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Holtec

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Panel Hears Risks of Radioactive Material Stored in Casks at Pilgrim

    Holtec has no plan to deal with tons of radioactive spent fuel stored on-site

    By

    PLYMOUTH — The 62 concrete-and-steel casks storing more than 4,000 radioactive spent fuel assemblies from the former Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s 47 years of operation still sit on the site, a few hundred feet from Rocky Hill Road. A low wall and chain-link fence provide the only separation from passersby, and although a sign on the gate warns that “security officers are authorized to use deadly force” against trespassers, the gate frequently stands wide open and no security guards are in view.

    Dry casks at Pilgrim are protected by a concrete berm and chain-link fence around its immediate perimeter. The gate to a second fence, at the edge of the property, frequently stands open. (Photo by Diane Turco)

    The security of this material at the plant, now owned and being decommissioned by Holtec Decommissioning International, was the main subject discussed at the meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel on Jan. 27. Gordon Thompson, an expert in risk management at nuclear facilities, was a guest speaker. Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, an independent nonprofit, made a presentation on the risks remaining at Pilgrim with a focus on the casks.

     

    Cask Risks

    Thompson outlined for the NDCAP panelists three broad categories of risk connected to dry cask storage facilities in general and Pilgrim in particular: attack, accident, and neglect.

    Regarding attacks, Thompson described the ways simple explosives could be effectively used to damage dry casks. He then compared the multipurpose dry casks manufactured and used by Holtec to store spent fuel at Pilgrim with so-called monolithic casks used at several plants in Europe.

    The Holtec casks are made of steel roughly a half inch thick on their sides, Thompson said. There is a small air gap that provides cooling of the fuel, which is surrounded by a steel and concrete shell. The canisters are permanently welded shut. “They cannot be accessed other than by cutting them open,” Thompson said.

    The monolithic casks used at other sites are solid containers made of cast iron or steel, have walls about 10 inches thick, and have removable lids. “It allows the exterior and interior of the casks to be examined at any time,” Thompson said. In Switzerland, spent fuel is stored in monolithic casks that are housed in a temperature-controlled building equipped with a dry transfer system known as a hot cell. “It allows a suspect cask to be taken to a hot cell at any time, opened up, and its interior and fuel examined,” Thompson said.

    Holtec officials have stated that the only way to address a defect in one of its casks would be to place a larger cask over the defective one, since once the cask is sealed it can’t be opened. The Plymouth site is not equipped with a hot cell where workers could safely deal with a damaged cask. Nor is the plant ready with a larger canister should it be needed.

    In response to Thompson’s presentation, Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien wrote in a Feb. 3 email to the Independent that Holtec was the industry’s leader in spent fuel storage and that “to date, the industry has never had an issue with a Holtec cask breeching.”

    “A high wire artist walking across the line in Boston should not take comfort in safety nets being used in London,” wrote nuclear expert David Lochbaum in a Feb. 3 email to the Independent in response to a request for comment on the lack of a hot cell and a large replacement canister at Pilgrim. Lochbaum is a nuclear engineer with 17 years in the industry. He is also the former director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Nuclear Safety Project and continues to consult on matters related to the nuclear industry.

    Activist Diane Turco, director of the Cape Downwinders, a public safety advocacy group focused on the Pilgrim nuclear plant, said after the meeting that she sees the lack of security at the site as an immediate problem.

    “We drove through the gate and up to the casks,” said Turco of a recent trip up Rocky Hill Road. No security officers were posted at the storage area, she said. “Those casks are holding the most dangerous material on the planet,” Turco said. “ ‘No Trespassing’ should not be a mere suggestion.”

    O’Brien, in his email, disagreed with Turco’s description of lax security at the site. The gate Turco referred to, he wrote, is “outside the vehicular barrier systems” for the spent fuel storage area. “While Ms. Turco continues to trespass on the site, should she or anyone else attempt to cross security barriers, they would have very different experiences.”

    He described the security staff as “highly trained and experienced local individuals who work with local and federal agencies to ensure the safety and security of the casks.”

    Turco is not the only person to have observed the lack of security around the casks at Pilgrim.  Thomas Bass, a part-time Truro resident whose “The Bomb Next Door” was published in The American Scholar in 2022, described walking along the perimeter fence, waving to security cameras. “No one comes to ask me what I’m doing,” he wrote. He said he could see birds beginning to nest in the air vents of the dry casks.

     

    Paralysis, Atrophy, and the Purge

    Thompson told those present at the NDCAP meeting that he was most concerned about “long-term neglect and atrophy of vigilance,” which he said was highly likely to occur at Pilgrim.

    The installation where the casks are located “is likely to be there for a very long time,” he said. And as time passes, he added, efforts to transfer the spent fuel to other storage sites could be abandoned along with efforts to create a national repository.

    According to the Congressional Research Service, about 91,000 metric tons of radioactive spent fuel are currently being stored at commercial nuclear plants around the country. The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 promised to establish a national underground repository by 1998, which would provide permanent storage of the nation’s spent nuclear waste. The Dept. of Energy still has no program to develop that national repository.

    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that oversees the nuclear industry, now says spent nuclear fuel could remain indefinitely at various plant sites such as Pilgrim.

    Federal regulation of the storage of spent fuel at the various commercial sites could be relaxed, Thompson said. The NRC currently licenses the storage canisters for 40 years with options for renewal.

    So far, oversight of the nuclear industry has not been spared from the Trump administration’s efforts to remake government.

    Members of an independent board, established as part of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987 to evaluate activities by the Dept. of Energy related to the management and disposal of spent fuel and other radioactive waste, were sent requests for their resignations by the White House in mid-January.

    According to a Jan. 29 report in Nuclear Newswire, the memo, sent by Trent Morse, the deputy director of presidential personnel, told members they would be contacted if President Trump determined their services were still needed.

    That 11-member board is appointed by the president from a list of candidates provided by the National Academy of Sciences. The only board member not asked to resign was chair Peter Swift.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    NRC Finds Apparent Security Violations at Pilgrim

    ‘Escalated enforcement action’ may be needed to protect spent fuel storage area

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have found apparent violations in the security measures being used to protect the spent fuel storage area on the grounds of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.

    The problems were found in early November, according to a Nov. 26 letter to Holtec International, which now owns the plant, from Paul Krohn, the director of the NRC’s Radiological Safety and Security Division. That notification letter is publicly available, but details of the violations are not, because the infractions relate to security, according to the letter.

    The inspection examined activities related to Holtec’s physical security plan for the area where radioactive spent fuel rods used during Pilgrim’s five decades of operation are stored in mammoth steel and concrete casks. The inspectors looked at procedures and records, conducted interviews with personnel, and observed security activities.

    Based on the results of that inspection, “escalated enforcement action” is being considered, the letter says.

    Holtec was given 10 days from Nov. 26 to notify the federal agency of its acceptance of the violation finding or to provide a written response contesting the report. The company could also request a pre-enforcement conference within the 10 days. If the NRC does not hear from Holtec by the deadline, the agency “will proceed with its enforcement decision,” the letter says.

    NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan told the Independent by email on Dec. 3 that Holtec had not yet responded. Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said in an email that because the matter is security related he could not comment other than to say, “Our focus remains on a safe and secure decommissioning of Pilgrim Station.”

    Detection Limits

    The day before the letter was sent, at a meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, two scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution gave updates on their assessments as to where the station’s contaminated wastewater would likely flow if it were to be released into Cape Cod Bay.

    Holtec is looking to release the wastewater into the bay after filtering it to reduce contaminants including some of the radioactive isotopes it contains.

    Initially, Holtec sought to release 1.1 million gallons of radioactive water. That quantity is now down to about 916,500 gallons because some of it has already been released as evaporation, thanks to heaters Holtec is running during the cold months at the former plant. In spite of public criticism of the release by evaporation, those heaters are now running again, according to Dave Noyes, senior compliance manager for Holtec Decommissioning International.

    The state Dept. of Environmental Protection has denied the company an amendment to its water discharge permit required to release the water, saying the state Ocean Sanctuaries Act prohibits it.

    Holtec has appealed that decision.

    At the November NDCAP meeting, Irina Rypina, a physical oceanographer at WHOI, said her models of the currents in the bay, which factor in the seasons, tides, and wind directions, showed the wastewater has a very high probability of flowing toward Provincetown and then hugging the coastline, affecting Wellfleet on both the bay and ocean sides and Dennis inside the bay.

    Based on her study, the wastewater would reach Provincetown within a week of its release and would reach the rest of the bay in three weeks.

    “We’re talking about putting radioactive material into the ocean,” said Ken Buesseler, a WHOI marine radiochemist. “I can’t do that from a research vessel, and you could not put this material on a ship and take it to the middle of the ocean and release it. It’s not allowed.”

    The wastewater has not yet been treated to filter out contamination. Test samples drawn and analyzed by both Holtec and the state Dept. of Public Health in May 2023 showed the presence of five radioactive isotopes above detection limits: manganese 54, cobalt 60, zinc 65, cesium 137, and tritium.

    The results showed those isotopes in “very high numbers relative to the ocean,” Buesseler said. The level of manganese was two million times higher than what naturally occurs in the ocean’s sediment.

    Noyes said the company monitors contamination in the sediment, shellfish, finfish, and other marine life.

    Buesseler responded that he was not aware of that specific monitoring program but “what I saw were pretty high detection limits, so a ‘no detect’ doesn’t tell me anything as a scientist.”

    The dose to humans and sea life will depend on the treatment system used to clean up the wastewater, Buesseler said. He said he thought the dose would likely be low after the water is treated. “You will be able to swim and be able to boat in Cape Cod Bay,” he said. “I never said Cape Cod Bay will be destroyed.” But he said there were better options for dealing with the wastewater than releasing it into the bay.

    “Tritium is difficult to get out of water, but if you just cleaned up things that were more harmful, you would be left with water that’s largely tritium, which you could hold for its decay,” said Buesseler.

    The plant’s radioactive spent fuel assemblies are now stored in 62 casks on the Pilgrim plant property. “We’re talking about a site where they will have to maintain high-level waste for decades, centuries, and beyond, until we have permanent waste disposal for commercial reactors,” the radiochemist said. If the wastewater were to be treated and then stored on the site, the tritium level would go down to 6 percent in 48 years.

    “In 60 years, less than 3 percent would be left,” he said.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Pilgrim Worker Claims He Was Poisoned by Radiation

    Adam Snyder’s lawsuit says Holtec knew of danger and withheld facts

    By

    PLYMOUTH — A 41-year-old worker assigned to the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station for several months in 2021 claims he was poisoned by radiation and that Holtec Pilgrim, the plant’s owner, misled workers about safety. He has sued the company for injuries caused by “the release of radioactive, hazardous and toxic substances.”

    The purple area is a work location. The control rod drives come out the bottom of the reactor vessel and moved to the purple work area. The yellow area is the 9-foot elevation of the drywell, which had not been sufficiently tested for airborne radioactivity. Under procedures regulating safety in work areas, they must be surveyed for radiological hazards prior to workers entering them. Both the 9- and 23-foot elevation areas were not properly sampled, according to NRC inspection reports. (Illustration courtesy David Lochbaum)

    Adam Snyder, a resident of Ohio, was employed by William Industrial Services, a company subcontracted by Holtec International to work at a handful of nuclear plants the company is decommissioning. According to court documents, Snyder’s job was to remove fuel rods.

    In an amended complaint filed on Nov. 8 in the U.S. District Court, he claims Holtec knew about the unsafe working conditions.

    The complaint was initially filed in Plymouth Superior Court in early September. It was moved to federal court at Holtec’s request. Holtec had also filed a motion to dismiss the complaint.

    Snyder’s attorney, Andrew Abraham of Keches Law Group in Milton, provided more details in his motion to allow an amended complaint. On Nov. 14, the judge allowed the amended complaint and denied Holtec’s motion to dismiss.

    Abraham filed the action under the Atomic Energy Act and the Price Anderson Act, federal laws that regulate commerce in the nuclear industry. The named defendants are Holtec Pilgrim LLC, a subsidiary of Holtec International that owns the plant, and several related limited liability companies formed by Holtec. Snyder has requested a jury trial.

    The court documents include inspection reports done at Pilgrim starting in 2020, shortly after Holtec bought the shuttered plant and began decommissioning it. “Throughout decommissioning of this facility, [Holtec] has caused the release of radioactive, hazardous and toxic substances into the jobsite,” Snyder states in the filing.

    The judge has not yet scheduled any hearings in his suit.

    Snyder’s Claims

    Snyder was assigned to Pilgrim from May to December 2021. He states in his filing that Holtec knew of the unsafe conditions caused by elevated radiation levels at the site but withheld information from those working at the plant. Snyder claims his Holtec supervisor, Leon Johnson, “assured him the jobsite was safe to work at without protective gear or a ventilator and that the site had been tested for radioactive materials.”

    Snyder claims he was exposed to nuclear radiation, which has caused “serious sickness.” During the last several weeks of his assignment at Pilgrim, he started to experience nausea, fatigue, and lack of stamina. Those symptoms grew worse in the six to eight weeks after he left the site, with chronic nausea and vomiting.

    In 2022, he learned that inspections done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at Pilgrim cited violations related to improper monitoring and radioactive contamination in the same areas where he had worked.

    In March 2023, doctors at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital told him that too much time had passed since exposure to put him on medicines for that condition. He was told to get his lymph nodes and blood tested annually. He was prescribed ondansetron HCL, which he still must take daily for nausea.

    Without the medication, Snyder said, he is too sick to leave his house. In his opposition to Holtec’s motion to dismiss the complaint, attorney Abraham claims that one of Snyder’s co-workers also developed symptoms at about the same time as Snyder and had part of his tongue and esophagus surgically removed.

    The experience at Pilgrim “ended my nuclear career,” said Snyder in a recent phone interview. His lawsuit seeks $393,000 for lost wages and medical expenses.

    Snyder said he filed the complaint to shine a light on Holtec’s practices. “If it was $5 million or their boardroom going to jail,” he said, he would choose the latter. “What has gone on at that plant is the worst of the worst. All the money in the world doesn’t matter if you’re in a hospice bed.”

    Lack of Monitoring

    An NRC inspection report, released in late 2022, described a violation that occurred between Aug. 12 and 24, 2020, about eight months before Snyder’s arrival at Pilgrim. Holtec did not perform radiation surveys or surface contamination surveys or take radiological air samples in the 23-foot elevation of the drywell where workers were unbolting and removing control rod drives from the underside of the reactor vessel, which they then removed from the drywell.

    The area was posted as having high radiation and high contamination, and workers located under the vessel wore plastic air-fed suits to provide protection from water, radioactive contamination, and potential airborne radioactivity. Support workers wore powered air-purifying respirators.

    Inspectors reported that Holtec also failed to conduct air sampling where workers were being decontaminated and removing their respiratory protection. “As a consequence, the potential for very high loose surface contamination and the potential for the generation of airborne radioactivity were not assessed,” the report said. As a result of Holtec’s failure to perform the radiation surveys, six workers received unplanned intakes of radioactive material, according to the inspection report.

    Attorney Abraham included in the complaint an NRC inspection report from 2022, shortly after Snyder had left Pilgrim, that described violations related to failures to properly survey radiological conditions in areas where workers were present.

    The inspector found that a stop-work order should have been executed based on the radiation levels found in areas on elevation 9. No such order was made.

    In an inspection done earlier this year and reported by the Independent, a series of mistakes had been made that resulted in a worker getting an internal dose of 132 millirem and a 43-millirem external dose when surveying the underside of the head of the reactor vessel on April 2. The annual dose limit for the public is 100 millirems per year total, although workers in the nuclear industry have a considerably higher annual dose limit of 5,000 millirem.

    Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    DEP Denies Permit to Discharge Wastewater Into Cape Cod Bay

    Local advocates and state ask Holtec to ship the waste offsite rather than appeal

    By

    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.”

    ‘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.

    ACCOUNTING

    NRC Cites Holtec for Improper Use of Funds

    The company’s gifts in four different communities came out of taxpayer trusts

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Holtec Decommissioning International has misspent money from the decommissioning trust funds at all four nuclear plants it owns, using it to pay for activities like parades and softball games when federal regulations restrict the use to decommissioning of the reactors and cleaning up the contaminated sites.

    Holtec has also spent close to a half million dollars in decommissioning trust funds on lobbying related to Pilgrim since 2019. That expense, however, is allowed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), according to spokesman Neil Sheehan.

    Four nuclear facilities — Pilgrim in Plymouth, Oyster Creek in New Jersey, Indian Point in New York, and Palisades in Michigan — are owned by Holtec’s decommissioning arm. All four plants are currently closed, and all but Palisades are in various stages of decommissioning; the company is currently working to restart the Michigan reactor, however.

    The company’s purchase of the plants is part of an arrangement that provides Holtec with trust funds amounting to billions in taxpayer money, set aside specifically to cover decommissioning costs.

    While the amounts of money improperly spent from the funds are small, critics say they reflect Holtec’s pattern of ignoring regulations.

    “Holtec’s motto is ‘It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission — much cheaper, too,’ ” said Mary Lampert, director of the activist group Pilgrim Watch and a member of the citizens advisory committee on Pilgrim’s decommissioning.

    The company blamed the misappropriation on clerical errors in the case of one plant but has not yet offered explanations in the other three cases. The NRC has given the company 30 days to provide reasons for the violations.

    Holtec appeared to be a generous corporate partner last year, donating $84,000 to the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, the town’s annual Thanksgiving celebration, and similar local events. The donation didn’t come out of Holtec’s wallet, however. The company used Pilgrim’s decommissioning trust fund to make those gifts.

    The NRC chastised Holtec in a Feb. 29 letter, saying that community celebrations are not “legitimate decommissioning activities.”

    When Holtec took ownership of Pilgrim in 2019, the $1.1-billion decommissioning trust fund was part of the deal — what remains in the trust after decommissioning ends is retained by the company as profit. As of December 2022, $518 million remained in the account. Holtec representatives recently extended the timeline for decommissioning Pilgrim by eight years to give the fund time to earn more interest.

    On the same day it sent its notice to Holtec regarding the expenses at Pilgrim, the NRC sent a violation notice to the company regarding improper use of the Oyster Creek nuclear plant’s decommissioning fund. There, the company used $62,000 from the fund for a “celebration day for Lacey Township, donation to a food bank and certain upgrades to the local community.”

    Holtec issued the same statement to news media regarding the violations at Pilgrim and at Oyster Creek: “We take our responsibility as watchful stewards of the trust fund very seriously. We are also deeply committed to our local communities we serve as part of the decommissioning process. It is in that spirit as a strong community partner that these charitable expenditures were made, as part of our regular community outreach and engagement activities. We take any violation very seriously and have already taken corrective actions to ensure the amount was restored to the trust fund, with interest, and that this issue does not recur with our future community and charitable contributions.”

    At Indian Point in New York, Holtec spent $63,000 from the decommissioning trust fund on events such as parades and softball teams. The NRC wrote to Holtec on Feb. 22, saying that the company had violated the fund’s restrictions.

    In these three cases, Holtec has been ordered to provide federal regulators with a timeline for paying the money back to the trust funds and an outline of measures taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

    In Michigan, between January and March 2023, Holtec improperly used $57,000 from the Palisades decommissioning fund for activities related to the restart of the reactor as well as on community events. In a letter sent to Holtec on Feb. 20, federal regulators chastised the company but said it would not cite it with a violation notice because Holtec had entered it into its “corrective action program” and was already working to restore the money.

    Regarding its infraction at Palisades, Holtec had claimed it had inadvertently used the decommissioning fund because of “mis-coding,” according to the NRC’s inspection report. Holtec performed “additional training of staff” to avoid future missteps, the inspection report said.

    Holtec purchased the Palisades plant in Covert, Mich. in June 2022 shortly after it was permanently shut down. While the company initially planned to decommission the reactor, it has since reversed that decision and is working on restarting it.

    Last month, Mass. Attorney General Andrea Campbell filed a civil complaint against Holtec in Suffolk Superior Court for a long list of violations related to improper handling and disposal of asbestos-laced debris. As part of a settlement Holtec agreed to pay $200,000.

    The focus at the March 25 meeting of the Pilgrim Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel will once again be on the disposal of radioactive wastewater, which also contains several other nonradioactive pollutants.

    The Mass. Department of Environmental Protection has directed Holtec to provide an analysis of the contaminants known to be in the wastewater, based on sampling done last April and any additional pollutants that may have been released into the water since then.

    The company proposes to filter the wastewater and release it into Cape Cod Bay and has applied for the state and federal permits required to do that. Meanwhile the company has evaporated 200,000 gallons of the 1.1 million total from the reactor building’s vents, using submersible heaters to speed up the process.

    PILGRIM PROGRESS

    State Hears Mostly ‘No’ at Public Hearing on Radioactive Wastewater

    In written comments and at a town hall event, people press DEP to deny permit

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Nearly all of the more than 700 written comments sent so far to the state’s Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) urge the agency to finalize its denial of a permit that would allow Holtec Decommissioning International to release up to 1.1 million gallons of irradiated wastewater from the former Pilgrim nuclear plant into Cape Cod Bay.

    The deadline for submitting comments is Aug. 31.

    Holtec is looking for approval from the state to amend its surface water discharge permit. At the same time, the company is pursuing a separate approval for the release by seeking a go-ahead from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to amend its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Without the state permit, though, the EPA approval can’t be granted.

    The EPA has not yet acted on the federal permit amendment, but Mass. DEP issued a draft decision in late July denying the amendment to the surface water discharge permit, based on the Ocean Sanctuaries Act. That act prohibits the discharge of industrial wastes into water bodies designated as ocean sanctuaries, including Cape Cod Bay.

    Some of the written public comments got right to the point: Carolyn Parker wrote, “Really? Radioactive pollution in our bay? No! No! No! No!”

    James Lampert, an attorney and longtime watchdog of the nuclear plant, submitted a 50-page document citing a long list of state laws that would prohibit the release of the wastewater into the bay, as well as the court settlement Holtec signed in 2020 saying it would comply with state laws.

    Comments came in from environmental organizations, representatives of the fishing and tourism industries, real estate brokers, and those who live or vacation in the Plymouth area and on Cape Cod.

    The coastal region is known for its natural beauty, said the Mass. Association of Realtors in its letter. “The reputational harm to the attractiveness of this area as both a place to call home and a place to vacation will be irreparable if nuclear waste dumping is permitted,” the organization said.

    Beth Casoni, the executive director of the Mass. Lobstermen’s Association, wrote that the release of wastewater into the bay would devastate the commercial fishing and shellfishing industries here.

    Hundreds of Cape Cod residents submitted comments.

    “I am a North Truro resident directly in the line of fire that Holtec proposed poisoning with the discharge,” wrote Laurie Veninger. She pointed to the $1-billion decommissioning trust fund Holtec received when it purchased the plant. “It seems to me simply dumping the waste into Cape Cod Bay is how they intend to keep as much of that money for themselves,” she wrote, “rather than decommission the plant in a responsible and environmentally safe and sensible way.”

    In her letter, Wellfleet resident Amy Daimant asked DEP to finalize its denial of the discharge permit. “Our fragile environment on Cape Cod needs your protection from all forms of damage to public health, economic vitality, and environmental diversity,” she wrote.

    One of the few written comments that opposed the DEP decision to deny the permit came from Plymouth resident Brett Hannigan. “While I understand environmental concerns, if you want [the wastewater] gone, stop getting in the way.”

    Holtec had not yet submitted its written comments by the Independent’s deadline, nor did company representatives speak at the recent public hearing. Spokesman Patrick O’Brien said the company planned to make its submission on deadline day.

    A long list of speakers packed a Plymouth Town Hall meeting room on Aug. 24, providing DEP officials with more feedback to factor into the agency’s final decision on the water discharge permit. As with the written comments, most speakers expressed support of the state’s preliminary decision to deny the amendment to the permit.

    Orleans resident Doug Long said Skaket Beach “is heavily populated in the summertime by kids, teens, and other rascals, and they are all in the water.”

    Discharging the wastewater into the bay makes no sense, Long said. “How many parents will tell their kids, ‘Wow, it’s just so exciting: radiation coming your way to coat your arms and legs and bodies.’ ”

    Don Keeran, assistant director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, told DEP hearing officials, “Simply put, it’s illegal. We strongly believe there is no choice but to deny.”

    Mary Lampert, James Lampert’s wife and president of the Pilgrim Watch citizens group, urged DEP to cite all the Massachusetts laws that prohibit the discharge in its final written decision, including the Mass. Endangered Species Act, the Mass. Crimes Against Public Health law that makes it a crime to discharge “waste or other material of any kind in or upon coastal and inland waters,” and the state Oil and Hazardous Material Release Prevention Act. All prohibit discharges of pollutants.

    Citing all the laws in its denial will allow DEP to use them in court if Holtec appeals the decision, she said: “Multiple arrows in the quiver are better than one.”

    The Lamperts are members of the NDCAP panel advising on Pilgrim’s decommissioning.

    A handful of speakers urged state officials to reverse the denial and grant Holtec’s request, including Pine duBois, executive director of the Jones River Watershed Association in Kingston and cochair of the NDCAP panel.

    “What concerns me most is that a delay in dealing with the wastewater almost certainly delays decommissioning of the entire site,” duBois said. Sea level is rising faster than predicted, said duBois, so it’s important to get the site cleaned up quickly. “If we fail to remediate the stormwater systems and the contamination that we know is in the soils, virtually all of that contamination will migrate to the bay.” That outcome would be worse than releasing the 1.1 million gallons of wastewater, duBois said.

    Shawn Noyes, a member of a pro-nuclear group called Eco-Nuclear Solutions and not a relative of the plant’s senior compliance manager, David Noyes, argued that the dismantling and decommissioning of a nuclear plant “are essential phases in the life cycle of any power plant.

    “It’s crucial that we’ve made decisions grounded in science and evidence rather than allowing emotion to cloud our judgment,” Noyes said.

    State officials gave no deadline for finalizing their draft denial. “MassDEP will issue their decision after thorough review and consideration of all comments submitted and immediately upon making appropriate updates to the draft decision,” said the agency’s Deputy Press Secretary Fabienne Alexis.

    OCEAN SANCTUARY

    State Agency Denies Holtec’s Permit Change

    DEP’s draft decision blocks path to nuclear wastewater release for now

    By

    PLYMOUTH — The state Dept. of Environmental Protection issued a draft determination on July 24 denying a permit modification that would have allowed Holtec, the company decommissioning the shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, to release over one million gallons of wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.

    The decision was based on a state law protecting water bodies, including Cape Cod Bay, that are designated “ocean sanctuaries.”

    Seth Pickering, deputy regional director of DEP’s Bureau of Air and Waste, explained the draft decision during Monday’s meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP) in Plymouth. “The Ocean Sanctuaries Act prohibits the dumping and discharge of commercial, municipal, domestic, or industrial wastes into ocean sanctuaries,” Pickering said. “The wastewater that the facility proposes to discharge qualifies as industrial wastewater, and therefore discharges are prohibited under the Act.”

    The wastewater, although treated, would still contain both radioactive and nonradioactive contaminants.

    The state Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM), the agency that oversees the Ocean Sanctuaries Act, agreed with DEP’s interpretation of the law. That office’s director, Lisa Berry Engler, sent a letter to the DEP on July 24 citing several sections of the act that would prohibit the release. “CZM’s analysis reaches the same conclusion as MassDEP’s interpretation of the Act in this matter,” Engler wrote.

    Holtec says the battle isn’t over yet. At Monday’s meeting, Holtec’s compliance manager David Noyes said the company intends to look at its options, which include submitting additional information to support its case for the water release and exercising its right to request a public hearing.

    The draft determination requires a 30-day public comment period — through Aug. 28. After considering the comments, DEP can finalize its draft decision.

    “We are disappointed by the state’s denial of our permit modification for discharge of treated water from Pilgrim Station,” Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said in a statement on behalf of the company. He called the water the company wants to release “well within safe limits.”

    “We will continue with the EPA modification process,” O’Brien wrote. That means the company is preparing for the DEP’s decision to fall through: a permit modification would need to be approved federally by the Environmental Protection Agency, but DEP approval on a change to the surface water discharge permit would have to come first.

    O’Brien took the position that the permitting process has slowed economic development at the site. His statement continued: “This process has already delayed the completion of the project for an additional four years, impacted the workforce on site and further changes when the site can be returned to be an economic driver for the Plymouth Community.”

    An Example for Others

    DEP’s draft decision comes 18 months after Holtec announced its plan to release the water into the bay, triggering objections from the public, federal and state legislators for the region, local officials, and the fishing and tourism industries.

    Diane Turco, president of the Cape Downwinders, which is now part of a coalition called Save Our Bay, praised Gov. Maura Healey and her administration in an interview after the July 24 decision was announced. “I look forward to keeping this going to seal the deal to halt Holtec,” Turco said. “Then we can be an example for communities across the country that are going to have to fight Holtec over this same issue.”

    Holtec is currently decommissioning the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey, where it has released wastewater, and the Indian Point plant in New York, where officials and others are opposed to a release of water into the Hudson River.

    Healey, while she was the state attorney general, was instrumental in crafting an agreement requiring Holtec to obey state laws. “I’m glad to see this tentative decision from MassDEP,” Healey wrote in a statement. She said that her administration will continue to monitor Holtec’s role in the decommissioning at Pilgrim.

    U.S. Sen. Edward Markey also issued a statement calling the MassDEP decision a win “for the environment and for all of the people, businesses, and organizations that rely on Cape Cod Bay’s reputation for clean and safe water.”

    “The denial of Holtec’s permit modification is an incredibly meaningful win for the countless Cape and Islands advocates who have long worked to block the discharge of radioactive wastewater into our bay,” said State Sen. Julian Cyr in a statement to the Independent.

    Gray Areas?

    NDCAP member James Lampert said the public certainly didn’t anticipate it would take 18 months for DEP to issue a draft decision, and he wondered how long it might take the agency to finalize its draft.

    Pickering would not make a prediction about that. The 30-day public comment period could be extended at the request of Holtec or those who have submitted comments, “if the department determines that such an extension would be in the public interest,” Pickering said.

    Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod and an NDCAP member, said he hopes the draft decision will allow the panel and the public to move on to other important matters related to the decommissioning of the Plymouth nuclear plant.

    When the plant was producing electricity, its periodic releases of wastewater into the bay were allowed under an exemption in the Ocean Sanctuaries Act. Now that the plant has been shut down, that exemption no longer applies.

    “It changes the applicability of the Act entirely, and as a result we don’t need to any longer get into the mind-numbing conversations about what level of tritium is okay, what’s happening at Fukushima, and who thinks it’s okay and who doesn’t,” Gottlieb said during Monday’s meeting.

    “The plain black-letter reading of the law is that a new discharge from a point source into an ocean sanctuary, of which Cape Cod Bay is one, is prohibited,” Gottlieb said. “End of conversation.”

    Noyes responded that the DEP’s decision is not final. “There is nothing in this that’s black and white legal until we get through the process,” he said.

    If the denial is finalized, Holtec will have the option of appealing it in Superior Court.

    Public comments on the DEP’s draft decision should be sent to: [email protected]. Comments may also be mailed to Cathy Coniaris, MassDEP’s Surface Water Discharge Program, 100 Cambridge St., Boston, MA 02114.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Five Isotopes Found in Pilgrim Water Samples

    State agencies say there’s no surprises; one expert disagrees

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Five radioactive isotopes and 22 nonradioactive pollutants were found in untreated wastewater samples drawn from the spent fuel pool, torus, and dryer-separator at the closed Pilgrim nuclear power plant last month.

    The Dept. of Public Health and Dept. of Environmental Protection released their analyses at the May 22 meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP). There were no surprises in the results, the state agencies said.

    The testing of the untreated wastewater was done to ensure the validity of testing being done by Holtec Decommissioning International, the company that now owns the Plymouth plant.

    Holtec proposes to release 1.1 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. That plan is opposed by legislators at all levels of government, environmental groups, the seafood and tourist industries, and the general public. The company has applied to the state DEP and federal Environmental Protection Agency for a wastewater discharge permit needed for the release.

    In its analysis of the samples taken in April, DPH found five radioactive isotopes above the detection limit: manganese-54, cobalt-60, zinc-65, cesium-137, and tritium.

    Other than tritium, those elements would be reduced by a treatment system to levels allowed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the DPH said in a conference call with reporters on Monday. Concentrations of tritium, an isotope that can’t be reduced by treatment, would be lowered by dilution.

    The water would be released in batches of 18,500 gallons of wastewater mixed with nearly one million gallons of salt water from the bay.

    Among the 239 nonradiological pollutants that were tested for, 22 were present at concentrations above the detection limit. They included nine PFAS compounds, one semivolatile organic and two volatile organic compounds, eight metals (boron, cobalt, copper, iron, nickel, potassium, zinc, and cyanide) and five general chemistry measures (nitrogen/nitrate, oil and grease, pH, total dissolved solids, and chlorine). The analysis of the nonradiological pollutants was done by Gel Lab in South Carolina.

    If the DEP and EPA ultimately grant Holtec a discharge permit, any wastewater released would first undergo treatment to remove or significantly reduce the pollutants to levels allowed in the permit, said Gerard Martin, the DEP’s regional director of the Bureau of Waste Site Cleanup during the May 22 NDCAP meeting.

    There is no guarantee at this point that the permit will be issued, he said.

    “The application requires several state and federal permits and reviews,” Martin said. “The comments and concerns raised by the NDCAP and the public will be carefully considered in the state’s actions. The Healey-Driscoll administration also has serious concerns about the proposed discharge of decommissioning wastewater into the bay.”

    Concerns of a Scientist

    Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, reviewed the results on Tuesday and said the radionuclide levels were high, even factoring in that the wastewater was untreated.

    The report used very concentrated unit measurements for radioactivity found in a very small amount of water. “The result might read .003, but that’s actually quite a lot of radioactivity compared to what’s in the ocean,” Buesseler said. “The numbers for cesium-137 in the untreated water are 200 million times higher than what’s in the ocean right now.”

    Tritium is often a source of concern because it can’t be cleaned out of the water, but the other radionuclides that were found have greater health effects, he said.

    Cobalt ends up in seafloor sediments and can be ingested by marine life and end up in humans who eat the seafood, Buesseler said.

    Based on what he has seen at Japan’s Fukushima, the million gallons at Pilgrim will require a sophisticated cleaning system and probably more than one treatment, he said: “It’s got to go through it again and again and again. Even if you remove 99 percent of it, you might still be a million times higher than what’s in the ocean.

    “They need to demonstrate they can get more than 99 percent removal, and that’s not easy,” he added. “And it’s different for different radionuclides.” According to Buesseler, the water will never be 100 percent clean.

    Further tests would be needed to determine levels of other radioisotopes such as carbon-14 and strontium-90, plutonium, and uranium, which require more advanced testing. “Once you see these other isotopes at these levels, you know there’s other forms of radioactivity than just the five radionuclides,” he said.

    The best solution for the wastewater, according to Buesseler, is to store it onsite for 50 years or so after it is treated.

    New Study Is Announced

    At the NDCAP meeting, Matthew Charette, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and director of its Sea Grant program, outlined a study of the currents in Cape Cod Bay that WHOI scientists will conduct starting in July.

    “I’m sure everyone here appreciates the fact that the bay hosts a diverse and productive marine ecosystem, and that it’s the site of many commercial and recreational fishing and aquaculture enterprises as well as a thriving tourist economy,” Charette said. “All of these aspects of the blue economy depend critically on water quality in the bay.”

    The study will provide regulators with information about where the surface water travels and how long the water stays in the bay, building on a study done last year by WHOI oceanographer Irina Rypina.

    Rypina’s study, based on data collected by 400 drifter buoys, concluded the wastewater released from the Pilgrim plant would flow southward and split into two branches. One would flow into the bay, where it would slowly circulate for about two weeks; the other would flow past Race Point in Provincetown and head southward on the ocean side of the Outer Cape, hugging the coastline.

    A possible pathway showed the release heading north toward Duxbury, then turning south and flowing into the bay.

    The new study will add temporal variabilities, such as tides, wind, and the seasons, to the analysis, providing a clearer picture of water’s potential presence in aquaculture areas.

    NDCAP member Andrew Gottlieb said the results of the study would be valuable in understanding the flow within the bay but “were largely irrelevant” to those making regulatory decisions on wastewater discharge permits.

    “The plain reading of the law says no discharge,” said Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod.

    “These results shouldn’t be determinative, nor should the agencies feel the need to wait for this work to be completed to reject the application,” Gottlieb said.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Promised Study of Water Release Risks Is Stalled

    Holtec says it can’t pay; Sen. Markey says otherwise

    By

    PLYMOUTH — An independent study of potential risks related to Holtec’s plan to release one million gallons of radioactive wastewater from the former Pilgrim nuclear facility into Cape Cod Bay is stalled because of disagreement about who will pay for it. The conflict was revealed in correspondence between U.S. Sen. Edward Markey and Holtec officials over the last several months.

    Meanwhile, Holtec International, the company that now owns Pilgrim, is steadily moving forward on its own plans. On March 31, the company submitted its application for an amended discharge permit, a step toward release of the wastewater.

    Holtec agreed to support the study, proposed by Markey, at a congressional hearing last May. At that hearing, the company’s CEO Krishna Singh said such a study would benefit Holtec. “Because there has been so much material in the media, a non-problem, in my personal opinion, has become a big problem,” he said. “I think your suggestion to have experts review and study is a great suggestion. We will support it wholeheartedly.”

    Markey organized a panel of experts to carry out a study that would look at possible harm to public health, marine life, and the region’s tourist and fishing industries.

    But when Markey pursued the company for financial support, Holtec asserted that federal regulations prevented use of Pilgrim’s decommissioning trust fund for this purpose. Markey’s staff checked with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and was told the study was well within the allowed uses.

    Speaking on behalf of the senator during the March 27 meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP) in Plymouth, James Cantwell said the decommissioning trust fund for Pilgrim initially contained over $1 billion, contributed over several years by ratepayers. According to the complex calculus of decommissioning, Holtec will profit by keeping what remains in the fund at the end of the process.

    According to Holtec’s 2021 report on the fund, $881 million remained in it. The company anticipated $252 million would be left when decommissioning is complete, Cantwell said.

    Holtec’s recently submitted annual trust fund report for 2022 shows a much-reduced outlook. The report, which the Independent obtained this week, shows profits plummeting to $44 million, due to an anticipated drop in trust fund earnings. Not factored into the profit calculation, however, is the ability of plant owners to recover their spent fuel management costs from the federal Dept. of Energy. In Pilgrim’s case, that could net Holtec up to $600 million, according to Holtec. The company has said it will pursue the reimbursement.

    Markey sent a letter to Holtec on March 17 demanding that the company live up to its commitment to support the independent study. On March 31, Kelly Trice, president of the decommissioning arm of Holtec, responded with his own letter, refusing for a second time to pay for the study.

    Singh never committed to paying for the study, Trice wrote. What he intended was simply to give information. Trice quoted Singh from the hearing’s transcript: “We will give them access to the data at the plant to help comfort the community.” Trice added that any financing by Holtec could create a perception that the company might have influence over the results.

    At the March 27 advisory panel meeting, DPH and DEP officials confirmed that testing of the untreated wastewater in Pilgrim’s systems was expected to be done on April 5, with representatives from the two agencies on hand.

    Holtec agreed to provide portions of each sample to the two agencies for their own testing. DPH will use the state’s Hinton Laboratory in Jamaica Plain to identify the sample’s radioactive contaminants. After an extensive search, DEP contracted with South Carolina-based Gel Laboratories to test the water for other pollutants.

    The one drawback with Gel Laboratories, said Seth Pickering, the regional director of DEP’s Bureau of Air and Waste, was that Holtec was using that same lab for its sample analysis. Those attending the March 27 NDCAP meeting expressed initial outrage at that news.

    But Jack Priest, director of DPH’s radiation control program and a member of NDCAP, said Gel was essentially the only laboratory that was equipped and licensed to handle the radioactive water. “This is a nationally accredited independent lab, not something we Googled,” he said.

    Results should be provided to the two agencies in May and will then be made public.

    The company will also seek modifications to its state permits. A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs released the following statement this week: “The Healey-Driscoll Administration has serious concerns about Holtec’s plan to discharge spent fuel pool water and other decommissioning wastewater into Cape Cod Bay and is monitoring this situation closely. Holtec cannot unilaterally decide to discharge this water.”

    The statement continued: “Massachusetts agencies will carefully review all permit modification applications and analyze compliance with all applicable laws. We applaud the strong community engagement on this issue. The community’s concerns will be front of mind in the state’s review.”

    PLEAS

    Fisherman Launches Petition Against Release of Pilgrim Water

    Over 214,000 people ask Holtec to hold back

    By

    PLYMOUTH — Bourne resident Ryan Collins, whose father and grandfather were fishermen, continues the family tradition. He has now become an advocate as well.

    Collins has collected more than 214,000 signatures on a petition asking the owners of the former Pilgrim nuclear plant not to release radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.

    Bourne’s Ryan Collins presents his petition at the March 27 advisory panel meeting. (Photo by Christine Legere)

    Collins told the Independent he took up the matter because he is a “common sense” person. “All of our ecosystems are under a lot of stress,” Collins said. “If there is an opportunity to keep something out of the water that may have some impact, we should do it.”

    He said he has been listening to concerns from his fellow fishermen as well as family, friends, and neighbors about Holtec Decommissioning International’s proposed solution to disposing of the water from various systems at the shuttered plant.

    “Everyone I am speaking to is against it,” he said. Eight weeks ago, he started his online petition at Change.org.

    At the March 27 meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, Collins presented two Holtec representatives with a large binder containing just some of the signatures his petition has collected.

    In the petition, Collins noted there have been convincing scientific arguments as well as legal arguments for not releasing the water into the bay. His main point, though, is that “the wishes of people, real human beings who live here in the shadow of the nuclear plant,” are clear. “We don’t want the water discharged into Cape Cod Bay,” the petition states.

    At the meeting, Collins said that Holtec’s website describes the company as “a learning organization, forever striving for a higher standard of excellence.”

    “CEO Krishna, if you happen to be listening,” he said, “I’d like you to know that I personally feel that right now is a wonderful opportunity for you to demonstrate this higher standard of excellence by acquiescing to our collective wishes as a community and agreeing to no longer consider dumping this water into our beloved bay.”

    Retired Wellfleet shellfisherman Irving Puffer was not at the meeting. “I thought it was so ludicrous they wouldn’t even think of doing it, but I guess I’m wrong,” he told the Independent, referring to the release of the wastewater. “We don’t want that in our bays or harbors or anywhere near us.”

    Even the perception that the bay was contaminated could have a huge effect on whether people would want to swim in it or eat seafood harvested there, said Puffer. In his view, too little is known of possible effects, and “once they do it, it’s done.”

    Wellfleet lobsterman Damian Parkington noted the currents in Cape Cod Bay run counterclockwise. Woods Hole oceanographer Irina Rypina has studied the bay’s currents and believes the radioactive water released from Pilgrim would flow south, with one current branching off and hugging the coast of the Outer Cape while a second flowed into the bay where it would stall before heading out to the ocean.

    “It’s scary,” Parkington said. “With the prevailing currents that would nest a lot of these sediments into the little harbors from Hyannis to Provincetown.”

    PILGRIM UPDATE

    Pilgrim Water Must Go to Colorado for Testing

    By

    PLYMOUTH — The state has still not tested samples of untreated water from the spent fuel pool and other areas of the former Pilgrim nuclear plant, members of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel learned at their Jan. 23 meeting.

    Seth Pickering, the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) representative on the panel, said sampling had not yet been done because none of the laboratories contracted by his agency could handle the contaminated water. The agency planned to ship the samples to Eurofins Scientific’s testing laboratories in Colorado, he said.

    Pickering said that the sampling procedure could now continue as planned, with representatives from DEP and the Dept. of Public Health present. Both agencies will still be provided with some water from the samples. DPH will test it for the presence of radionuclides. DEP will test for the presence of nonradioactive contaminants that are prohibited under the current discharge permit.

    David Noyes, Holtec’s senior compliance manager, told the panel in November that the company plans to file an application for a modification to its current discharge permit at the end of the first quarter of 2023. Noyes said at the time that the company would not proceed with any release of radioactive wastewater while the permit modification is underway.

    That reassurance came after the Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to Holtec President Kelly Trice in December saying the discharge permit didn’t allow the water to be released into Cape Cod Bay and that any violations could result in fines and even imprisonment.

    “We recognize the authority of the EPA,” Noyes said at that time.

    That permit modification will trigger an extensive review, Pickering said, involving state and federal agencies.

    During a short public comment period, Joanne Corrigan, who lives close to the Pilgrim plant, pointed out that none of the two million gallons of wastewater at Vermont Yankee, which is being decommissioned by NorthStar, went into the Connecticut River. “Vermont might be a bunch of pot-smoking tree-huggers,” she said, “but they had enough sense to give the legislature the final say on what went on at the plant.” The water was hauled offsite to a disposal facility.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    EPA Threatens Holtec Officials With Fines and Imprisonment

    Association to Preserve Cape Cod is exploring preemptive action

    By

    PLYMOUTH — In a letter sent to Holtec Decommissioning International, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has warned decision makers at the company they could face fines and even jail time if they proceed with a radioactive wastewater release. That’s because the company’s current permit does not allow it.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    State Will Test Pilgrim Water for Contaminants

    DPH does not want to see Holtec release wastewater into the bay

    By

    PLYMOUTH — The Mass. Dept of Public Health (DPH) and the state’s Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) will in the weeks ahead be analyzing untreated water taken from new samples at the former Pilgrim nuclear power plant where decommissioning is underway.

    The news was announced by Jack Priest, a member of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP) and director of the radiation control program for DPH, at the panel’s meeting on Monday.

    This comes on the heels of a Nov. 17 statement by Holtec Decommissioning President Kelly Trice that the company’s recent sampling of the plant’s wastewater, which had not yet been treated to remove pollutants, was “of higher quality than the current water composition of Plymouth Harbor,” in terms of its nonradioactive contaminants.

    Holtec’s senior compliance manager, David Noyes, presented those same findings on Monday, along with historical data on radionuclides in the treated wastewater from 2015, the date of the last release from the plant.

    Having Trice’s report made public in this way did not change the state agencies’ determination to move forward on their own testing plans.

    At issue is 1.1 million gallons of wastewater from the plant’s spent fuel pool and other systems that Holtec plans to release into Cape Cod Bay. The water, which is currently contaminated with both radioactive and nonradioactive pollutants, would be treated prior to release and then diluted in billions of gallons of seawater before it is released from the plant’s discharge channel.

    Public opposition has been strong, but Holtec, the company that now owns and is decommissioning the plant, has maintained the release will not cause harm.

    According to Priest, the agencies will be measuring both radionuclides and nonradioactive pollutants. The testing will be done on raw samples of untreated wastewater taken at the plant. State agency representatives will be present when Holtec draws the samples, which should be taking place in the next few weeks.

    “It’s not going to be, I walk over to the edge with a dip bucket and grab water off the top,” Priest said. “It has to be representative of the water in the tank.”

    Seth Pickering, a panel member and deputy regional director for DEP’s Bureau of Air and Waste, and Gerard Martin, deputy regional director of DEP’s Bureau of Water Resources, will be at the plant to witness the sampling along with Priest.

    The samples will then be split. DPH and DEP will take their samples. Holtec will conduct its own testing.

    Priest said he will analyze the water at DPH for radionuclides. The DEP will hire a laboratory to test for myriad nonradioactive pollutants that are regulated under a discharge permit issued by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state DEP.

    Martin provided a list of the pollutants his agency will look for, including oil and grease, dissolved solids, total residual oxidants, several metals, cyanide, sodium nitrite, asbestos, volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds known as PFAS, and PCBs.

    The two state agencies will then forward their results to a panel of scientific experts being established by U.S. Sen. Edward Markey.

    The agencies expect to have the test results ready to present at the next meeting of the NDCAP in late January.

    DPH and DEP will again be supplied with samples of the water once it has gone through Holtec’s treatment system, which the company says will filter out both radionuclides and nonradioactive pollutants. The idea is to test the effectiveness of the company’s proposed water treatment.

    That likely won’t happen for a while. For now, Priest said, Holtec continues to use the water as shielding for workers as it dismantles radioactive plant components, which would push any treatment into at least the second quarter of next year.

    EPA officials have told Holtec on a few occasions that the existing wastewater discharge permit and surface water discharge agreements prohibit the discharge of pollutants in spent fuel pool water and other wastewater from the decommissioning.

    Trice has disagreed with the EPA on what the permit allows. But Noyes indicated Monday the company is preparing to deal with the EPA’s terms: he said they now plan to apply for a modification of the discharge permit.

    “This is the path EPA has given us to move forward, and this is the path we will follow,” Noyes said. “We believe it will enable us to, without reservation by DEP or EPA, move forward.”

    According to Pickering and Martin, the application process for a permit modification is complex and would require both state and federal reviews, along with a review by the Mass. Office of Coastal Zone Management. If a new permit is required, the review would be even more extensive under the Mass. Environmental Policy Act (MEPA).

    Holtec has not yet submitted that application. Once it does, an EPA spokesman told the Independent, the review process would take at least 12 months.

    New NDCAP member James Lampert, an attorney and the husband of member Mary Lampert, an organizer of Pilgrim Watch, has argued the planned wastewater release is prohibited under the state’s Clean Water Act and Ocean Sanctuaries Act.

    David Nichols, another NDCAP member, challenged Lampert on that idea, saying the federal Atomic Energy Act would preempt such state laws. But Lampert countered that preemption comes into play only when the state and federal laws are in conflict in a way that won’t allow for both to be complied with. Holtec, Lampert said, could comply by simply using the other three options for managing the wastewater, which include evaporating it, storing it, or shipping it off-site.

    Newly appointed NDCAP member Andrew Gottlieb, the executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, spent 16 years at DEP and for 10 years was the executive director of the Cape Cod Water Protection Collaborative.

    Gottlieb seconded Lampert’s opinion that Holtec’s water release would be a discharge of commercial or industrial waste, which is prohibited under the Ocean Sanctuaries Act. “The legislature opened up the Ocean Sanctuaries Act in 2018 for expanded prospects of municipal discharge,” Gottlieb said. That was done to accommodate municipal sewage treatment. But Gottlieb said that when it came to discharges such as Holtec’s, the legislature is “not interested in another carve-out.”

    In setting regulations, it comes down to assessing risk, Priest said. “Basically, people want to know if we have a release, if they are successful, what is the consequence of that.”

    The DPH representative made the position of the various state agencies clear. “The delegation at the state is working with our legislative people to minimize the risk, and it’s our preference to not release the water into Cape Cod Bay,” Priest said.

    RADIOACTIVITY

    Holtec Says Regulated Contaminants Will Be Treated Away

    The EPA does not regulate radionuclides

    By

    PLYMOUTH — The owner of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has indicated it is closer to releasing radioactive wastewater from the plant’s spent fuel pool, reactor cavity, and other systems into Cape Cod Bay.

    Holtec Decommissioning International announced a year ago that it would release 1.1 million gallons of treated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay in a series of small batches as part of the decommissioning process. A public outcry ensued, and those opposed included state and federal legislators, environmental groups, and members of the fishing and tourism industries.

    Holtec agreed to delay the release while it considered other options, but the company has never taken the release off the table.

    Now, in a Nov. 17 letter to U.S. Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. William Keating, Holtec President Kelly Trice has stated that recent sampling of the plant’s wastewater, which has not yet been treated to remove pollutants, showed it is of a “higher water quality than the current water composition of Plymouth Harbor.”

    The legislators wrote to Trice earlier in the month asking why the company had not responded to a June 17 letter from the Environmental Protection Agency. That letter said the discharge would clearly violate the plant’s current discharge permit. In it, Ken Moraff, water division director of the EPA’s northeast office, told Trice that Holtec would need a modification to the permit to release spent fuel pool water or other wastewater generated during decommissioning.

    With its latest sampling, Holtec appears to assert it will not need that modification. Trice’s letter argues that all of the contaminants listed in the plant’s discharge permit were below detection levels — except for copper, lead, zinc, and nickel. Those would be removed when the water is treated, he wrote, making the water “of equal or higher quality than the existing water in Cape Cod Bay.”

    The company does not currently report on radionuclides levels because, it says, the water is being used to aid dismantling of equipment and the levels currently fluctuate. And, in any case, the EPA does not regulate radionuclides. The EPA’s authority to stop the wastewater release would need to be based on the presence of other pollutants.

    The EPA has not yet commented on Holtec’s recent sampling. But in the agency’s June letter to Trice, EPA director Moraff said Holtec was misinterpreting the permit requirements: “Your reading of the permit is, in fact, plainly inconsistent with the unambiguous terms of the permit.”

    Before receiving the Nov. 17 letter from Trice, Markey, Warren, and Keating had urged Holtec to respond to that EPA directive.

    “To provide clarity to our offices, local residents, and the many businesses and organizations that rely on Cape Cod Bay’s reputation for clean and safe water, we ask that Holtec confirm publicly as soon as possible that it will not discharge any Pilgrim wastewater without first obtaining the EPA’s authorization and the necessary permit modification,” wrote the three members of Congress.

    Dave Deegan, regional spokesman for the EPA, confirmed last week that Holtec has not yet requested a modification to its discharge permit. The request had been expected to trigger an extensive review process.

    “Given the complexities of the issues and the public interest in this case, we presume it will take more than 12 months,” Deegan said.

     Baker Vetoes a Study

    Earlier this month, state lawmakers showed solidarity with their Southeastern Massachusetts colleagues by unanimously approving an amendment attached to the $3.7-billion economic development bill that would have delayed the release until November 2024 while a commission studied the potential environmental and economic effects.

    Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto of that amendment on Nov. 10 stunned both lawmakers and the public — perhaps no one more so than longtime Pilgrim opponent Diane Turco, president of the Cape Downwinders.

    “Obviously, Gov. Baker wasn’t listening to the people,” said Turco. With the veto, Turco said, Baker has “completely failed the democratic process and the people he was elected to serve.”

    State Rep. Sarah Peake expressed her own outrage at the governor’s veto. “He did it without even so much as a heads-up to the Cape and Islands and Plymouth delegations,” Peake said. The Provincetown Democrat is the 2nd Assistant House Majority Leader.

    Peake said options for immediate action are limited. “I’m not sure right now what the opportunity may be for the House to return in a special session to override the vetoes in the economic development bill,” she said. “That would be my first choice, but the fallback plan will be to file this as a standalone bill as the session begins in January.”

    The fact that the proposal already passed both branches as an amendment should expedite that, Peake said.

    Cape & Islands Sen. Julian Cyr called the governor’s action “shocking and disappointing.”

    “How shameful for the governor to impede corporate accountability and environmental stewardship with his veto pen on the way out the door,” said the Truro Democrat in an email. “Cape Codders and South Shore residents deserve better. We will not allow this callous action to prevent our voices from being heard.”

    State Sen. Susan Moran of Falmouth pointed out that the amendment Baker vetoed on Nov. 10 had been adopted by legislators in July. Since then, Moran said, she met several times with members of the governor’s team in the depts. of public health and environmental protection. “At no time did anyone ever relay concerns with this important amendment,” she said.

    Mark DeCristoforo, executive director of the Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, remains optimistic despite the recent setbacks because, he said, the proposal to release the water is ultimately illegal. “We’re quite used to adversity, and the powers of greed are always difficult to overcome,” said DeCristoforo in an email. “We will carry on with the tools at our disposal.”

    Holtec will present its water test results to the public at the Nov. 28 meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, a group made up of representatives from several state agencies, local leaders, and citizens.

    Results will include the non-radioactive pollutants currently in the water, which Trice referred to in his letter, along with a list of radioactive elements historically present in the plant’s water, based on releases done when the plant was operating.

    The radioactive compounds in the discharge are under the authority of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Agency spokesman Neil Sheehan has said Holtec can release the water without notifying the NRC as long as the release is within federal limits.

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