The company in charge of decommissioning a Massachusetts nuclear power plant sought to set the record straight this week on its now-delayed plans to discharge the site’s wastewater into the Cape Cod Bay.
Although Holtec has said that it won’t release any wastewater from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into the nearby bay this year, president of the company’s decommissioning branch Kelly Trice defended the practice, criticized by locals and members of Congress, in a letter dated Thursday.
“[I]t is well known that these discharges are normal for nuclear plants and are very well regulated by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” Trice said. “In fact, the Pilgrim plant has discharged water for its entire 50-year lifespan.”
Average radiation doses for plant wastewater already released into the Cape Cod Bay come in at around 0.12 millirem annually, Trice said, which is roughly 833 times lower than the NRC limit of 100 millirem.
Holtec is also evaluating two other options for disposing of Pilgrim’s wastewater, the letter said. The company is looking into whether it can evaporate the water with residual heat, a technique already in use at Pilgrim. Around 680,000 gallons of the plant’s wastewater has been evaporated this way, Trice said. However, “great quantities” of electricity would be needed to keep up evaporation as decommissioning progresses, she said.
Another possible disposal pathway would be to load the wastewater onto trucks and transport it to an off-site disposal facility, but that would involve “extensive trucking” and a “risk of vehicle incident,” Trice said.
While Holtec is still evaluating its options, all three of those pathways will “likely be necessary,” Trice said. More information should be coming “later in 2022,” she said.
All this comes after the Massachusetts congressional delegation, led by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), penned a letter to Holtec Jan. 11 urging the company to consider alternative disposal options that wouldn’t see Pilgrim’s wastewater discharged into the bay.
“A commitment from Holtec to pursue alternative methods of disposal, including the solidification and shipment of this waste, would be a first step towards rebuilding trust and fulfilling the commitment to transparency with the Cape Cod Bay community,” the letter said.
Meanwhile, Holtec is pressing on with decommissioning the Plymouth, Mass., Pilgrim plant, which it purchased from Entergy in 2018. The company finished moving the plant’s spent fuel inventory into dry storage late last year. Holtec has said that it could finish decommissioning Pilgrim by 2027 or so.
