NOTICE CHARLIE BAKER'S SILENCE....BOTH SENATOR MARKEY AND SENATOR WARREN SPOKE OUT....
WHERE IS KENNEDY WHO PRETENDS HE SHOULD BE SENATOR?
KENNEDY IS TOO BUSY DISTRACTING AND GLAD HANDING TO ADDRESS ISSUES OF SIGNIFICANCE TO THE COMMONWEALTH.
PILGRIM WATCH
Request for stay on Pilgrim license transfer denied
Nuclear Regulatory Commission says AG’s office failed to show how approval would pose harm to citizens
Federal regulators have denied a request from state Attorney General Maura Healey to stay the license transfer for Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station from Entergy Corp. to Holtec International until officials and the public have had an opportunity to weigh in.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s staff approved the license transfer Aug. 22, even though the commission had not yet acted on a petition from state officials to intervene in the license review process, which it had submitted in February.
Two days after the commission’s staff approved the license transfer, Entergy sold the plant to Holtec, the company that will oversee the now-shuttered Plymouth plant’s decommissioning.
But state officials have continued to battle for a voice.
On Sept. 4, the attorney general’s office filed its request to put a temporary halt on the license transfer until the commission made a decision on the state’s motion to intervene.
The attorney general’s office argued that the commission’s failure to act on the petition to intervene had deprived the public of its chance to weigh in on the transfer, since a hearing would have been part of that process.
If the stay was not granted, the attorney general said, the commonwealth and its citizens would suffer harm “due to the immediate start of decommissioning activities by a licensee that is neither technically nor financially qualified to perform the work.”
In its denial of the stay Tuesday, the five-member commission argued the state failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm, since current decommissioning tasks — moving spent radioactive fuel into dry casks — would be the same whether the property was owned by Holtec or returned to Entergy.
The 35-page denial also noted the commission would still have the ability to reverse the license transfer or attach orders and conditions, based on the outcome of the requested hearing.
Local activists and the region’s legislators view the denial as just one more snub state officials and citizens have been dealt as Pilgrim transitions into decommissioning. The reactor shut down permanently May 31.
Duxbury citizens group Pilgrim Watch has filed its own motion to intervene in Pilgrim’s license transfer, which is also pending. Organization president Mary Lampert was critical of the NRC’s stay denial.
Duxbury citizens group Pilgrim Watch has filed its own motion to intervene in Pilgrim’s license transfer, which is also pending. Organization president Mary Lampert was critical of the NRC’s stay denial.
“The residents around Pilgrim and the state of Massachusetts have real and substantive concerns about transferring the nuclear plant from one entity that had one of the worst safety records to another entity that has almost no experience decommissioning a power plant,” U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said in a letter to the NRC. “Instead of listening to the people of Massachusetts, the NRC continues to move forward with this license transfer without answering critical questions about safety, security, and funding.”
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called the denial “a punch in the gut to the people who live, work and go to school in the area and who have rightly raised safety concerns and should be heard.”
Over the last several months, state officials had made several unsuccessful attempts to have a voice in the license transfer process. Asked whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a deadline to act on the petition to intervene and request for a public hearing, spokesman Neil Sheehan said in an email that the commission “will rule on the requests when it is ready to do so.”
Healey’s office sued the commission in federal court in late September, asking the court to overturn the agency’s August license transfer approval and an accompanying exemption that allows use of the plant’s $1.1 billion decommissioning trust fund for non-decommissioning activities.
The suit accuses the commission of violating the Atomic Energy Act, National Environmental Policy Act and the commission’s own regulations by approving Pilgrim’s license transfer without providing “the Commonwealth with a meaningful opportunity to participate in the process.”
Duxbury citizens group Pilgrim Watch has filed its own motion to intervene in Pilgrim’s license transfer, which is also pending. Organization president Mary Lampert was critical of the NRC’s stay denial.
“The decision is replete with statements that the NRC can ‘fix’ this after the hearing,” Lampert said in an email. “The fact of the matter is that the NRC cannot turn back the clock; neither does it have any ability to require anyone to make up a shortfall in funding if the only two licensees, Holtec Pilgrim and HDI (Holtec Decommissioning International), are limited liability companies and have no money. The NRC cannot get blood out of a stone.”
“While we are pleased with the recent ruling denying the stay requests, we appreciate and understand that there is still an adjudicatory proceeding remaining,” Patrick O’Brien, spokesman for Holtec and Pilgrim, said in a statement. “As a reminder, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had previously concluded that Holtec met the required regulatory, legal, technical and financial requirements to qualify as licensee, but we respect the petitioner’s rights to file legal motions, we are not going to comment on any specific legal motions or action.”
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