Responding to a scathing letter from the government’s environmental regulator, the company in charge of decommissioning a Massachusetts nuclear power plant insisted Monday that it was not planning to discharge irradiated wastewater from the facility in violation of a federal permit.
In a Monday letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Holtec International sought to “reiterate and affirm” its intention to decommission Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in compliance with the Plymouth, Mass., plant’s EPA-administered pollutant discharge permit.
Holtec is currently weighing a plan to discharge irradiated water from Pilgrim’s spent fuel pool into the nearby Cape Cod Bay — an action that EPA has warned would violate the facility’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit.
The agency in a Dec. 5 letter raised concerns about comments made by Holtec senior compliance manager Dave Noyes during a Nov. 28 Plymouth community meeting that “appear[ed] to contemplate the possibility of intentional noncompliance” with the NPDES permit.
EPA warned that refusing to comply with regulations, which include a 90-day advance notice of any discharge, would result in enforcement action from the agency.
In its Monday letter, Holtec said that “no such unauthorized discharges are planned” from the Pilgrim plant, and that the company would “endeavor to fully comply with any notification requirement specified in the NPDES permit and/or under applicable law.”
Holtec also said that Noyes’s comments at the Nov. 28 meeting “were misconstrued to imply that Holtec is contemplating intentional noncompliance with the Clean Water Act.”
“This is not true,” the company said. “Please be assured that we will only discharge when in full compliance with all state and federal regulations and permitted requirements.”
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, 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.
