Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/23/2015
Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation last week called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny any requests for exemptions to security and emergency preparedness requirements at the Pilgrim Station until after all spent fuel is removed from the facility’s pool. Entergy announced last week that it would shut the Pilgrim plant down no later than 2019 due to economic reasons. The delegation, led by Sen. Ed Markey (D) wrote the NRC to ensure that the utmost safety regulations remain in place while spent fuel remains on site.
“We write to request that the Commission ensure that the remaining period during which the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, MA operates receives the utmost attention to safety and security, and that the reactor’s operations are adequately funded by Entergy,” the delegation wrote in its letter to NRC Chairman Steven Burns. “We additionally ask for your assistance with ensuring that the reactor’s subsequent decommissioning occurs quickly, with all needed measures to protect public health and safety, and assistance for the workers whose jobs will be lost when the reactor shuts down.”
Markey, a longtime opponent of the Pilgrim station, earlier this year joined Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in introducing a series of bills aimed at preventing the reduction of safety and security regulations for reactor sites undergoing decommissioning and for the storage of spent nuclear fuel at operating nuclear plants. Those bills are unlikely to become law, though, in a Republican controlled Congress.
The NRC, for its part, bases its exemptions on the decreased risk of a shutdown plant. A defueled plant does not pose the same risk as an operating site, so regulations such as off-site emergency planning and other security requirements are changed to better reflect the difference. The NRC has already approved such exemptions at other recently shutdown sites like the Kewaunee Power Station in Wisconsin and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in Southern California.
The Massachusetts delegation, though, warned of the dangers that the exemptions could pose, particularly given Pilgrim’s geographic location. The letter cited studies from both the National Academy of Sciences and the NRC that said a spent fuel pool fire at a shuttered plant “could equal those caused by a severe accident at an operating reactor.”
“Given the geographic near-impossibility of quickly evacuating many of the communities located near the reactor and Pilgrim’s recent shutdowns during winter storms that rendered roads near the reactor impassable for days, there is simply no basis to remove common-sense requirements for measures like warning sirens, safety and security drills, and emergency protection zones,” the lawmakers said.
Entergy said it would close the Pilgrim plant as early as spring 2017 and as late as 2019. The announcement follows the downgrading of the Pilgrim plant by the NRC last month to Repetitive Degraded Cornerstone Column Four, the second to lowest performance category for a nuclear plant, after a series of unplanned shutdowns and unplanned shutdowns with complications in 2014 and 2015. Entergy officials, though, attributed the plant closure to economic factors, including high operational costs and low energy prices as a result of natural gas.
