Holtec Decommissioning International plans this fall to demolish water tanks at the shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant that held radioactively contaminated water and, by mid-winter, package much of the radioactive waste from the plant’s reactor vessel.
Members of the Massachusetts Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel heard that and more Monday from Dave Noyes, Holtec’s compliance manager for Pilgrim, during the panel’s latest meeting in Plymouth. The meeting was webcast.
Demolition of Pilgrim’s two condensate tanks was scheduled for “late in October [or] early November,” Noyes said during his presentation. “There is a radiological component associated with those tanks,” so Holtec first has to coat the tanks’ interior to keep particles of radioactive waste from blowing out into the air during demolition.
The condensate storage tanks held water used in the plant’s reactor cavity and dryer separator pit. Each tank has a capacity of about 275,000 gallons.
As of this week, there was about “80% of the plant footprint that has been demolished down to grade-level,” Hoyes said.
Meanwhile, Holtec is nearly done cutting up Pilgrim’s reactor vessel, Noyes said. By December, all of the Class B and Class C waste from the reactor vessel should be packaged and prepared for shipment off-site, according to slides Noyes briefed on Monday.
“We just finished segmenting the third segment of the [vessel’s] shroud, which is essentially a barrel-shaped housing and the third cut on the shroud was removed,” Noyes said. That piece will be segmented as waste.”
After the jet pumps are removed and packed up, Holtec will make “the fourth and final cut on the shroud,” Noyes said.
So far, since Pilgrim shut down in 2019, Holtec has shipped more than 225,000 cubic feet of waste, accounting for nearly 1,800 curies of radioactivity, out of Pilgrim for disposal, according to Noyes’ slides.
As Pilgrim’s teardown proceeds, Holtec has fought the Massachusetts government over whether the company is allowed to discharge irradiated wastewater from the plant decommissioning into nearby Cape Cod bay.
The issue was not resolved at Monday’s meeting.
Massachusetts has said the discharges are illegal under state law. Holtec has said federal law, which permits the discharges, preempts that law. The company is also seeking changes to its federal wastewater permit with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which could enable the discharges of tritium-containing water.
