The owner of the closed Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth says it may go to federal court to fight for authorization to release radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay as part of the plant decommissioning.
Suing in federal court, rather than in Massachusetts Superior Court as some observers had expected, would change the nature of the argument, because state and federal regulators have authority over different aspects of the nuclear plant.
Holtec International is fighting a denial from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. The company initially sought to discharge up to 1.1 million gallons of industrial wastewater into the bay, though evaporation has since reduced the water volume below 800,000 gallons.
When the company lost a DEP appeal earlier this month, the final decision from Commissioner Bonnie Heiple indicated that Holtec had 30 days to appeal in Massachusetts Superior Court.
On Monday, a Holtec representative said the company has opted against that.
“We didn't expect any different outcome than what had already been provided through the MassDEP appeal process,” said David Noyes, a compliance manager at Holtec who sits on the state advisory panel on Pilgrim.
An appeal in state court would have hinged on the Ocean Sanctuaries Act, which protects designated Ocean Sanctuaries, including Cape Cod Bay, from new, un-grandfathered releases of industrial wastewater.
Noyes said the idea behind a potential federal lawsuit is to rely on the authority of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to control radioactive material. The commission, he said, is “the sole organization responsible for regulation of radionuclides, including liquid discharges of radionuclides.”
The water inside Pilgrim contains both radioactive and non-radioactive pollutants. The water is treated, but treatment cannot remove 100 percent of contaminants, including radioactive tritium.
Ongoing evaporation of the water into the outdoor air has raised health and environmental concerns in the community. Local activists have called for the water to be shipped to a nuclear disposal facility, but Holtec has no immediate plans to do so.
The water will continue to evaporate as the company contemplates filing in federal court. There is no deadline for such a filing, Noyes said.
He said that at some future point, residual liquid that does not evaporate will likely be shipped.
“We ultimately will end up with some quantity of water as the concentration of both radioactive and non-radioactive material continues to concentrate in that liquid body,” he said in an interview Monday. “At some point, some portion of that water would have to be dispositioned — would have to be sent for burial in the absence of an option to discharge as a liquid discharge.”
Meanwhile, a new phase of work will begin next week to prepare for demolition of the heavy metal container that once held the reactor.
Workers are scheduled to begin cutting and removing 30 pipes attached to the container, called the reactor vessel, and finish the task in the first quarter of next year.
Removal of the vessel itself is scheduled to start in mid 2027. The vessel walls are six inches thick, made of carbon steel clad in stainless steel.
The interior parts of the reactor have already been dismantled. They are being stored in vaults at Pilgrim for future shipping to a nuclear disposal facility in Texas.
Although Plymouth has written a master plan for the roughly 1,700 acres of land at Pilgrim, the town has limited power over land it doesn't own.
Plymouth has a right of first refusal on most of the land, but Holtec is under no obligation to sell.
On Monday, Plymouth Select Board member Kevin Canty, who chairs the state advisory panel on Pilgrim, said the future of the Pilgrim land could revolve around zoning.
Canty said if Plymouth can’t buy the land, the main way the town could influence what happens there is to write new zoning.
“All we can do, if we don't own it, is zone it,” he said.
