The state says Holtec Decommissioning International, the company that is disassembling the Pilgrim plant site in Manomet, does not need a permit to evaporate radioactive water from the former nuclear power station.
That determination – made in a July 18 letter to Holtec from Seth Pickering, deputy regional director of the Bureau of Air and Waste of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection – was met with dismay from some members of the state’s Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel.
Pickering told Holtec that the state only controls non-radioactive waste, and that a permit for those emissions is not required because the amount released annually is low. Radioactive emissions are controlled by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he said, and the plant produces far less of those than the standards set by the NRC.
The plant, which began operation in 1972, shut down in 2019 after a long decline in demand for nuclear-generated electricity.
The water in question is in the spent fuel pool, the reactor cavity, and the dryer separator pit — an area that remained dry when the reactor was running dry but is flooded when it’s shutdown. There is also water in the Torus, a doughnut-shaped room below the reactor that was designed to absorb steam if there was an emergency.
Holtec and the state DEP estimate that 935,850 gallons remain in those four areas and the spaces that connect them. The state estimates that if all that water were evaporated over the course of a year, it would produce just 28 pounds of contaminants. Holtec would need a permit only if it emitted 2,000 pounds or more a year, Pickering said.
These calculations do not include potential emissions of radionuclides from the water. A radionuclide is an unstable form of a chemical element that releases radiation as it breaks down and becomes stable. In his letter to Holtec, Pickering said those are regulated by the NRC. In 2023, he said, the release of radioactive particulates and tritium into the air from Pilgrim were well below standards set by the NRC.
At Monday evening’s meeting of the citizens advisory panel at Town Hall, Pickering defended his department’s decision not to require a permit.
James Lampert, chair of the advisory panel, was skeptical.
“I fail to see how in deciding whether there has been a release of an air pollutant, you can properly not take into account all of the radioactive water that is included in the emissions,” he said.
Pickering reiterated that the standards for emitting radionuclides are set by the NRC, “not from us.”
“You have said several times that DEP doesn’t look at radioactive materials,” Lampert shot back. “I find that seriously troubling.”
“That’s your opinion,” said Pickering. “It’s not in our regulations that there are any standards that would need to be met in terms of ambient air for radionuclides.”
The day before its letter allowing evaporation, the DEP ruled that Holtec may not discharge water from the plant into Cape Cod Bay. As a result, the issue of evaporation has taken on greater focus, as it is one of the other ways that the company could dispose of the water from the plant.
Holtec has not said whether it will appeal the DEP’s decision precluding it from dumping water into the ocean. It has 30 days from the July 18 decision to do so.
The citizens advisory panel is supposed to consist of 21 members from Plymouth and surrounding communities, state government, and Holtec, but some seats are vacant.
In anticipation that Holtec willappeal, David Noyes, its compliance manager, faced a barrage of questions from some of his fellow panel members, who would prefer that the radioactive water be transported to an offsite processing facility in Texas, where it would be buried in clay. The company has estimated that doing so would cost $20 million.
Noyes said repeatedly during the meeting that dumping the water into Cape Cod Bay is the more environmentally sound solution.
Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod and a member of the citizens advisory panel, took Holtec to task for considering an appeal.
“You have a permit determination,” Gottlieb told Noyes. “You don’t like it. Too bad. If you then appeal it, you’re creating the circumstances that cause additional delay.”
Gottlieb said it was fair to wonder if Holtec would use appeals to delay disposing of the water, allowing it time to simply evaporate over time, something that has slowly been happening since 1972.
Another panel member, Jack Priest, director of the Radiation Control Program of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, predicted that Holtec would spend more money on appeals that it would on trucking the water to Texas.
“If the appeal loses, we’re going to be just further down the line having spent more money from the Decommissioning Trust Fund than it would have cost to move the material off site now,” Priest said.
The Decommissioning Trust Fund – set up to cover the cost of decommissioning Pilgrim and storing the spent fuel on site – was paid for by Boston Edison customers until the Plymouth power plant was sold to New Orleans-based Entergy, which operated it until the time of its shutdown in May 2019.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.