The Environmental Protection Agency does not share Holtec International’s position that the company’s plan to release irradiated wastewater from a shuttered Massachusetts nuclear power plant into a nearby bay meets federal regulations, the agency’s water chief told the company in a recent letter.
EPA “does not agree” with Holtec’s claim that discharging wastewater from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into the Cape Cod Bay is allowed under the plant’s agency-administered National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit, EPA water division director Ken Moraff told Holtec decommissioning president Kelly Trice in a letter dated June 17.
Holtec’s “novel interpretation” of the permit’s regulations, which suggests that EPA’s regulations only prohibit the release of untreated wastewater, “directly conflicts with the ‘plain language’ of the permit,” Moraff said. EPA’s permit bars Holtec from releasing any spent fuel pool water, he said.
Although the current permit does not allow such discharges, Holtec can ask EPA to authorize one, Moraff said.
A spokesperson for Holtec declined to comment Thursday on Moraff’s letter or whether the company would seek such an exemption from the agency.
Holtec, which is currently decommissioning the Plymouth, Mass., Pilgrim plant, has said that it would not discharge any water into the bay in 2022, but that such discharges are normal for nuclear plants, and that radioactivity in the water meets safety standards set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Holtec CEO Kris Singh during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing in May told Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass), a vocal opponent of the plan, that Holtec would seek community approval before finalizing its wastewater discharge plan.
Holtec acquired the Pilgrim plant from Entergy in 2018. The company has said that it could finish decommissioning the site by 2027 or so.
