Work is scheduled to begin next week to remove the last internal components of the Pilgrim nuclear reactor from a storage pool as part of the ongoing demolition and cleanup of the Plymouth plant.
The radioactive components will be kept in concrete vaults at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station temporarily, until the company decommissioning the plant can design transport containers and get them approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
That should take about two years, said David Noyes, site vice president for Holtec Decommissioning International.
The reactor parts will be shipped to a Waste Control Specialists burial facility in Andrews, Texas, he said.
Holtec plans to demolish the outer shell of the reactor next year.
“What's left is the outside shell of the reactor vessel and all the piping that connected to it,” Noyes said after a meeting Monday of the state’s Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens’ Advisory Panel.
A crew will cut off the piping and then cut up the shell.
“The reactor vessel itself … will be cut in rings, and then those rings will be segmented and shipped as waste,” he said.
The reactor building still houses other hardware and hundreds of thousands of gallons of water from the reactor system. The treated water, once more than 1 million gallons, is evaporating into the outdoor air. Most contaminants can be removed, but some radioactive material remains.
The water volume has been reduced to 794,015 gallons, down about 3,600 gallons from two months ago.
The fate of that water is the focus of a dispute between Holtec and the state Department of Environmental Protection. The agency denied Holtec permission to discharge the reactor-system water into Cape Cod Bay, and the company appealed.
In November, a state appeals officer issued a recommended decision against Holtec, but the recommendation will not take effect until the department commissioner reviews it and issues a final decision. Commissioner Bonnie Heiple has not done so.
At the meeting Monday of the state panel on Pilgrim, Noyes announced that Pilgrim parent company Holtec International is creating two new entities, prompting questions from the panel. The new companies are Holtec Holdings Inc. and Decommissioning Asset Management Company, LLC.
Holtec International already owns two other companies with responsibilities for Pilgrim: Holtec Pilgrim LLC, which owns the plant; and Holtec Decommissioning International, which is the licensed operator of the plant.
Holtec Pilgrim will report to Holtec Holdings. Noyes said Decommissioning Asset Management Co. will perform oversight, including management of the trust fund, project budgeting, and major expenditures for work at the plant.
The creation of new companies left some local observers suspicious. A member of the state panel, Andrew Gottlieb of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, asked what the change would mean for Massachusetts.
Noyes said it will not affect the company’s obligation to clean up the property.
“Massachusetts has the same assurance they have always had from Holtec and its parent companies that it will complete the work of decommissioning the Pilgrim Station with the funds that are available," he said.
A Quincy resident participating in the meeting by video, Susan Entin, raised the question of Holtec’s future plans to build a new class of nuclear power facilities known as small modular reactors.
“It seems that Holtec is designing them and trying to build them in other states,” she said.
Noyes said he is only aware of Holtec considering sites in Michigan and New Jersey.
