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.

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.