An official for the company dismantling a shuttered Massachusetts nuclear power plant this week defended its controversial interpretation of a federal pollutant discharge permit during a community meeting.
It is “very clear” that Holtec International’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station “exempt[s] radionuclides as pollutants,” Dave Noyes, a senior compliance manager at the company’s decommissioning branch, told members of the Pilgrim Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens’ Advisory Panel during a Monday meeting.
Holtec, which is dismantling the Plymouth, Mass., Pilgrim plant, is weighing whether to release irradiated wastewater from the facility’s spent fuel pool into the nearby Cape Cod Bay — an action that the company has said is compliant with its NPDES permit.
Pilgrim’s wastewater is a “radiological byproduct,” Noyes said, and as such it is “exempt from the jurisdiction of the NPDES permit.”
Despite that, Noyes said that Holtec would seek an amendment to the NPDES permit.
Holtec’s claim that it can legally discharge the plant’s wastewater is contested by the very agency that administers the NPDES permit, the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency said in June that it “does not agree” with the company’s interpretation of the permit. Holtec would have to secure a modification to Pilgrim’s existing NPDES document to allow for the proposed discharges, EPA said.
Opponents of such action have seized on that discrepancy.
Jim Cantwell, state director for Sen. Ed Markey (D), said in prepared remarks Monday that the Massachusetts congressional delegation did not get “a clear answer” from Holtec about whether it would pursue a modification to Pilgrim’s NPDES permit.
Markey, alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.), penned a letter to Holtec Nov. 2 blasting what they said was the company’s “misinterpretation” of the EPA permit.
Holtec has said previously it would not discharge any wastewater from Pilgrim in 2022, and that any releases would likely begin early next year. The company has defended the practice, however, saying in January that such discharges were normal for nuclear plants.
Holtec acquired the Pilgrim plant from former operator Entergy Corp. in 2018. The company has said that it could finish decommissioning the site by 2027.
