The company in charge of decommissioning a former Massachusetts nuclear power plant said this week that, if it decides to follow through on a controversial plan to release irradiated wastewater from the facility, it will do so early next year.
The earliest time “under consideration” for discharging water from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station would be “mid-first quarter next year,” Dave Noyes, senior compliance officer at Holtec International, told members of the Massachusetts Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens’ Advisory Panel (NDCAP) during a meeting Monday.
The timing for such a decision depends largely on water testing Holtec has agreed to do alongside the Massachusetts Department of Health, Noyes said.
Holtec, which is actively decommissioning the Plymouth, Mass., plant, has proposed discharging the facility’s roughly one million gallons of wastewater into the nearby Cape Cod Bay. The company is exploring other disposal methods, but said in January that such a release remains a “likely” pathway for the irradiated water.
The plan has been received with skepticism from stakeholders and members of Congress, such as Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) who in May asked Holtec CEO Kris Singh to commit not to discharge any of Pilgrim’s wastewater without community consent.
“We must hold Holtec accountable to that commitment, and listen to our stakeholders, and we must protect against any unsafe release of this water,” a Markey staffer said in a statement at Monday’s NDCAP meeting.
In her own statement provided to the NDCAP, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called Holtec’s proposal to discharge wastewater into the bay “dangerous and irresponsible.”
“We have continually pushed Holtec for more open communication and transparency with community stakeholders and the general public,” Warren said. “We have made some progress, but it is not enough.”
Meanwhile, Noyes informed the NDCAP Monday that Holtec has shipped almost 70,000 cubic feet of Pilgrim’s low-level radioactive waste, which includes the reactor control rod drive mechanism and demolition debris, to Waste Control Specialists’ disposal site in Texas. The company has also demolished “greater than 60%” of the buildings on-site, Noyes said.
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 or so.
