Strange Sounds – December 6, 2021
The company decommissioning Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it plans to start discharging radioactive water from the plant into Cape Cod Bay within the first three months of 2022.
U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., shared an email with the Cape Cod Times that his staff received from the the commission Wednesday that confirmed Holtec International had informed the agency of its plan to release radioactive water into the bay.
A week earlier, Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien told a Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in Plymouth there were other options, including evaporating the million gallons of water from the spent fuel pool and the reactor vessel and other plant components or trucking it to a facility in Idaho.
Keating said that not disclosing their plans at a public forum violated promises of transparency.
“It’s troubling that within a couple of days it turned into a sure thing,” Keating said Friday.
“If Holtec had true concern for public health and the environment and worked with transparency as they promised, Holtec would halt any dumping until a viable solution is found acceptable,” said Diane Turco, director of Cape Downwinders, a citizen watchdog group. “Dumping into Cape Cod Bay just highlights the fact that the NRC and Holtec don’t have a solution for what to do with nuclear waste. Contaminating our environment is part of the nuclear nightmare process and that is immoral.”
Of more concern to Keating than the lack of transparency was what he said was a decision motivated by cost and not by necessity.