Dumping 1M Gallons of Radioactive Waste into Cape Cod Bay Raises Growing Concern

People in Cape Cod are concerned about the decommissioning project of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station located in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which plans to release 1 million gallons of radioactive waste into Cape Cod Bay.

South of the tip of Rocky Point and north of Priscilla Beach, the Pilgrim plant was responsible for the generation of 14% of all electricity in state of Massachusetts. On October 2015, the nuclear power station was shut down due to "market conditions and increased costs".

On May 2019, the operation of the Pilgrim facility permanently ceased, and all fuel was removed from its reactor vessel the following month.

Holtec International, Pilgrim's owner, expects all decommissioning work to be completed by 2027. This includes potentially releasing 1 million gallons of radioactive waste water in the large bay of Cape Cod - a growing concern of radioactive Nor'Easter threat.

Getting rid of radioactive water

(Photo : Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
ORLEANS, MA - JANUARY 03: Onlookers gather to photograph and watch the ice that covers Cape Cod Bay on January 3, 2018 in Orleans, Massachusetts. A winter storm is hitting the east coast from Florida to New England bringing snow and frigid temperatures.

According to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an independent US agency tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy, also overseeing the aforementioned decommissioning, "large volumes of low-level radioactive waste are generated. This low-level radioactive waste requires processing and disposal or disposal without processing, as appropriate."

The agency filed on October the transport of low-level radioactive waste from Pilgrim to other locations in the country safe and certified to store such waste, using truck or mixed mode shipments.

However, the Cape Cod Times reported that there had been a discussion in a recent meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in Plymouth of dumping radioactive water from the spent fuel pool, the reactor vessel, and other components of the facility directly into Cape Cod Bay.

"The option had been discussed briefly with state regulatory officials as one possible way to get rid of water," they reported.

Communities had found the news alarming but spokesperson Patrick O'Brien told reporters that they've made no decision on whether or not to proceed.

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Crossing hurdles

As easy as it may sound, the decommissioning process will take much more effort and rivers to cross before any discharge of radioactive waste into Cape Cod Bay could happen.

"Mass DEP, and the U.S. EPA have made the company aware that any discharge of pollutants regulated under the Clean Water Act, (and) contained within spent fuel cooling water, into the ocean through Cape Cod Bay is not authorized under the NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit," Pickering said in the article.

However, NPDES does not consider "radioactivity" as a pollutant and its discharges are regulated by the NRC, which is why radioactive discharges into bodies of water elsewhere around the country is permitted.

The unknown threat now goes to strong coastal storm - Nor'easter along the East Coast of North America. Although moving storm could help dilute waste water, the negative impact of the interaction between a strong coastal storm and a radioactive waste discharge is not exactly known.

Also read: State of Emergency Declared in British Columbia as Severe Floods and Mudslides Terrorize the Provinces