Massachusetts on Monday forbade Holtec International from discharging irradiated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant, but the company could still get a federal permit to do so.
The state Department of Environmental Protection published the decision in a tentative determination to deny Holtec’s application to modify a discharge permit the company already holds.
The state agency said the discharge would violate Massachusetts’ Ocean Sanctuaries Act, which generally forbids pollutant discharges into Cape Cod Bay. There are exceptions for discharges stemming from electricity generation, but because Holtec’s plans involve waste from decommissioning Pilgrim, which shut down in 2019, no discharge is allowed.
“The waters proposed for discharge have been used for decommissioning processes, including dismantlement of plant systems, not electrical power generation, and require disposal as part of the decommissioning process,” the state Department of Environmental Protection wrote in its tentative determination.
The state’s tentative determination can become final after a public comment process that ends on Aug. 28, the Environmental Protection department said.
Meanwhile, Holtec is still waiting for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to approve a modification to a federal wastewater permit that the company applied for in December. Holtec asked for the modification after the agency said the company’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System for the Pilgrim plant “excludes the discharge of certain wastewater,” including “wastewater from spent fuel pool water and other sources.”
“We will continue with the EPA modification process and will look to evaluate all options related to ultimate disposition of the water generated during plant operations for the last 50 years,” a Holtec spokesperson wrote Tuesday in an email.
The spokesperson said the discharges planned from Pilgrim are “well within established, safe limits” and that state opposition to the discharges “has already delayed the completion of the project for an additional four years, impacted the workforce on site and further changes when the site can be returned to be an economic driver for the Plymouth Community.”
The Holtec spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether the company planned to take Massachusetts to court over the tentative determination, or whether the company believed that the EPA permit alone would be sufficient to proceed with those discharges.
In March, Holtec said U.S. stock market conditions, which affect the value of Pilgrim’s decommissioning trust fund, and uncertainties associated with the EPA permit application prompted the company to delay the segmentation, or cutting up, of Pilgrim’s reactor vessel by four years. That will delay the partial release of the site to September 2031, the company told NRC in a regulatory filing.
Some state Massachusetts lawmakers and citizens have fought Holtec’s planned wastewater discharge into Cape Cod Bay on several fronts.
At the request of locals and officials including Gov. Maura Healey (D), Holtec agreed to an independent assessment of the wastewater it planned to dump. The company and the state briefed the results of that assessment to the local Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in May.
Separately, state Sen. Susan Moran (D-Pymouth/Barnstable) has proposed creating a special state commission to study the discharge of radioactive water into state waters. If enacted, the proposal would effectively block planned discharges from Pilgrim. Details Moran laid out her proposal on the 429th page of the state Senate’s 2024 budget proposal for Massachusetts.
