The panel advising the governor on the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has spent hours over the past year hearing from scientists and other experts, but now, some members want to focus on getting the plant demolished faster.
Jack Priest represents the Department of Public Health on the panel, which met Monday. He said the decommissioning seems to be moving much slower than at Vermont Yankee.
“We’ve got another decade,” he said. “What are we doing to communicate to the governor, and try to get some leverage to get us back on track on getting this site decommissioned, and the site restored, and turned back over to the town?”
Plymouth has launched a planning process for the 1,600 acres surrounding the plant. It includes an online survey, which closes Sunday, and a public “visioning session” set for Feb. 13.
Priest said plant owner Holtec International could move faster if it agreed to ship the more than 800,000 gallons of radioactive water in the reactor system to an off-site storage facility.
Instead, the company is seeking to discharge the water into Cape Cod Bay. After the state denied its application for a modified permit, Holtec filed an appeal with the Office of Appeals and Dispute Resolution. Such appeals can take a year or more.
Meanwhile, the water is evaporating into the outdoor air. Some members of the panel have previously accused Holtec of trying to delay action until the water evaporates, to avoid the cost of shipping and storage. The plant once held about 1 million gallons, but only 868,683 gallons remain.
After Holtec filed the appeal, company spokesman Patrick O’Brien blamed community opposition to putting the water in the bay for delaying the decommissioning.
“Our goal to clean-up Pilgrim in 8 years has already been delayed as a result of the challenges to safe discharges, which had occurred for over 45 years of plant operation and are regulated by the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission],” he said in an email.
At this week’s meeting of the state panel, David Noyes, compliance manager at Holtec, said without the water issue, the schedule for decommissioning Pilgrim would leap ahead by at least four years.
Right now, demolition of the reactor building is about a decade away.
Earlier in the meeting, the panel heard from invited speaker Gordon Thompson, a researcher who studies ways to reduce the risks of nuclear power plants. He directs the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge.
Thompson said more could be done to reduce the risks of storing spent nuclear fuel at Pilgrim, but some strategies are out of the state’s control, because the federal government regulates the industry.
In Switzerland, for example, the casks used to store spent nuclear fuel can be opened and inspected by first moving them to a radiation containment chamber, he said.
“It allows the exterior and interior of the casks to be examined at any time,” he said, whereas the casks at Pilgrim are sealed.
Still, he said, Massachusetts could do more with regard to emergency planning and public education, in the form of a civil defense program funded by a trust.
In addition to the risk of accident or attack, future neglect of the spent-fuel storage could jeopardize the containment of nuclear material, he said.
Also Monday, the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel elected new officers. Kevin Canty, a member of the Plymouth Select Board, will chair the panel. Mary Gatslick, a retired Pilgrim employee, will reprise her role as vice chair after serving last year.