When talking about Holtec International’s plans to dispose of wastewater from a Massachusetts nuclear power plant under decommissioning, make sure to use the right terminology, a company official told members of a community engagement panel this week.
“The term dumping does not apply here,” Holtec senior compliance officer Dave Noyes said during a Monday meeting of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s citizens’ advisory panel. “Dumping is indiscriminate or irresponsible leaving of waste material. The discharge of liquid waste material is something that has been scientifically studied, and it’s part of the plant’s license,” he said.
Holtec in recent months has faced significant community pushback on its proposal to release the Plymouth, Mass., nuclear plant’s irradiated wastewater into the nearby Cape Cod Bay. The company has said that it would not discharge any water in 2022 while it reviews alternative options such as evaporation or truck shipments.
So far, Noyes told the advisory panel Monday, all of those strategies remain on the table. “No data we’ve gotten to this point has eliminated any of the three options,” he said.
Holtec has previously defended its proposal to discharge wastewater into the bay. President of the company’s decommissioning branch Kelly Trice said in a January letter to the community that such a practice is “normal for nuclear plants and [is] very well regulated by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
Trice noted that the Pilgrim plant discharged wastewater throughout its lifespan. Plant wastewater already released into the Cape Cod Bay measured at around 0.12 millirem of radiation annually, he said, which is roughly 833 times lower than the NRC limit of 100 millirem.
Meanwhile, Holtec in March finished moving Pilgrim’s Greater-Than-Class-C waste into dry storage, Noyes said. The company finished moving the site’s spent fuel inventory into storage Dec. 13.
Holtec purchased the Pilgrim plant from Entergy in 2018, and has said that it could finish decommissioning the site by 2027 or so.
