NDCAP To Discuss Holtec's Proposed Nuclear Dumping

Interfaith Service and Save Our Bay Rally to Precede Meeting; Machinations on NDCAP by Holtec and Its Friends

( Save Our Bay poster for tonight’s events; photo credit — Save Our Bay ).

(PLYMOUTH) – The Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP), a body created by statute to advise the Governor of the Commonwealth on the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, will meet tonight, Sept. 26th, at Plymouth Town Hall at 6:30 p.m., to discuss the proposed dumping of 1.1 million gallons of radioactive wastewater by Holtec, the owners of Pilgrim, into Cape Cod Bay.

     It will be preceded by an Interfaith Service at Congregation Beth Jacob/Brewster Gardens beginning at 4 p.m., followed by a Save Our Bay rally at Town Hall Green beginning at 5 p.m. (Full disclosure: I sit on the Steering Committee of Save Our Bay).

Dumping Is Illegal

     The first and most important point to emphasize in this matter is that the proposed dumping is illegal. This is because, in the course of settling litigation with the Commonwealth, Holtec signed a contract with the Attorney General’s Office, the Settlement Agreement, in June, 2020. That document stipulates that "Holtec shall comply with all applicable environmental and human-health based standards and regulations of the Commonwealth" (Settlement Agreement, III, 10 (l)).

  This includes, among others, the Massachusetts Ocean Sanctuaries Act (M.G.L. Ch. 132A, Secs. 12-16J inclusive, and Sec. 18), which forbids “the dumping or discharge of commercial, municipal, domestic or industrial wastes” into not only Cape Cod Bay, but also Duxbury, Kingston, and Plymouth Bays, which are specifically mentioned and defined in the statute.

  The proposed dumping is likewise prohibited under the United States Clean Water Act (33 USC Ch. 26). Holtec is governed, under that statute, by a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oversees (a concurrent permit is issued by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection). The EPA roundly rejected Holtec’s spurious interpretation of these permits in a June, 2020, letter, categorically stating that dumping was not permitted: “Holtec Pilgrim is not authorized under the current NPDES Permit to discharge pollutants in spent fuel pool water,” according to the EPA. If Holtec wishes to apply to the agency to modify the permit, it may do so; however, so far as I know, it has not.

     The proposed dumping is therefore against the law, and public statements by the Attorney General’s Office are clear: it is prepared to take legal action to prevent dumping.

     Despite all this, when asked at the July 25th NDCAP meeting whether Holtec would follow the law, Holtec Senior Compliance Manager David Noyes refused to agree to comply with it, saying “We will not say that we will  not discharge waste into Plymouth Bay.”  

     This indicates that Holtec is preparing to dump. Its recent actions in New Jersey bolster this thesis, where it dumped – without warning the public – radioactive wastewater from the Oyster Creek nuclear plant into Barnegat Bay several weeks ago.

      It is therefore necessary for the Attorney General to take legal action to prevent this threatened invasion of our oceanic commons.

      Structural Problems With NDCAP

      Having been to a number of NDCAP meetings this year, it is clear the body is beset by structural problems — namely, the fact that Holtec, the entity being regulated, is given a seat on the very panel that is supposed to be overseeing it, thereby allowing it to derail the Panel’s work. Members who are either current or former employees of Holtec, or otherwise allied with the nuclear industry, are able to defeat motions that would give the public more time for comments or questions, or that would make NDCAP meetings more frequent than bi-monthly. The last thing Holtec wants is to give the public more time and opportunity to question its proposed invasion of our commons.

      So far as I know, hen houses are not in the habit of including foxes in their regulatory apparatus. Yet that is precisely analogous to what is being done here.

    The fact is that the Panel, as currently constituted, has been overwhelmingly friendly to Holtec’s interests, despite the valiant efforts of Members such as Mary Lampert, of Duxbury, and Henrietta Cosentino, of Plymouth (both Mrs. Lampert and Mrs. Cosentino are members of Save Our Bay). Recent machinations regarding this evening’s meeting are a case in point.

      In order to try to make the case that its proposed illegal dumping is no problem at all, Holtec has invited a pro-nuclear scientist, Dr. James Conca, a geochemist, who is widely known as a reliable mouthpiece for the nuclear industry, to discuss tritium, which both cannot be filtered and which bioaccumulates.

     What they won’t tell you about Dr. Conca is that certain past statements of his make him, to be charitable, an unreliable witness when it comes to nuclear safety.

      As many no doubt will recall, on March 11th, 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, resulting in the horrific nuclear disaster at Fukushima. That very morning, speaking to a Committee of the Washington State House of Representatives, various nuclear industry advocates, including Dr. Conca, gave breezy assurances that there was nothing to worry about, as reported by Erica C. Barnett, in the March 17, 2011, edition of SeattleMet (https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2011/03/nuclear-is-no-problem-at-all):

    “I’m very happy that Japan has 26 percent nuclear[,] because those will not be the problems. When you see the pictures [of] things burning [in Japan], it won’t be nuclear, it’ll be the gas-fired power plants and things like that. Nuclear is no problem at all,” said Dr. Conca. 

     Fukushima was second only to Chernobyl in the magnitude of its nuclear disaster. The entire region around the plant, out to a radius of 19 miles, had to be evacuated – over 150,000 people. 

   And Dr. Conca’s first instinct, even before the facts were all in that morning of March 11th, 2011, was to assure the People of the State of Washington that all was well.

   Is this really someone whose judgment we should trust when it comes to nuclear safety?

Holtec Maneuvers on NDCAP

    And here is where the relevance of the structural problems with the NDCAP come into play. Last week, the agenda for today’s meeting, as distributed by Vice Chair Pine Dubois, of Kingston, included a whole 45 minutes devoted to Dr. Conca and his likely nuclear industry propaganda.

    Emails obtained by the Plymouth County Observer reveal that long-time Harwich activist (and fellow Save Our Bay member) Diane Turco, wrote to the NDCAP Chair, Plymouth Selectman John Mahoney, on Sept. 22nd, requesting that more time be added for public comment, since many families with young children find it difficult to wait until the scheduled public comment period at the end of the meeting.

Mr. Mahoney assented, praising Mrs. Turco’s suggestion, and replying that “I will adjust the agenda accordingly to accommodate equity in public participation.”

    Given that equity and public participation are the last things Holtec wants, former Entergy and Holtec employee, and reliable voice for the nuclear industry and its interests, Mary J. Gatslick quickly objected.

  “I do not agree with the proposed changes to the agenda below, in particular the proposal for public comments in the beginning and middle,” she wrote.  “Both the NDCAP and public need to hear the facts and scientific data presented by Holtec and other agencies … in order to make informed decisions and recommendations.” 

   “[P]erceptions are not facts, feelings are not facts and opinions are not facts,” said Gatslick, very much defending the interests of her former paymasters, rather than the public, and seeming to suggest that the only facts that can be trusted are from the nuclear industry – which, given their record, is risible.

  This drew a response from Mary Lampert. Mrs. Lampert asked:

   “I wonder who arranged for James Conca; who is paying for his visit to the panel; and who approved that he would speak on tritium[?]

   It appears that he doesn't have a background that includes health issues of chronic exposure via ingestion or inhalation of organically bound tritium,” continued Mrs. Lampert. “His expertise seems to be as a scientist in the field of earth and environmental sciences, specializing in geologic disposal of nuclear waste, energy-related research, subsurface transport, and environmental clean-up of heavy metals. But a Google search did show that he has given talks about Fukushima’s water releases and stated discharges pose no harm.

   Is this a clue why he was chosen to speak?”

  Those exchanges occurred on the 22nd. By 6:07 a.m. on the morning of the 23rd, Ms. Gatslick and her old bosses must have become very nervous indeed, for she sent an email addressed to Mr. Mahoney, tersely advocating that opportunities for public comment be limited rather than expanded.

  “I thought that any changes to the agenda needed to be approved by the NDCAP.  I do not recall a message being sent out to the committee asking for concurrence on this action.  Will there be time limit on the comments? And will this time limit [be] enforced?  I under stand [sic] that the public should be given the opportunity to speak, however I still believe that the comments should be at the end of the meeting.” 

    “Please clarify,” continued Gatslick.

   In response to this and other emails from Ms. Gatslick, Mrs. Lampert replied that while the NDCAP would benefit from hearing from experts on tritium, if the Panel sought to give 45 minutes to an avowed nuclear industry ally like Dr. Conca, basic principles of fairness suggested opposing, critical voices be included as well.

“As I recall we asked for experts — not simply those representing and presenting one side to convince us that the quickest and cheapest and illegal  method of disposing the LLRW [low level radioactive waste] and chemicals in Cape Cod Bay — a protected ocean sanctuary,” wrote Mrs. Lampert.

  “There are many equally, and perhaps better, informed experts who do not agree with Dr. Conca.  If the panel agenda is to be more than an industry/Holtec show, it needs to hear the entire story, from experts presenting different views, so that panel members and the public can observe the dialogue between them and ask both questions to make reasoned decisions. Yes, the public has a list of experts,” said Lampert.

“Will the NDCAP assure balance?” she asked.

As of this morning, the posted agenda remains unchanged.

In Summary: Dumping Is Illegal and Contrary to The Will of the People

The facts are clear: Holtec’s proposed dumping is illegal. Voices that are the very definition of interested — in the pecunious sense of the word — ought not to be given greater weight than the collective voice of the People of our region and of our Commonwealth. Every Town on Cape Cod, on Martha’s Vineyard, as well as Duxbury and Scituate, have passed either Town Meeting Articles or ballot questions decrying and opposing dumping. The Plymouth Select Board has been emphatic in its opposition. The will of the People is clear.

Contrary to what some may believe, hope, or intend, this country remains a democracy, and it is the People, not lawless and invasive multi-billion dollar corporations, who must rule — here by Cape Cod Bay, across the entire Nation, and around the world.

The Interfaith Service will start at 4 p.m. outside Congregation Beth Jacob on Pleasant Street in Plymouth, while the rally will commence at 5 p.m. at Plymouth Town Hall. The NDCAP Meeting itself begins at 6:30 p.m., and will likely continue relatively late into the evening.