STATE REGULATORS last week told the company in charge of decommissioning Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth that it cannot discharge 1.1 million gallons of wastewater from the plant’s spent nuclear-fuel pool into Cape Cod Bay. But Holtec may not consider that the final word, potentially extending an expensive and drawn-out decommissioning, which prompted some testy exchanges at an advisory committee meeting Monday night.
The decommissioning process, begun when Holtec Decommissioning International took ownership of the former nuclear site in 2019, has been weighed down by civil lawsuits, regulatory hurdles, and open meeting issues.
Though the company initially said it could decommission the plant in just eight years rather than decades, active decommissioning through site restoration could stretch out for another 10-plus years, according to a chart provided to the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel at its Monday meeting.
An initial four-year pause in decommissioning was due to the “poor market performance that impacted the expected growth of 4th decommissioning fund, a higher-than-expected cost of labor, and uncertainty associated with the ability to process the water,” David Noyes, compliance manager at Holtec Decommissioning International, told the panel. Another four-year delay, Noyes said, was solely because of regulatory uncertainty about how they could dispose of the water.
The state’s Department of Environmental Protection handed down a final decision on Thursday, determining that Holtec cannot discharge water that had been used to cool nuclear fuel rods into Cape Cod Bay. Though the practice is considered legal if the water’s radioactivity tests below federally set levels, the state concluded that doing so violates the Ocean Sanctuaries Act.
“Now you have certainty in the form of a denial,” panelist Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, told Noyes. “Doesn’t that recoup four to six years of that eight-year delay?”
Noyes said he is “not sure [that] where they’re at in the process is final.”
“It’s final if you accept the answer you’ve been given,” Gottlieb said. “The only uncertainty that remains is that which is potentially created by your own choice to appeal. You got an answer from the state. You could take that answer and say the uncertainty is resolved, and stop penalizing the people of Plymouth for the additional six-year delay. It is entirely your choice.”
Noyes told the panel that there are “still avenues available to us, should we decide to pursue them, in order to be able to still consider the option of liquid discharge.”
The options available, he said, are an appeal and future litigation.
Gottlieb and Jack Priest, a panel member representing the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, pressed Noyes on the possible choice to appeal the decision and fund that appeal by drawing down the Holtec Decommissioning Trust Fund.
Ratepayers are charged fees over the life of a nuclear power plant to finance its decommissioning – which amounted to a $1.1 billion trust fund when Holtec took ownership of Pilgrim.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission previously chastised Holtec for using money from the trust fund on local community events, when federal regulations limit fund withdrawals to expenses tied to decommissioning and clean-up.
Priest asked for information on the cost to remove the wastewater by shipping it off site rather than discharging it into the bay. It seemed less financially feasible, in his estimate, to go through years of appeals and lawsuits rather than truck the water away from the site to disposal facilities out West.
Panelists split over the importance of the water question, with Pine duBois, president of the Jones River Watershed Association, decrying “the incessant focus on an amount of water that, unfortunately, the regulators listening to voice of people who don’t understand a lot of what’s going on in terms of damage to the environment.” A woman from the crowd interrupted to call out “how dare you.”
DuBois said she worries that sea level rise would eventually wash the area out and render the question moot if quick action is not taken. “My problem is climate change,” she said, “and I think the delay is going to create a big monstrous problem that we cannot climb out of if we continue to focus on the wrong thing.”
Volleys of lawsuits and complaints have already dogged the decommissioning and Holtec’s relationship with the citizen panel. Earlier this spring, Noyes filed a complaint against the panel alleging violations of the state Open Meeting Law. Two members of the panel, Noyes told NPR station CAI at the time, sent emails to the panel in which they misunderstood or mischaracterized information from the meetings and added things not discussed in public.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell pursued a civil suit against Holtec Pilgrim and Holtec Decommissioning International for failing to survey and identify asbestos before demolition or notify MassDEP before performing the work, which led to a $200,000 consent decree entered in March.
Under the terms of the decree, Campbell’s office noted, Holtec was not permitted to use funds from the Holtec Decommissioning Trust Fund to pay the penalty.
If delays drag on, some panelists worried that the water levels would indeed drop through evaporation, creating different potential risks.
To scattered applause in the room, Gottlieb said, “let’s not pretend going forward that, if that eight-year hold on timing sticks, that it’s not because you chose it, and you’re asking the people of Plymouth and Southeastern Massachusetts to bear the burden of that decision on your part. You have certainty. You can act on it. You could do the right thing.”
