The company that owns the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, Holtec International, has filed an appeal seeking to discharge radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay.
Last month, the state denied Holtec a permit to release nearly 1 million gallons of water from the nuclear reactor system at Pilgrim as part of the plant decommissioning.
Holtec’s appeal hinges on two main ideas: one, that discharge of water from Pilgrim is grandfathered under state law; and two, that federal law preempts state decisions on nuclear waste.
“The appeal explains that our permit was granted prior to the Ocean Sanctuaries Act legislation, which grandfathered these types of liquid discharges,” Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said.
The company argues that Massachusetts cannot completely bar the release of radioactive material because that authority lies with the federal government.
Boston attorney Jed Nosal filed the appeal, dated Aug. 16, with the state’s Office of Appeals and Dispute Resolution on behalf of a Holtec subsidiary, Holtec Decommissioning International, which is dismantling Pilgrim and cleaning up the Plymouth property for future re-use.
Appeals can take a year or more; during that time, the water will continue to evaporate into the outdoor air.
Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, said that’s exactly what Holtec wants.
“They're using the appeal to buy themselves time,” he said. “And what they buy themselves, with time, is the ability to continue to induce evaporation of the wastewater, so that ultimately it's gone, at minimal cost to them.”
Some local activists want Holtec to truck the water to a licensed disposal facility out of state.
Read more of CAI's coverage of the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
The company says all options are on the table, but it continues to pursue discharge of the water into Cape Cod Bay.
“I think they've made the determination that the cost of lawyers is less than the cost of transport,” Gottlieb said. “And so they'll litigate it until they evaporate it, and then they'll be done.”
He said a delay also allows the decommissioning trust fund to increase in value, so Holtec could make more profit on the work.
Responding by email to the allegation that Holtec is trying to run out the clock, O’Brien said the company is following the regulatory process.
“We do not know the period of time the appeal [may] take but total evaporation of the water at Pilgrim would take a number of years and continues to occur naturally as it has since the plant was commissioned,” O’Brien wrote.
The water is filtered to reduce contamination, but not everything can be removed.
The appeals office within the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection — the same agency that denied the permit — is the final venue for administrative appeal before the matter could go to court.
