Nuclear activists from Cape Cod and the South Shore are planning to bring the results of a recent ballot question to Gov. Maura Healey’s office in June.
The question passed this spring in all 14 Cape Cod communities where it was on the ballot. Off the Cape, it passed in Plymouth; a Duxbury Town Meeting article to the same effect passed in March. Scituate votes this Saturday.
The question directs each town to call upon state officials to compel the owner of Pilgrim, Holtec International, stop the evaporation of radioactive water from the plant.
Because the measure is nonbinding, town officials are under no obligation to do anything except report the election results to the state.
The activists aren’t waiting to see what the towns do, if anything. They plan to visit the State House June 10.
Diane Turco, director of the community group Cape Downwinders, said they don’t have a meeting with Healey, but they plan to deliver official documentation of the vote.
“She needs to pay attention and enforce the state laws that prohibit Holtec’s evaporation of radioactive wastewater into our communities,” Turco said.
She and other local activists contend that the state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act, which protects Cape Cod Bay from dumping, should apply to vapor from Pilgrim landing in the bay.
“We need to be proactive and positive about how we are protecting our communities, and this is one way to do it,” she said.
Cape Downwinders is one of several groups that are part of a coalition called Save Our Bay, which opposes the release of radioactive water from Pilgrim, either in liquid or gaseous form.
Holtec is looking for a way to dispose of reactor-system water as part of its decommissioning of the nuclear power plant, which was shut down in 2019.
The company says the water is treated to remove as many impurities as possible, and that the release of water from Pilgrim falls well within federal safety limits, including for the dose of radiation to the public.
Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said activists are fear-mongering.
If all of the Pilgrim water were to evaporate in a single year, he said, a full-time worker near the former spent-fuel pool would be exposed to an extra 8.62 millirem of radiation for the year — far lower than the dose the average American receives each year from natural and human-made sources.
Americans receive an average dose of 620 millirem per year, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
O’Brien said the potential dose to the public, outside the plant, would be 0.00032 millirem.
“The impact is negligible and difficult to separate from naturally occurring radiation,” he said.
But activists maintain — as some scientists have determined — that no level of radiation exposure can be considered completely safe for human health.
Turco said the activists' message to the state is, “The people have spoken. You need to take action to protect us. That's your first responsibility as state officials.”
