. 29 meeting, its chair, James Lampert, asked how much wastewater was in the plant when Holtec purchased Pilgrim after its 2019 permanent shutdown. David Noyes, Holtec’s senior compliance manager, said there were about 2 million gallons.

    Nearly 1 million gallons of that evaporated before January 2021, Noyes said, due to the heat being generated by the radioactive fuel assemblies stored in the spent fuel pool. Those assemblies have since been moved to large concrete and steel casks.

    It’s not possible to project how long it might take to evaporate the 900,000 gallons now remaining in storage because there are too many variables, according to Noyes.

    Lampert and his wife, Mary, also an NDCAP member, wrote to state officials recently, arguing that the evaporated water, laden with contaminants, ultimately ends up in Cape Cod Bay, carried by prevailing wind and falling in the form of precipitation. If discharging the wastewater into the bay is a violation of the state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act, then evaporation would also be a violation, the Lamperts wrote.

    When Mary Lampert pointed out during the NDCAP meeting that Holtec had agreed to abide by state laws in the settlement agreement with the attorney general, Noyes said the agreement doesn’t mention the Ocean Sanctuaries Act.

    The agreement simply states “applicable laws,” argued Noyes. To that, Lampert responded, “Well, they weren’t talking about speeding.”

    Pine duBois, an NDCAP member who was formerly the chair, praised Holtec’s practice of heating the reactor building with wastewater. “I applaud your ingenuity in this heating system, and I wish I could do it at my house,” duBois said.

    DuBois went on to say, however, that she preferred Holtec’s option of discharging the water into Cape Cod Bay over evaporation. “I relate your million gallons of water to the 1.7 million gallons a day that Plymouth releases into the bay,” she said, referring to the town’s wastewater. That water, she said, “has all kinds of contaminants in it, including the stuff we’re talking about here.”

    Mary Lampert disagreed. “Saying the bay is already screwed is not an argument for why we should add more,” she said.

    Holtec is meanwhile fighting an unrelated battle in New Jersey, where the company is decommissioning Oyster Creek, another of its nuclear plants.

    New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a statement to the press on Jan. 30, announcing that the state and Holtec had reached a multimillion-dollar settlement following a criminal investigation into the company’s attempt to exploit the state’s tax credit program.

    The investigation involved a 2018 application for $1 million in tax credits that Holtec and its sister company, Singh Real Estate Enterprises, claimed was due to them. Under the settlement, Holtec must pay a $5 million fine and retain an independent reviewer approved by the state for any submissions for state tax credits, loans, or other benefits during the next three years.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Ocean Sanctuaries Act Could Stop Pilgrim Release

    Lawyers for APCC argue the law prohibits any new industrial waste in bay

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Holtec International can’t release one drop of its million gallons of wastewater from the former Pilgrim nuclear plant into Cape Cod Bay because doing so would violate the state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act, say attorneys for the Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC). And what’s in the water shouldn’t matter, they argue.

    In a letter sent to state officials in mid-February and made public on April 10, attorneys Lisa Goodheart, Dylan Sanders, and Alessandra Wingerter of the Boston firm Sugarman, Rogers, Barshak & Cohen state the act prohibits any new discharge of industrial waste into Cape Cod Bay because it is a designated ocean sanctuary.

    The law dates to the 1970s. As long as discharges were related to the operation and maintenance of active power generation facilities, they were not prohibited if they complied with relevant regulations, according to the letter. But Pilgrim no longer generates electricity, so radioactive wastewater related to decommissioning would be a “new industrial discharge,” which would violate the law, the attorneys wrote.

    Previous arguments about what Holtec Decommissioning is permitted to do with the wastewater remaining in systems there focused on radioactive contaminants and other pollutants the wastewater may contain. The untreated wastewater was recently sampled and is being tested.

    Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the APCC and a member of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP), told the Independent that the Ocean Sanctuaries Act “provides a very clear statement by the legislature.

    “The introduction of wastewater to Cape Cod Bay,” he said, “is simply and flatly prohibited.” There should be no need to research possible harm or discuss various standards for pollutants, he added. State officials should simply be able to invoke the act to deny Holtec a discharge permit.

    Meanwhile, Holtec is still working to find its way around regulatory challenges. Late last month, the company applied for a modification of its wastewater discharge permit that would allow it to treat the water for nonradioactive contaminants and then release it.

    The letter on behalf of the APCC was directed to state Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper and to Lisa Berry Engler, director of the Office of Coastal Zone Management, the agency that oversees the state’s ocean sanctuaries. It asks CZM to notify Holtec that the sanctuary law prohibits the release of the wastewater.

    The letter also asks CZM to notify the DEP that the discharge is not eligible for new or modified discharge or water quality permits, which the DEP issues.

    A spokesperson for the Healey-Driscoll administration recently stated: “Massachusetts agencies will carefully review all permit modification applications and analyze compliance with all applicable laws.”

    “It’s time for the attorney general to tell DEP that ‘applicable laws’ forbid what Holtec wants to do,” said James Lampert, a member of NDCAP.

    “We expect the state to step up and enforce the laws,” said Harwich resident Diane Turco, director of the Cape Downwinders, an advocacy group working to halt the release of the wastewater into the bay.

    Gottlieb said the debate over the wastewater, which has been ongoing since November 2021, is a distraction.

    “There are sequential actions around the physical decommissioning of that facility that require significant public oversight,” he said. “Because all we ever talk about is this disposition of water into the bay, not enough time is being spent looking under the hood and holding Holtec to its obligations.”

    At the advisory panel’s March 27 meeting, Holtec maintained that its end dates for decommissioning had not changed, Gottlieb said. In fact, he said, Holtec “had filed a report with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission saying they were adding four years to the endpoint to finish decommissioning and release of the site.”

    Those are the kind of things the NDCAP should be thinking about, said Gottlieb. Instead, he said, the advisory panel and others are stuck “spinning our wheels arguing about something that’s fundamentally illegal, and at the end of the day, they’re not going to be allowed to do.”

    Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien confirmed the company applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for a federal discharge permit on March 31 and to DEP for state authorization on April 4. He declined to comment further, other than to add, “We look forward to following the process set forth.”

    PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

    Meaning of Holtec Chief’s Testing ‘Promise’ Is Unclear

    Questions remain over the timing and methods of sampling

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Kris Singh, president of the company decommissioning the Pilgrim nuclear plant, has committed to allowing independent testing of the 1.1 million gallons of radioactive water from the plant’s systems that may be released into Cape Cod Bay.

    But Singh chose his words carefully when making that promise. During the Congressional hearing held here on May 6, he told U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, “We’ll share any information we have and give them access to the data at the plant.”

    Singh repeated the commitment in a letter he sent to Markey a few days later, but again his choice of words left questions for observers concerned about the potential release of the water.

    One is whether Holtec International, Singh’s company, is simply agreeing to allow an independent lab to look at the company’s test results rather than to allow the lab to do its own sampling.

    Another is whether the independent lab will be allowed to test the water before it is treated rather than after it has undergone treatment to filter out enough radionuclides to meet federal standards for release into the bay. In recent correspondence with the Independent, a company official said outside testing would happen only after the filtering treatment.

    State officials have said they believe it is important for Holtec to do initial sampling of the spent fuel pool and other stored wastewater onsite to get baseline data on pollutants and their concentrations.

    Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has said that radioactive contaminants have “vastly different fates in the ocean, depending upon their chemical nature.”

    Tests should show the details of the pollutants in the water. “This should be more than that levels will be below some allowed threshold,” Buesseler said, “but actual values for the water today, by isotope, detection limit, and volume.”

    James Cantwell, the state director for Sen. Markey, told the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP) at its May 23 meeting that “the intent is not just to have an independent party, but that they go in themselves and get the sample and Holtec will pay for it.”

    NDCAP member Mary Lampert, who is director of the citizens group Pilgrim Watch, was clear about her preference following the meeting. The Dept. of Public Health (DPH) should be allowed to take its own water sample, she said, “before it is diluted, in order to get a true reading.”

    NDCAP member Jack Priest, director of the DPH’s Radiation Control Program, said his agency could offer some guidance to the third party testing the water on what radionuclides to look for. “Hopefully, we won’t have to do the testing because Holtec will decide not to discharge,” Priest added.

    In a statement to the Independent, David Noyes, Holtec’s senior compliance manager at Pilgrim, said the independent analysis of the water would be done after treatment, not before.

    “The only benefit to sampling now is diagnostic as it allows us to begin to evaluate treatment options,” Noyes said. “The water would likely be treated (filtered and demineralized), depending on the method of disposal selected, significantly changing its chemical and radiological composition.”

    As for public concern about the “integrity of HDI-performed sampling activities,” Noyes said, “We have performed split sampling with MDPH on tritium concentrations in the groundwater wells for several years and during early phases of site characterization and never had any anomalies.”

    The “Save Our Bay” coalition, with members of the fishing and tourism industries and area activists, has demanded that Holtec take the option of releasing the radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay off the table.

    The frontrunner among the alternatives is to ship the water to a registered disposal facility — the method being used by the company decommissioning the Vermont Yankee reactor. The DPH would oversee transportation of the radioactive water to an offsite disposal facility.

    Diane Turco, director of Cape Downwinders, has suggested that the water be stored onsite in a large leakproof tank placed on the pad where spent fuel is currently stored in steel and concrete casks.

    HOLTEC’S TREASURE

    Holtec Expects to Make Huge Profit off Pilgrim Plant

    Finance report predicts that $500 million or more would go to company

    By

    PLYMOUTH — When Holtec International took ownership of the shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in 2019, it came with a decommissioning trust fund with more than $1 billion in it. The money, paid by the utility’s customers over the 28 years the plant was owned by Boston Edison, was to cover the cost of dismantling the reactor once it shut down.

    While state officials and citizen groups have worried that the money could run out before decommissioning is complete, company projections don’t show that account ending in the red.

    In fact, Holtec’s latest financial report predicts the company will have $252 million in the fund when the job is done, thanks to decades of accruing interest. Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien agreed with an analysis of the report’s data by the Independent.

    The company’s financial projections extend to 2063, reflecting several decades of managing the spent fuel on site. The decommissioning itself is expected to be finished by 2027.

    The $252 million left in the trust fund won’t be the only source of profit for Holtec. Reimbursements from the federal Dept. of Energy (DoE) for the expense of managing the radioactive spent fuel on site could boost Holtec’s bottom line by another several hundred million.

    The Decommissioning Fund

    Based on Holtec’s annual financial report published in March, $497 million had been spent from the trust fund as of December 2021. The fund’s balance, thanks to accruing interest, stood at $825 million.

    Spending is divided into three categories: license termination, spent fuel management, and site restoration. Based on projected expenses through 2063, Holtec anticipates the total cost for license termination to be $548 million, spent fuel management $579 million, and site restoration $33 million.

    That puts the projected grand total for decommissioning Pilgrim at $1.16 billion. Thanks to accruing interest, the company has projected the fund will still have $252 million if all goes as planned. That money would go to Holtec as profit.

    Holtec will also be able to sue the DoE for reimbursement of money taken from the decommissioning fund for spent fuel management. So far, $237 million has been spent at Pilgrim for that purpose, and another $342 million of expenses is projected, putting the total at over half a billion dollars.

    Under the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the U.S. DoE committed to begin removing spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear waste from plant sites around the country by January 1998. There is no national repository to store the fuel, however. Nevada’s Congressional delegation has repeatedly blocked the construction of a repository there, and no other possible location has ever been established.

    The waste remains at the various individual nuclear plants, and plant owners have successfully sued the DoE for breach of contract to recoup their costs for managing the fuel. Holtec has indicated it plans to do the same thing.

    For example, the owner of the Maine Yankee, Yankee Rowe, and Connecticut Yankee nuclear plants has collected $575.5 million to date in damages related to spent fuel storage from the DoE.

    At a recent Congressional hearing in Plymouth, Seth Schofield, senior appellate counsel for the Mass. attorney general’s office, said any reimbursement for spent fuel costs from the DoE should go back into the decommissioning trust fund, since the money had come out of the fund to cover spent fuel management.

    Krishna Singh, Holtec’s president and CEO, disagreed. “You forget: we as a company take the risk,” he said. Holtec would therefore keep the money, Singh said.

    For Pilgrim, Holtec may not be awarded the full $579 million in damages for spent fuel costs, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “How much of that amount will be recoverable from the Department of Energy settlements with the plant owner is uncertain,” said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan in an email.

    Other Expenses

    Holtec has other expenses related to Plymouth as its host community. It also has obligations to some surrounding communities for emergency planning, thanks to a hard-won court settlement with the state attorney general’s office.

    Plymouth isn’t getting the amount the town is used to, however. In 2014, Entergy Corp., the company that owned Pilgrim at the time, paid the town $10 million under its PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) agreement. The amount dropped to $9.5 million for a few years, then slid to $7 million for fiscal 2020, the first year Pilgrim was closed. In fiscal 2021, Holtec paid Plymouth $6.5 million.

    The town was unable to negotiate a PILOT for the current year, and therefore sent Holtec a real estate tax bill for about $3.5 million, which the company paid.

    Holtec has also reduced the amount of money it has paid to the Dept. of Public Health for radiation monitoring, and to the Mass. Emergency Management Agency for emergency planning. The region’s legislators, led by Sen. Julian Cyr of Truro, have proposed an attachment to the state budget that would bolster funding to keep the testing program in place.

    Radioactive Water

    The Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP), established to advise on Pilgrim’s decommissioning and made up of representatives from state agencies, local officials, and citizen representatives, will hold a hybrid meeting on May 23 at 6:30 p.m., to be aired from Plymouth Town Hall. The agenda had not yet been posted as of the Independent’s deadline.

    NDCAP member Mary Lampert has asked Holtec to provide at the meeting a list of the systems that the radioactive water now stored at the Pilgrim is coming from, whether the state will be given samples of the water or simply supplied with data from Holtec’s sampling, and other details related to the more than one million gallons of radioactive water at the plant.

    During the recent Congressional hearing, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey secured a pledge from Holtec’s president to allow for independent testing of the water prior to any discharge into Cape Cod Bay.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Holtec Chief Offers ‘Access to Data’ at Congressional Hearing

    Singh and NRC safety boss are grilled by Markey and Keating

    By

    PLYMOUTH — The president of Holtec International, the company decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, has pledged not to release radioactive water from the reactor into Cape Cod Bay without the consent of “stakeholders,” including the Mass. attorney general.

    After being pressed by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey during a Congressional hearing here on May 6, Kris Singh also said his company would allow an independent study of the water by marine life experts.

    Markey asked Singh to allow testing of the water by an independent lab such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and to “not release the water until it is confirmed safe.”

    “We will share with them any information we have and give them access to the data at the plant,” Singh said.

    “We’ll take you at your word,” the senator responded.

    Holtec’s president added, “If it shows the water is not contaminated, I hope the release will be reinstated.” He got no response to that comment.

    After the hearing, Markey said, “We have to make sure the commitments made today are made in writing.”

    Holtec announced in late November that it planned to release one million gallons of radioactive water from the plant’s spent fuel pool, reactor cavity, and other systems. Following an outcry from the region’s state and federal legislators, municipal officials, fishing and shellfishing organizations, advocates for the tourism and real estate industries, and the public, Holtec pledged not to release any water in 2022 while it looked at options.

    The NRC’s John Lubinski, Sen. Sue Moran, and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey. (Photo by Christine Legere)

    The company could ship the water offsite to a licensed disposal facility or use evaporation technology to dispose of it. But Holtec has consistently noted the downsides of those alternatives and refused to take the release into Cape Cod Bay off the table.

    Friday’s hearing, held by the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety, was chaired by Sen. Markey. He and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating grilled John Lubinski, director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, on the agency’s current lack of strict regulations on the nuclear industry and on changes they see as weakening the rules even further.

    Discussion always came back to the proposed release of the radioactive water.

    When Keating asked Lubinski why Holtec couldn’t truck the radioactive water away, he was told, “It is up to them,” meaning Holtec.

    “We just don’t agree with ‘It’s up to them,’ ” Keating responded.

    To a suggestion that the water be stored onsite, Singh said that would delay completion of decommissioning.

    In a letter sent to Markey on Monday, he put the company’s commitment to work with an expert in writing.

    “We will voluntarily refrain from releasing processed water to the bay even if lawfully permitted by the authorities (EPA and NRC) until the processed water discharge is confirmed by your expert’s determination to contain radiological levels low enough to ensure that the local marine life remains protected,” Singh wrote.

    Singh added that Holtec will “hold the processed water inside the plant for as long as necessary if expert scientific opinion advises against discharging the remaining plant water into the bay.”

    Diane Turco, director of the anti-nuclear Cape Downwinders, was distrustful of Singh’s statements during the hearing.

    “Holtec needs to be held accountable to do what they said they were going to do,” Turco said. “The stakeholders have already said they don’t want the water dumped into the bay, so they should be taking that off the table and working on other plans.”

    Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist at WHOI, said his institution would not be able to test the radioactive water. “A concentrated brew of radioactive isotopes would contaminate the whole lab,” he said. “We’re not set up to do that.”

    There are other labs that come to contaminated sites to conduct tests; Buesseler said it was “essential” that the testing be done well and independently.

    “I’d be happy to advise people what to test for,” Buesseler said. “My suspicion is it’s a mix of radionuclides of varying health concerns. For example, this form of cobalt-60 is likely to end up on the sea floor.”

    WHOI could test the bay water before, during, and after the release, if it occurs.

    Buesseler called Holtec’s commitment to independent testing “a first step and positive sign.” But he warned, “You need some assurance they don’t take the sample out of a rain barrel.”

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Worker Lockout Is New Worry at Nuclear Plant

    NRC says radioactive releases from Pilgrim have always been at safe levels

    By

    PLYMOUTH — There is more to worry about than the possible discharge of a million gallons of radioactive water from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into Cape Cod Bay. That was the message at Monday’s meeting here of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP).

    The panel of citizens, local officials, and representatives from a handful of state agencies was told by officials of Laborers’ Union Local 721 that 60 skilled workers have been “locked out” by plant owner Holtec International.

    The union workers, the officials said, have been involved in Pilgrim’s maintenance for several decades and more recently in the decommissioning of the plant. “We built that plant; we maintained that plant; we took pride in going in there,” said Scott Gustafson, the union’s regional organizer and a Plymouth resident.

    The lockout is related to some remarks made by a national union member to a top Holtec official, Gustafson said.

    Holtec is reportedly now replacing the unionized laborers with untrained workers who don’t know the jobs or the related safety standards, according to Andrew Marshall, the union’s business manager. “These people are inexperienced,” said Marshall. “This isn’t about unions. This is about safety for the public and the people working there.”

    Marshall said the lockout isn’t about money. He said replacement workers were being paid 25 cents per hour more than the union’s workers make. He added that Holtec was having difficulty finding replacements who could successfully pass the required tests.

    The news of the lockout left the advisory panel and members of the public dismayed. “From what these guys are saying,” said Plymouth resident Joanne Corrigan, “they’ve got Homer Simpson running the plant.”

    David Noyes, Holtec’s senior compliance manager at Pilgrim, assured the panel there was no cause for alarm. “People on this committee can sleep at night,” he said.

    Noyes blamed the lockout on the laborers’ union, saying its members had refused to sign a contract.

    But Marshall said the laborers did sign a contract in 2019 and that it doesn’t expire until September 2022.

    The trouble is, responded Noyes, the union’s contract is with a company called Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI) and Holtec is no longer using that company as its decommissioning contractor.

    CDI was a joint venture formed by Holtec and SNC-Lavalin, a Canadian company with experience in decommissioning. That venture fell apart in January because of a dispute, Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said at the time.

    Holtec Decommissioning International then took over from CDI. O’Brien had said CDI workers were simply transferred to Holtec Decommissioning. But that did not happen for the workers in Laborers’ Union Local 721.

    Following Monday’s meeting, Mary Lampert, an NDCAP member and longtime Pilgrim watchdog, said she saw the lockout as a safety concern. She said she worried about the loss of trained workers and that other employees might hesitate to disclose problems at the plant for fear of being locked out.

    NRC Says Nothing to Fear

    At the same March 28 meeting where the union workers lockout was discussed, a top regional official of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission delivered his own message: the public has nothing to fear from the release of one million gallons of radioactive water from the closed Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into Cape Cod Bay.

    Plenty of people attending the meeting vehemently disagreed, asking the NRC if it had considered how the currents would cause the irradiated water to stall in Cape Cod Bay and whether the agency looked at potential economic effects on regional industries like shellfishing and tourism, in addition to adverse health effects.

    The radioactive water comes from the plant’s spent fuel pool, reactor cavity, and other systems. It would be released in small batches into the bay.

    Holtec has two other options for getting rid of the contaminated water. Evaporation, the company has said, would require a considerable amount of heat and possibly the use of diesel generators. Trucking the waste offsite is a second alternative. But releasing the water into the bay appears to be the company’s favored strategy.

    Anthony Dimitriadis, the NRC’s branch chief for the region, offered a slide presentation during Monday’s meeting to show how radioactive releases, which were ongoing while the plant operated, were always well below the allowed annual limits for the exposure to the human body. One hundred millirems is the limit set by his organization, while 25 millirems is the limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

    The branch chief discussed monitoring and noted that sampling of sediment, shellfish, and finfish at the end of the plant’s discharge canal had not shown evidence of contamination. Testing does not appear to have taken place along the shoreline of Cape Cod Bay, however, where an expert from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has said currents would carry the radioactive water from Pilgrim.

    NDCAP member Mary Lampert cited several laws that protect the bay as an ocean sanctuary. “They would not be allowed to dump if the state enforces the laws on the books,” she said. She added that the Supreme Court had said the state would have authority to prohibit the dumping if it were determined to have an economic impact. Fishing and shellfishing are major industries in the region.

    Lampert also brought up the NRC standard for radiation dosage known as ALARA, which stands for “as low as reasonably achievable.”

    “Obviously, dumping will not accomplish this,” Lampert said. Holtec can meet the ALARA standard by trucking the water offsite to a disposal facility, she said.

    Dimitriadis talked about tritium, a radionuclide that binds with water and can’t be filtered out, characterizing it as “the least hazardous isotope.” Lampert disagreed, saying it can cause health effects.

    Pine duBois, NDCAP’s co-chair, said she was concerned about marine life. “We’re so much bigger than what lives in the bay,” duBois said. “At what level would it be dangerous to organisms in the bay?”

    Dimitriadis said the main focus has been on human health. “How does tritium affect shellfish? I don’t know,” he said.

    Local businessman Paul Quintal, who serves on the Plymouth Harbor Commission and runs a fishing boat, said the town has spent $20 million dredging the harbor and $4 million on a wharf that is designed to catch fuel spills. The town has a 135-page harbor management plan, he said, to protect its natural resources. “Would you want to eat a fish that had even a hint of contamination?” he asked Dimitriadis.

    James Lampert, Mary’s husband and an attorney, asked whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers economic effects, effects on endangered species, and the effect of cumulative radiation. He also asked whether the NRC looks at site-specific issues such as water circulation patterns.

    “Do you look at where the discharge is likely to stay?” Lampert asked. “My fear is that you do not look at any of those.”

    RADIOACTIVITY

    EPA: Holtec Sows ‘Public Confusion’

    Agency chastises Pilgrim’s owner for statements on dumping water into Cape Cod Bay

    By

    PLYMOUTH — An Environmental Protection Agency official criticized Holtec International last week for misleading the public about its proposed dumping of radioactive water from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into Cape Cod Bay.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Attorney General Says Permits Forbid Release of Reactor Water

    The company argues against the alternatives to ‘overboarding’

    By

    PLYMOUTH — The Mass. attorney general’s office has doubled down on a recent statement saying that Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s permits prohibit the release of radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay.

    The news that the plant is on Attorney General Maura Healey’s radar brought some relief to opponents. But those who are determined to stop Pilgrim’s owner from dumping a million gallons of contaminated water into the bay remain wary.

    Holtec International, the company that owns Pilgrim and is decommissioning it, said last fall that there are three options for getting rid of the water from the spent fuel pool and other systems: “overboarding” it, which means releasing it into the bay; shipping it to a disposal facility; or evaporating it, which entails its dispersal into the clouds and eventual return in the form of precipitation.

    Healey’s office issued a statement on Feb. 2 saying that Pilgrim’s permits prohibit the discharge of spent fuel pool water and wastewater into Cape Cod Bay, and the attorney general expected Holtec to “abide by those rules.”

    Further information provided by Healey’s office to the Independent this week elaborated on its earlier statement. The office cited the water discharge permit for the plant, issued by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in January 2020, as the basis for its conclusion that release of contaminated water into the bay during decommissioning was not allowed.

    “Our office will take any violation of Holtec’s permits seriously — especially one that could pose a threat to public health and safety,” said Chloe Gotsis, Healey’s spokeswoman. “We are continuing to coordinate with our state agencies to monitor this and are prepared to take action if needed.”

    The federal Clean Water Act prohibits the discharge of a wide array of pollutants into waterways unless authorized by a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. But radionuclides are not on the statute’s list of pollutants, nor are they in the plant’s discharge permit. Those are under the jurisdiction of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has historically allowed such releases into waterways by nuclear plants.

    The DEP and EPA have the power to prohibit the release of the water based on the presence of pollutants other than radionuclides. But the water has yet to be tested and its components identified.

    “If this option were to proceed to the next step, scientists and regulators would need to have more detailed information about what exactly would be contained in the discharge,” said Richard Delaney, former executive director and now senior adviser to the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. The bay and coastal waters are already affected by a wide array of pollution ranging from excessive nitrogen to other chemicals like PFAS, Delaney said. “To add another accumulated insult to the Cape Cod Bay ecosystem makes no sense at all,” he said.

    The fishing communities both on and off Cape Cod have been loudly protesting any release of radioactive water into the bay, saying it will have a devastating effect on the industry.

    Mark DeCristoforo, executive director of the Mass. Seafood Collaborative, said his organization was “appreciative” of the attorney general’s statement, but added, “We need more.”

    “Holtec has dug their heels in on this, based on every public statement the company has made,” DeCristoforo said. “It’s important for the legislature to pass one of the two bills now in committee and for the governor to sign it.”

    Emergency bills prohibiting the release of radioactive water into any of the state’s waterways have been submitted by the region’s legislators. Their provisions carry fines for violators. It’s not the fines that might cause Holtec to think twice, DeCristoforo said, it’s the negative press a violation would generate.

    Legislators, environmental activists, and the general public all oppose the plan to release the water, said Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod. His organization will focus on the ways the state can legally block the option.

    “How do we get in Holtec’s way, and how do we get the NRC out of the way?” Gottlieb asked.

    Public reaction has had some effect, said Gottlieb. Facing protests, Holtec backpedaled, saying it would not release any water into the bay in 2022 while it studied all its options.

    But after this year, the release of the water into the bay still appears to be the company’s top choice. Kelly Trice, president of Holtec Decommissioning International, has argued against the alternatives, citing in a recent open letter the potential for accidents in trucking the water away. And evaporation, he said, would require large quantities of electricity and possibly the use of a diesel generator to produce heat.

    DeCristoforo said even smaller entities like local governments can help stop Holtec’s plan by implementing their own ordinances, which is being considered in Duxbury.

    Holtec should be thinking long-term, because it has acquired several reactors and will be decommissioning all of them, said Gottlieb.

    “They are going to run into this every place they are decommissioning, so it would behoove them to set a standard here that they can replicate elsewhere to avoid this kind of conflict,” he said.

    RADIOACTIVE QUESTIONS

    Attorney General: Dumping Pilgrim Water Is Prohibited

    The water has not yet been tested for possible contaminants

    By

    Editor’s note: After this week’s Independent went to press, Mass. Attorney General Maura Healey’s office issued a statement about the release of radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay. The report below has been updated to include that late-breaking development.

    PLYMOUTH — No one knows yet which radionuclides and other contaminants are in the million gallons of radioactive water that Holtec International has proposed dumping into Cape Cod Bay in decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.

    That lack of knowledge seemed to make it impossible for state and federal health and water quality agencies to say what authority they might have to prevent the release.

    But on Wednesday, Feb. 2 at 4 p.m., a statement from state Attorney General Maura Healey’s office said release of the water was prohibited.

    “The facility’s permits prohibit the discharge of spent fuel pool water and wastewater generated by the decommissioning process into Cape Cod Bay and we expect Holtec to abide by those rules,” said Chloe Gotsis on behalf of Healey. “Our office will continue to coordinate with state agencies to ensure that public health, safety, and the environment are protected during ongoing activities at Pilgrim.”

    Before Gotsis’s statement, discussion of who would have authority over the proposed dumping focused on potential contaminants other than radioactivity in the water. The water has not yet been tested because some of it is still being used as “shielding.” Highly radioactive reactor components are kept under water while they are being segmented and put into containers to protect workers.

    More than 100 people tuned in to a remote Jan. 31 meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP). Most were hoping for some assurance that there would be no release of radioactive water into the bay.

    There was no such assurance at the meeting.

    The NDCAP comprises representatives of state agencies, local officials, and a handful of citizens. Its job is to help oversee decommissioning: keeping the public informed and offering advice on how the job should be done.

    The panel learned at its last meeting in November that Holtec International, which owns and is decommissioning Pilgrim, was considering a few options for getting rid of 1 million gallons of radioactive water from the spent fuel pool, the reactor cavity, and other plant systems.

    Releasing the water into Cape Cod Bay in batches of 20,000 gallons is one option. Others include evaporation — where it goes up into the clouds and comes back down in the rain — and trucking it offsite to a disposal facility.

    When news of the potential dumping became public, protests led Holtec to pledge not to release any of the water into the bay in 2022.

    The fishing community has been vocal in its opposition.

    “The livelihood of so many, providing nourishment to so many more, might forever be lost,” said Mark Cristoforo, executive director of the Mass. Seafood Collaborative, during a “speak out” event before the NDCAP meeting. Fishermen’s livelihoods would be “sacrificed on the altars of greed,” he said.

    State Sen. Susan Moran, a Falmouth Democrat who is leading a legislative effort to block the dumping, said legislators had met with state officials to discuss what could be done. They plan to meet again in March.

    The state attorney general and Holtec signed an agreement in 2020 with a long list of requirements. But it’s not clear whether the agreement gives the state authority to regulate the release of the water.

    Legislators have also filed emergency bills in both the state House and Senate to prohibit the discharge of radioactive material into coastal or inland waters. Violators would face “steep fines,” Moran said.

    “We will never allow the dumping of radioactive material in Cape Cod Bay,” she said.

    Jack Priest, director of the radiation control program for the Dept. of Public Health and an NDCAP member, expressed frustration over the lack of information.

    “It would be useful to have more facts,” he said. “We haven’t even seen what’s in the water. Are there other contaminants?”

    The state’s water discharge permit for the nuclear plant, called the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, regulates an array of contaminants. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection and federal EPA can stop the release of the water into the bay if it contains contamination levels that exceed those allowed in the permit. But the permit does not regulate radioactive contamination, which is under the authority of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

    Priest also complained that Holtec seems to have dismissed the option of trucking the water to a disposal location.

    “If you’re evaporating the water filtered from the stack, it eventually makes its way to the ground wherever the cloud floats to,” he said. “Or you’re doing a liquid dump into the bay. Both are lousy choices.”

    David Noyes, senior compliance manager for a Holtec affiliate, assured Priest that trucking remains on the table.

    But it’s been made clear by Holtec Decommissioning International’s president Kelly Trice that the company strongly favors discharging the water into the bay.

    In a public statement last week, Trice cited the potential for accident inherent in trucking the water to a disposal facility. Evaporation, he said, would require large quantities of electricity and possibly the use of a diesel generator to produce heat. While hundreds of thousands of gallons of effluent have been evaporated over the last couple of years, the heat source was the pool where the spent fuel assemblies from nearly five decades of operation were stored. That fuel has been moved into massive steel and concrete casks.

    Mary Lampert, an NDCAP member and director of an activist group called Pilgrim Watch, questioned Holtec’s safety concerns related to trucking. “Holtec wishes to have an interim waste storage site and have spent fuel trucked from all over the country, and they have no problem with transportation,” she said. Holtec expects to have a license for its planned storage facility in New Mexico approved by the NRC sometime this month.

    Lampert tried to have NDCAP resume a monthly meeting schedule rather than every two months, but she failed to get her motion seconded. The next meeting will be at the end of March.

    The NRC is scheduled to attend that meeting. NDCAP co-chair Pine duBois said a representative from the EPA would also attend. Lampert said Seth Schofield, senior appellate counsel for the attorney general, should be invited. Schofield was instrumental in hammering out the settlement agreement with Holtec. Lampert said Schofield could clarify “what specific authority the state has.”

    Another panel member suggested asking a scientist from Woods Hole to attend, citing comments senior scientist and oceanographer Irina Rypina made in the Independent last week. Rypina said that contaminated water would be trapped in the bay rather than filtering quickly into the ocean because the shape of the land creates a semi-enclosed space. “A tracer released into Cape Cod Bay would recirculate and stay in the waters within the bay for a long time,” Rypina said. “And then will likely end up in the sediment on the ocean floor or on the beaches inside the bay.” The same thing would happen to the radionuclides in the water released from Pilgrim, she said.

    ENVIRONMENT

    United on Shutting Pilgrim Reactor, Advocates Differ on Nuclear Waste

    Navajo activist calls New Mexico plan ‘blatant environmental racism’

    By

    PLYMOUTH — The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has been shut down, but the arguments over what to do with its highly radioactive spent fuel are heating up.

    A Navajo activist from New Mexico delivered a powerful warning on Monday about a plan to create a giant nuclear waste storage facility there, calling it an act of environmental racism.

    “I want you to know, we are watching you in New Mexico,” Leona Morgan told a citizens panel on the decommissioning of the Plymouth reactor. “Your waste will not come to New Mexico if we can help it.”

    In its 47 years of operation, the Pilgrim Station generated hundreds of tons of spent fuel, which is now being loaded into 61 massive steel and cement casks that will sit on a concrete pad off Rocky Hill Road in Plymouth. Holtec International, the company that purchased Pilgrim shortly after it shut down in May 2019, is securing a license for its HI-STORE Consolidated Interim Storage facility, proposed for Lea County in southeastern New Mexico. Waste from plants all over the country would be sent there.

    Company officials have said the spent fuel at Pilgrim and other plants it has purchased would be shipped to New Mexico and stored underground until a permanent federal repository is built.

    Morgan told the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel during Monday’s Zoom meeting that the governor of New Mexico, state land commissioner, and attorney general all oppose Holtec’s plan, along with many residents statewide. New Mexico has already been overburdened by the effects of uranium mining, she said.

    “When you people say, ‘Take it away,’ that means bringing it to our communities, which to me is the most blatant form of environmental racism,” Morgan said. “This is beyond unjust. It’s something that will impact future generations, and not just residents here but all along the transportation routes.”

    The initial license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the interim storage facility would be for 40 years, with an option to renew for 40 more. Holtec’s plan calls for initially taking 500 canisters of spent nuclear fuel, about 8,600 metric tons. In phases, the facility would ultimately accept 10,000 canisters.

    Currently, nuclear plants nationwide have produced about 85,000 metric tons of waste, which is being stored at 80 sites in 35 states. Meanwhile, plans for a permanent federal repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have stalled for decades due to determined opposition.

    John McKirgan, chief of storage and transportation for the licensing branch of the NRC, attended the Monday meeting to answer questions. His agency develops design standards for packaging spent fuel. The Dept. of Energy will handle issues related to shipping. “They have to notify the states, tribes, and local law enforcement prior to shipments,” McKirgan said.

    The NRC is considering an application for a separate site in West Texas, proposed by Interim Storage Partners LLC. Completion of a safety review there is expected in May. Holtec’s completion date is being delayed so the company can answer further questions.

    The NRC review includes soil analysis, flooding hazards, “aircraft crash hazards,” building design, and “aging management analysis.” The environmental review of both interim storage facilities should be completed by July.

    “Technically, the NRC could issue the license this year,” said Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien in an email, and the interim facility could begin operation in 2024.

    Sheltering in Place

    When the Pilgrim reactor shut down, residents on both sides of the Sagamore Bridge breathed a collective sigh of relief. And for good reason: the tip of Provincetown is just 19 miles across the bay from the problem-plagued plant, which sits on the coast of southern Plymouth.

    Pilgrim site radii
    The circles show the areas within 10, 20, and 50 miles of the site of the decommissioned Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.

    “There’s no escape from the Cape,” was a frequent comment about a possible accident. The state’s emergency plans called for holding the 250,000 Cape residents back from the bridges until Plymouth and other towns close to the plant had been evacuated. Cape residents were advised to “shelter in place” in their homes.

    People remain concerned about the 4,000 radioactive spent fuel assemblies.

    The dilemma of what to do with spent fuel is a tough one, said Susan Weegar, a Wellfleet resident and member of the Down Cape Downwinders. “I’m totally of two minds,” Weegar said. “It seems to be unsafe to be leaving it in Plymouth, where it is on the seacoast, but the idea of putting it in transport and shipping it across the country is such a nightmare.”

    The federal Government Accountability Office has characterized spent fuel as one of the most hazardous substances created by humans, with some of its components remaining radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

    Provincetown resident Brian O’Malley, a retired physician, called any plan for long-term storage of the radioactive fuel in Plymouth “preposterous.”

    “I don’t know what the right path is, but the issue with nuclear power is the waste,” he said. “We shouldn’t be making it anymore.”

    Dry Cask Concerns

    The casks being used to store Pilgrim’s spent fuel are called HI-STORM 100s, manufactured by Holtec. Each cask consists of a stainless-steel inner canister where the fuel assemblies are stored, surrounded by inert gas. About 27 inches of concrete is installed between that inner canister and the carbon-steel outer shell to act as a radiation shield. When loaded, each 18-foot-high cask weighs 150 tons.

    Holtec boasts that its casks could withstand the impact of a Boeing 767 traveling at 350 miles per hour, as well as extreme natural events like tornadoes, but opponents ask whether the casks are vulnerable to modern missiles launched by terrorists. They also argue that the inner canisters, about a half inch thick, are too thin and could corrode in the salt air.

    Holtec officials have said the design, material, and workmanship of the dry casks have a 25-year warranty. That number is not reassuring, said Pilgrim Watch president Mary Lampert, who sits on the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel.

    “Holtec provided a 25-year warranty for manufacturing defects, period,” Lampert said. “Even they were not willing to have a lengthy guarantee, so why should we believe the casks can withstand time?”

    There is also concern about potential leaks. Holtec has said that leaking casks could not be opened. Instead, a separate larger cask would be slipped over the leaking cask, Russian-doll style.

    “If they leak, what will that do to the bay?” asked Wellfleet resident Judith Kwiat Cumbler. “It’s horrible for fish and horrible for those of us who live on the bay. It is truly alarming how much radiation is in those things.”

    McKirgan said Monday that the casks will be inspected for signs of degradation and corrosion, but Lampert countered that the program calls for sampling a few rather than all. According to the NRC official, technical assumptions about the rest of the casks could be made from the random sampling.

    Divided Opinions

    While activists agreed on the need to shut down Pilgrim, they differ on what to do with the waste.

    Lampert believes it should be moved out of Plymouth. The environmental justice argument is an “oversimplification” of the issue, she said.

    “Plymouth is unsuited for extended spent fuel storage, period,” Lampert said. “It is densely populated, an appealing terrorist target, and its marine environment conducive to corroding the casks.”

    Diane Turco of Cape Downwinders disagrees. “We do not want it moved to New Mexico,” she said, noting the region’s population is predominantly Hispanic. Projects like this are often located in poorer communities, she said.

    The governor of New Mexico, the All Pueblo Council, and citizens’ groups have all voiced opposition, she said.

    “We want it safe and secure right here,” Turco continued. “It needs to be in better casks, not cheap Holtec canisters.” Turco also called for more robust security of the fuel storage area.

    Lampert argued that the sparser population and arid conditions at the New Mexico target site make it preferable to Plymouth.

    “There always will be opponents,” Lampert said. “But if the site makes sense, then, like with the Quabbin Reservoir, the greater good prevails. But those directly harmed should be recompensed.”

    Holtec’s application for its HI-STORE facility already faces four separate appeals, according to Kevin Kamp, a nuclear expert from the national group Beyond Nuclear. His organization filed an appeal representing some abutters. Appeals were also filed by the Sierra Club, among others.

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