Every other month, on the fourth Monday of the month, I trudge up to Plymouth to take my seat as a gubernatorial appointee on the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP). The idea behind NDCAP, providing the public some insight into the decommissioning activities of Holtec International at the old Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, is sound. Like many good ideas in concept, the NDCAP in practice leaves much to be desired. The meetings have become a form of bad performance art orchestrated by Holtec.
I am not just being cranky here, just dumbstruck by the manipulation, half-truths, and hypocrisy I sat through Monday night. It has been well documented that Holtec, despite express prohibitions outlined in the Massachusetts Ocean Sanctuaries Act, sought state permission to discharge 1.1 million gallons of industrial wastewater that also happens to contain radionuclides into Cape Cod Bay. It is also well known that the Commonwealth has notified Holtec that such a discharge is illegal and that it intends to deny the permit application. Also known, because Holtec has said it in public meetings, is that Holtec will appeal the permit denial and extend the timeline for final resolution of the disposition of the wastewater.
Pardon me for being outraged then when Holtec delayed the timeline for final cleanup and disposition of the site by eight—that’s eight—years, citing uncertainty about how they are going to dispose of the contaminated water. Just to be clear, the company chose a path known to be illegal, gets called on it, declares its intent to appeal and extend the timeline for resolution, and then relies back on the extended timeline that they created to force an extended timeline for final cleanup. One other thing Holtec mentions, almost under its corporate breath, is that the extended timeline for clean-up means that the balance of the publicly funded trust fund that Holtec uses for this work will be able to be invested and grow in today’s positive interest environment. Any money left over at the end of the closure goes into Holtec’s pocket as profit. Makes you wonder what is the real basis for the delay, permit uncertainty or profit? You decide.
If all that were not enough, Holtec made the case that their handling of the wastewater is the best for the environment and climate-friendly approach to boot. To tease that out a bit, Holtec stated that placement of heaters in the water in the reactor building allegedly to create a warmer work area used less energy than other heating options. Perhaps a happy coincidence is that heating the water increases evaporation of the contaminated water into the atmosphere. Holtec claimed credit for doing a good thing for the environment by using less fossil fuel and ignoring the impacts of the evaporation of the water. They could have chosen to be good climate actors by heating with wind or solar, or by providing their workers with Team Holtec jackets to avoid the release of radioactivity into the surrounding community. They didn’t.
Holtec continued on by justifying disposal of the wastewater into the bay by citing the carbon impacts of shipping the wastewater to an off-site disposal area. Compared to their self-determined finding of no impact from the illegal discharge of the water to the bay, Holtec declared their solution to be the best environmental outcome. While having figured out to the gallon how much fuel would be consumed by shipping the wastewater, no such calculations were provided to quantify the climate impact of Holtec’s five years of transporting over 250,000 cubic yards of demolition debris from Massachusetts to Texas and other western locations. I assume that the latter makes the former a drop in the bucket. I guess it suits the Holtec PR machine to selectively choose from its record when making the case for its climate change credentials. Just because they say it doesn’t mean we need to believe it.
If this NDCAP process were a TV series most of us would have changed the channel on this repetitive and absurd scripted drama. That said, this is real life, and the stakes are high. So we will stick with it and make sure that the right questions are asked and pursue real answers not be distracted by the nonsense.
