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Pilgrim activists debate over spent fuel storage

By Christine Legere
Posted Sept 8, 2018

PLYMOUTH — Activists who have fought against Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s operation are in agreement about its need to permanently close, but they are breaking into factions when it comes to solutions for dealing with the radioactive spent fuel its operation will leave behind.

Over 4,000 spent fuel assemblies are currently on the property.

Holtec International, a company known for dealing with spent-fuel issues, hopes to purchase the Plymouth plant once it closes. The company’s timeline calls for a swift transfer of all the spent fuel from a fuel pool into dry casks, which is generally considered safer. The company estimates eight years for site cleanup, and recently talked about plans to move the spent fuel to a consolidated interim storage site in New Mexico, for which it is working on a federal permit.

But activists like Deb Katz, head of the Citizens Awareness Network, and Diane Turco, president of the Cape Downwinders, are launching a battle over the plan to move the fuel, saying it will be done on the backs of the poor and minority populations.

Public forums, with panelists who will speak of safety and environmental justice issues related to moving the fuel to New Mexico, have been scheduled for Sept. 21 at the Statehouse and Sept. 22 in Plymouth.

Posters announcing the two sessions feature a hearse pulling a dry cask on a truck bed.

“We all want the waste out of Plymouth, but it has to be done responsibly,” Turco said. “The communities they’re looking at are minority and low-income. This is about public safety and environmental justice.”

Interim storage is not a final solution to the waste problem, Turco said. It’s letting the nuclear industry off the hook to produce more waste with no permanent solution in sight. “Pilgrim has been a nuclear waste site since it opened 40 years ago, it might as well continue for another 20 years” while the federal government searches for a permanent location, she said.

Mary Lampert, president of Pilgrim Watch, disagrees. The dry conditions and low population of the New Mexico target location are far better than conditions in Plymouth, with its coastal location and dense population.

“I’m a NIMBY because Pilgrim is the wrong place to store this fuel and we never agreed to keep it here,” Lampert said. “Down there, the governor wants it, and the county commissioner wants it. If I compared that to Plymouth, I think it makes more sense.”

But Lampert doesn’t believe the fuel will be moved out of Plymouth any time soon. Transportation challenges will have to be resolved first.

“It’s not even going to get out of there in our lifetimes,” she said.

Former state Sen. Daniel Wolf, a longtime Pilgrim watchdog and a current member of the citizens advisory panel that will monitor decommissioning, expressed frustration over the spent fuel battle.

“You can get into all the politics, but could we just focus on the technical, economic and safety side of this?” Wolf said. “We created a situation that needs fixing. What are you going to do? Put the spent fuel on the penthouse of a nuclear executive on the Upper East Side of Manhattan?”

“The fuel needs to be in a stable and safe location, he said, “and the economic part needs to be on the table.” The communities should be compensated for taking the fuel.

Katz called the interim storage plan “short-sighted,” suggesting instead “hardened on-site storage casks that are double-walled” and protected by berms.

“This is a problem where scientists need to get together and figure out ways to store this waste that has a potential to be toxic for 250,000 years,” Katz said. “Right now there are no good solutions. They are makeshift solutions to dump it on poor communities that can’t fight back.”

Holtec spokeswoman Joy Russell argued the target site for the interim storage facility — called HI-STORE — has enjoyed support from cities and counties in the region as well as by its legislators. Refuting the argument that the nation’s poor are being taken advantage of, she said the region enjoys low unemployment and surging growth.

“The technology that will be used to store the used nuclear fuel is the HI-STORM UMAX, which is a below-grade storage vault wherein each silo contains a strength-welded canister with a 37,000 pound lid providing the utmost protection of the stored used nuclear fuel,” Russell said by email.

“It is very likely that the United States Department of Energy will eventually site a final repository in the western United States, therefore it is a positive move to collocate the nation’s used nuclear fuel in a safe configuration in a secure area that is sited near the final repository,” she wrote.

Speaking as chairman, Sean Mullin said the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel welcomes information and input from all sources, as it seeks to advise state leaders on decommissioning, “including permanent removal of the nuclear waste from the Plymouth site.”

As a resident of Plymouth, Mullin said he will continue to demand that the reactor property be restored and released for unrestricted use as soon as possible, which would include moving the waste to temporary or permanent storage sites. “That’s the promise that was made to Plymouth, the region, the commonwealth and communities across the nation,” Mullin said.

Pine duBois, executive director of the Jones River Watershed Association, said she doesn’t have a “rock solid position” in the spent fuel debate, “except that while it’s on site, it should be back from the coast.”

DuBois will be on the panel of the Environmental Justice and Nuclear Waste forum in Plymouth.

“I think the function of this group is to raise questions, challenging the powers to address these problems,” she said. “That’s where the power of the people lies. Maybe you can’t answer these questions, but you can ask them.”

If you go

What: Environmental Justice and Nuclear Waste Forum

When and where:

• 1-3 p.m. Sept. 21 at the Statehouse, Boston, Room 222;
• 1-3 p.m. Sept. 22 at Unitarian Universalist Church, Town Square, Plymouth