PLYMOUTH – Holtec International, the company overseeing the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, pledged this past November not to discharge any radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay in 2022, and state lawmakers are using the time to enact legislation that would prevent them from doing so ever.
“We will never allow the dumping of radioactive waste into Cape Cod Bay,” state Sen. Susan Moran, D-Falmouth, told members of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizen Advisory Panel during their every-other-month meeting Monday, Jan. 31.
Moran, along with state Rep. Matt Muratore, R-Plymouth, and representatives of U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Bourne, were on hand during the virtual meeting to share their feelings on the prospect of Holtec discharging up to 1 million gallons of treated radioactive wastewater into the bay. The water would be released in 20,000-gallon batches.
Twin bills in the House and the Senate would add language to a state law that regulates “crimes against public health.” The revised law would prohibit the deposit, disposal or discharge of any solid or liquid radioactive material in coastal or inland waters. Violators would face an initial fine of $25,000 followed by a $10,000 penalty for each subsequent violation.
Holtec’s pledge not to release any water this year came after public outcry following news it planned to do so. The company has two other alternatives for disposing of the water: evaporate it or take it to the company’s storage facility in Texas, where other waste from the plant has already been sent. Each option comes with its own risks and costs.
“Let's be realistic: When dealing with radiation, nothing’s safe,” Muratore said.
David Noyes, senior compliance manager with Comprehensive Decommissioning International, the company partially owned by Holtec that is overseeing the cleanup, told the panel Holtec is evaluating its options.
"No decision has been made," he said. “We’re evaluating all three options. The decision will ultimately be made based in science.”
Although Moran said she wanted to ensure no water is released into the bay, Entergy, the company that owned the plant while it was operating, had regularly done so.
Noyes, a longtime Entergy employee who was a senior manager when the plant closed in 2019, said the two largest discharges over the last 15 years were in 2011 and 2013. Combined, they accounted for 635 gallons. He said the amount of radiation was significantly below Nuclear Regulatory Commission thresholds.
While Holtec has not released any wastewater into the bay, it has evaporated about 680,000 gallons over the last few years.
Evaporation is generally viewed as more palatable than liquid release, but it is no longer cost-effective because the residual heat from the storage tanks continues to decline with the removal of the spent fuel rods.
"It’s reached a point of diminishing returns, where heat is insufficient to evaporate at anywhere near that rate,” Noyes said. “To evaporate at the previous level would require fossil fuels to generate the necessary heat.”
Panel members had their own concerns about evaporation, noting the released vapors could return the waste elements to the ground or the water through precipitation.
“The effect (of evaporation) might be higher than putting it into the bay,” Nuclear Decommissioning Citizen Advisory Panel member Jack Priest said. “Both are lousy choices.” Priest works for the state Department of Public Health’s radiation control program.
Holtec president weighs in
In letter, Holtec President Kelly Trice said either option is environmentally safe.
“Both methods of discharge are well documented, regulated, and the federal limits that have been set are established based on scientific expert evaluation, public input, and are considered safe for humans and the environment,” the letter stated.
That leaves the option of trucking the waste to Holtec’s storage site in Texas.
“This technique involves extensive trucking, risk of vehicle incident, and the water is still processed and discharged in a permitted and safe fashion,” Trice wrote.
That line of thinking didn’t make sense to panel member Mary Lambert, who noted Holtec is already trucking materials to its storage site, both from Plymouth and other closed plants.
“Spent fuel has been trucked all over the country,” she said. “There's been a lot of waste sent to Texas, again with no problems with transportation.”
Although the water issue remains unresolved, Holtec continues to make progress at the plant, including demolition of buildings and other structures and preparation to plant trees near the storage tanks to shield them from neighbors' view.
The company expects to finish its major work at Pilgrim by 2027 in preparation for a partial release of the 1,700-acre property by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for development or other use. The developed portion of the plant covers 140 acres.
Environmental samples and impact studies are awaiting review and feedback from the state. Those results, which will help shape whatever decision is made, will likely be the main focus of the panel’s next meeting in March.
Brewster resident Mary Waygan, who said she has a master’s degree in environmental science and has worked on lab and field testing, told the panel that containment is the best option.
“Dilution is not the solution to pollution,” she said. "You need to contain it and protect it from dispersement into the general environment.”
Alternatives sought to dumping of contaminated water into Cape Cod Bay
Doug Fraser
Cape Cod Times
Published Jan 15, 2022
Opposition to a proposal to dump up to 1 million gallons of treated radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay continues to burn brightly among local elected officials.
"Forcing this latest discharge upon the community would threaten the reputations and operations of the many businesses and organizations that rely on Cape Cod Bay's reputation for clean and safe water," the four Massachusetts federal delegation members wrote in the Jan. 12 letter to Holtec's president Kelly Trice.
"The strong public opposition to news of the proposed discharge reflects Holtec’s failure to engage in the forthright, open, and transparent process that it promised the Plymouth community and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts when it took over the operating license for the decommissioning of Pilgrim," the letter stated.
The possibility that Holtec was considering releasing up to 1 million gallons of radioactive water into the bay was revealed by state Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Regional Director Seth Pickering at a decommissioning citizens' advisory panel meeting Nov. 22. It was contemplated as one way to get rid of water in a pool used to store spent nuclear fuel rods and water in the "donut" that helps cool the reactor.
Alternatives sought to dumping of contaminated water into Cape Cod Bay
Doug Fraser
Cape Cod Times
Published Jan. 15, 2022
Opposition to a proposal to dump up to 1 million gallons of treated radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay continues to burn brightly among local elected officials.
"Forcing this latest discharge upon the community would threaten the reputations and operations of the many businesses and organizations that rely on Cape Cod Bay's reputation for clean and safe water," the four Massachusetts federal delegation members wrote in the Jan. 12 letter to Holtec's president Kelly Trice.
"The strong public opposition to news of the proposed discharge reflects Holtec’s failure to engage in the forthright, open, and transparent process that it promised the Plymouth community and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts when it took over the operating license for the decommissioning of Pilgrim," the letter stated.
The possibility that Holtec was considering releasing up to 1 million gallons of radioactive water into the bay was revealed by state Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Regional Director Seth Pickering at a decommissioning citizens' advisory panel meeting Nov. 22. It was contemplated as one way to get rid of water in a pool used to store spent nuclear fuel rods and water in the "donut" that helps cool the reactor.
The other options were to truck the water off-site to an approved facility in Idaho, or evaporate it. Holtec has said the company hasn't made a decision yet on the disposal method and would not release any radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay in 2022 while it is making its decision.
Letter: Ship radioactive water to Idaho
Citing a 2021 Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval for the closed Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant to ship approximately 2 million gallons of radioactive water to the US Ecology facility in Grand View, Idaho, and widespread public opposition to dumping in Cape Cod Bay, the delegation said Holtec should pursue such an option.
"This would be a viable alternative to the discharge of radioactive material into one of the most important areas of marine life and economy in the United States," the letter stated.
Known as "overboarding," discharging radioactive water is considered routine practice within the nuclear power industry. The water is filtered to reduce radioactivity to a level acceptable to regulators, and then can be released. It has been used at Pilgrim in the past, plant operators say.
But opponents contend it would tarnish the reputations of the fish and shellfish harvested in Cape Cod Bay as well as make beaches less attractive in an area heavily dependent on tourism.
A long list of maritime businesses including fishermen, aquaculture operations, state legislators and watchdog groups oppose dumping the radioactive water into the bay.
Assembly of Delegates weigh in on Pilgrim
Earlier this week, the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates also sent a letter to Trice expressing its unanimous opposition to any bay dumping.
"Your proposed plan to release radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay, an environmentally fragile area, is an intolerable threat and this hazardous proposal must be permanently discarded," the assembly wrote in the letter that also requested that Trice, or a Holtec representative, appear before the assembly at a future meeting.
Cape Cod towns were also being asked to sign on in opposition with a letter circulating to town select board meetings for a vote. The nuclear watchdog group Cape Downwinders has also planned a speakout against the bay disposal option for 5 to 6:15 p.m. Jan. 31 at Plymouth Town Hall.
Last month, Holtec finished moving all the spent fuel rods from the pool at the Pilgrim plant to what are known as dry casks that sit atop a concrete pad awaiting future transport on an as-yet-unknown date to a federal facility that the U.S. Department of Energy has yet to open.
With the fuel safely stored, demolition of remaining buildings on the Plymouth property can begin. A Holtec spokesman said they expect to have all structures demolished and the site cleaned up by 2024. Only the spent fuel storage facility will remain.
Holtec spokesman Patrick O'Brien said the remaining costs to finish the job at the Plymouth plant amounted to $824 million at the close of 2020 with a balance of $881 million left in the $1.03 billion decommissioning trust fund. He said Holtec will update those figures in March to reflect the cost of work in 2021.
Seafood, aquaculture trades oppose possible discharge of radioactive water in Cape Cod Bay
Doug Fraser Cape Cod Times
Published Dec 20, 2021
PLYMOUTH — The company in charge of decommissioning Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station recently backed off from making a decision on whether to discharge up to a million gallons of radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay, but opponents say it should never happen.
In an email last week, Holtec Decommissioning International spokesman Patrick O'Brien repeated the assertion that his company, which is handling the decommissioning of the closed nuclear power plant in Plymouth, is still in the early phases of making a decision on how to dispose of the water from the plant's reactor and spent fuel pool. He reiterated that Holtec will not discharge any of that water into Cape Cod Bay in 2022.
Despite assurances from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec that releasing radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay has been done in the past — and can continue to be done, safely — those who depend on the marine environment for their livelihood or for recreation are lining up in opposition.
Related:Holtec says it won't dump radioactive water in Cape Cod Bay in 2022
"We will definitely be hard against it," said Arthur "Sooky" Sawyer, a Gloucester lobsterman and president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association. "I can't say how much fear people have of radioactive waste going into Cape Cod Bay. There are red flags all over it."
The Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, representing 60 seafood businesses, sent a letter to Holtec and state and federal legislators and officials last week "strenuously" opposing the disposal into the ocean as an option. They want it taken off the list of alternatives.
Scott Soares, of the Massachusetts Aquaculture Association, said his organization is urging active opposition. Soares said the MAA wants a guarantee that there will be no discharge of radioactive materials from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station at any time during decommissioning.
"We believe prioritizing the bottom line of one corporation above the health and brand of our marine economy, of which shellfish aquaculture is a large part, is a travesty that the Commonwealth cannot afford to risk," Soares wrote in an email Monday.
Reduce, reuse, recycle:8 Wellfleet restaurants to recycle oyster shells
The oyster harvest comes mostly from aquaculture and was worth over $30 million paid to fishermen in 2019. Harvested lobsters were valued at over $93 million, according to state Division of Marine Fisheries statistics.
"Our industry is in jeopardy because someone wants to take the cheap way out and poison the water where our families live and our kids swim," said aquaculturist Gregg Morris, of Duxbury. "We need a public outcry to say 'No' to this. It isn't acceptable, and we need to do better to protect our ecology, our livelihoods."
NRC: Discharging radioactive water into the ocean is common practice
Known in the nuclear industry as "overboarding," discharging radioactive water into the ocean is a common practice, say federal regulators and nuclear power plant operators.
"As long as that plant (Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station) was in operation for four decades, they were doing effluent releases (radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay)," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. "And if it were to resume, it would happen in the same fashion. The water would be filtered, treated, put into a storage tank, characterized as to its nuclear make-up."
Plant operators would then calculate a rate of release that would allow for dispersion in the ocean at acceptable levels, Sheehan explained.
"This is not something new," he said.
The National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine reviewed radiation exposure studies worldwide in a 2006 publication, assessing health risks from exposure to low-level radiation. It found that the nuclear fuel cycle contributed around 1% of that exposure risk, with natural background radiation (from sources such as radon in the soil) at 82%.
The NRC, National Academies and other federal agencies agree that radiation can cause cancer at high doses and high dose rates. But low doses and dose rates remain problematic in studies. Although exposure to ionizing radiation can cause gene mutations that can lead to cancer, low exposure studies haven't clearly established that link.
"Even so, the radiation protection community conservatively assumes that any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer and hereditary effect," the NRC warns on its website.
Previous reporting:Pilgrim nuclear plant may release 1M gallons of radioactive water into bay. What we know
Although a nuclear power plant is built like a Russian doll, with shell upon shell of thick concrete and steel protecting the public from catastrophic exposure, it's the small stuff that can also add up to big problems when it comes to radioactive waste, experts say. Maintenance work, valve leaks, pipe corrosion and radioactivity passing into coolant water, all contribute to contaminated water and air that has to be controlled and cleaned.
During the decommissioning of Pilgrim, which permanently closed in May 2019, the spent fuel rods are removed from the cooling pool and placed in dry casks for storage. The million gallons of contaminated water in the pool and the reactor's coolant and pressure-relief system — as well as water that collects in other areas of the plant and has been exposed to radioactivity — must be removed so that demolition of the main buildings can commence, Sheehan said.
"Every operating nuclear power plant is allowed to discharge into the air and water as long as they are below these standards," said physicist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"But just because it is allowed doesn't mean you should do it," said Lyman, the author of "Fukushima: The Story of A Nuclear Disaster."
Decommissioning Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station:Holtec says it won't dump radioactive water in Cape Cod Bay in 2022
His concern is rooted in the nature of water.
"If there are other options, and you could avoid planned or uncontrolled discharges into the water, you should," he said, noting that land-based disposal problems have more certainty about the fate of the radioactive material than the ocean.
"You can't really control where it goes in the ocean. You should look for ways to dispose of it where you have more certainty of where it should go," he said.
Cape elected officials oppose bay discharge
State legislators also voiced opposition to discharging radioactive waters into Cape Cod Bay and to the public and state being excluded from the decision process.
State Sen. Susan Moran, D- Falmouth, said which disposal option Holtec chooses needs to be a "transparent process that doesn't catch anyone by surprise."
"We don't want to have dumping of (radioactive waste) into the water as the default solution," said Moran. She said the Cape and Plymouth legislative delegations have asked for a meeting with Attorney General Maura Healey's office, the Department of Public Health and the Department of Environmental Protection.
"My concern is that we are taking a process (decommissioning of a nuclear power plant) that really demands the utmost public trust and giving the procedural dismantling to a corporation that is, like any business, just trying to be profitable," Moran said.
PLYMOUTH — The company decommissioning Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it plans to start discharging radioactive water from the plant into Cape Cod Bay sometime within the first three months of 2022.
U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., shared an email with the Times that his staff received from the NRC Wednesday that confirmed Holtec International had informed the agency of its plan to release radioactive water into the bay.
Just a week earlier, Holtec spokesman Patrick O'Brien told a Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in Plymouth there were other options, including evaporating the million gallons of water from the spent fuel pool and the reactor vessel and other plant components or trucking it to a facility in Idaho.
"We had broached that (discharging water into the bay) with the state, but we've made no decision on that," O'Brien said.
Previously:Pilgrim nuclear plant may release 1M gallons of radioactive water into bay. What we know
In an interview Tuesday, Harold Anagnostopoulos, Nuclear Regulatory Commission plant inspector and senior health physicist for Region 1 (which includes New England), said he didn't know of any planned discharge, but "we would not be involved in that decision. We would be involved in investigating or inspecting to make sure that they are meeting the requirements of their license."
Keating said that not disclosing their plans at a public forum violated promises of transparency.
"It's troubling that within a couple of days it turned into a sure thing," Keating said Friday.
"If Holtec had true concern for public health and the environment and worked with transparency as they promised, Holtec would halt any dumping until a viable solution is found acceptable," said Diane Turco, director of Cape Downwinders, a citizen watchdog group. "(D)umping into Cape Cod Bay just highlights the fact that the NRC and Holtec don’t have a solution for what to do with nuclear waste. Contaminating our environment is part of the nuclear nightmare process and that is immoral."
Of more concern to Keating than the lack of transparency, was what he said was a decision motivated by cost and not by necessity.
Two years ago, during the negotiations for longtime plant owner Entergy Nuclear Operations to sell Pilgrim to Holtec for the purposes of decommissioning, Keating said he and others expressed concern about turning the process over — including the $1.03 billion decommissioning trust fund — to a private company that hadn't yet dismantled a nuclear plant. At the time, state Attorney General Maura Healey tried to intervene on that basis, citing concerns that the billion-dollar fund might prove insufficient and that Pilgrim would be Holtec's first shot at decommissioning.
In interviews, both the NRC and Holtec said that discharging radioactive water into the ocean is a common practice in the nuclear industry and is the least expensive method. O'Brien said Pilgrim discharged radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay as recently as 2017.
Keating said there is also a profit motive to the dumping plan.
"They are responsible to their shareholders, and that's what is going to drive them," he said.
O'Brien said in an email response Friday night that the company hadn't made any decisions yet on which disposal option to use.
"We are looking at all options allowed under the state and federal NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit. We are evaluating options that include trucking for disposal, evaporation, overboarding (release) of treated water or some combination thereof. As was stated, we would be looking to come up with a final plan over the next 6-12 months, working with state and federal regulatory authorities to ensure compliance, and provide the public ample notice on the final disposition,” O'Brien wrote in the email. He said Holtec may have informed the NRC that they were ready to discharge, but hadn't finalized plans.
The email shared by Keating from NRC Congressional Affairs Officer Carolyn Wolf said that "Holtec has informed the NRC that it plans to discharge liquid effluents sometime in the first quarter of 2022."
O'Brien said cost is one consideration, but that "all levels of risk are evaluated and considered as well."
In an interview this week, Anagnostopoulos said the water from the plant cannot be discharged unless it meets standards for radioactivity materials and levels. The water is handled in batches (Holtec said the batches will be 20,000 gallons) and is cycled through filters to remove metals and other possible contaminants as well as any longer-lived high radioactive elements.
Radioactive tritium is generally what is released from nuclear power plants and the Department of Energy website put its half-life at 12.3 years.
Anagnostopoulos said the level of radiation allowed to be discharged is 100 millirems. To put that in perspective, soil contains roughly 21 millirems and a mammogram exposes the patient to 42 millirems, according to U.S. Department of Energy data. A cardiac CT Scan contains over 2,000 millirems.
Anagnostopoulos said that the 100 millirem level is right at the mouth of the outfall before dilution comes into play. He said that sensors at the mouth of the discharge pipe and at a distance measure radiation, and that plant employees do biological and water sampling and submit them to an independent lab to test for bioaccumulation. He said there are also risks in transporting radioactive water, such as the potential for a crash or spill along the route, and that it is transferring a problem elsewhere.
But Keating said that claims of low radiation levels in nuclear plant effluent were only one part of the decision-making process. He said the potential biological and economic damage caused to maritime industries such as fisheries, aquaculture and recreation, including the public perception that they may be tainted with radioactivity, should have been factored in. If it was, he said, the clear choice was to truck the water to another site, not dump it into the ocean.
"The issue is much more clear-cut. We have an alternative (trucking) and the only difference is cost," said Keating, who argued that the $1 billion in the trust fund came from ratepayers and that they deserved the best disposal solution that preserved their environment and maritime industries.
