The solution to pollution is not dilution

‘Holtec’ has no right to dump radioactive water into the bay in 2022, or anytime

Here’s what storing spent nuclear fuel rods in Plymouth looks like. Do you find the way the white arrows line up under the blue stars reassuring? Plus the sturdy yellow and red warning signs? Plutonium in spent fuel rods is dangerously radioactive for 10,000 years, but seeing as it’s 2022 — Happy New Year! — let’s say 9,999 years. This photo is from Holtec’s website.

Now that the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth has become a radioactive waste dump, giant cement casks protecting the world from plutonium fuel rods, we now place our faith and trust in, drumroll please…

Holtec.

That would be Holtec International, Inc., which like any self-respecting multi-national must have at least one wholly owned subsidiary; Holtec Decommissioning International.

Holtec now owns Pilgrim, including about $900 million from ratepayers set aside to pay for decommissioning. This is their growth industry; they have or likely soon will have similar decommissioning deals at seven nuclear power plants, and counting.

In recent weeks they “floated” one of their creative ideas:

Pilgrim has a million or more gallons of radioactive water on site; water was crucial to the plant’s operation in many ways, cooling off super-hot nuclear material, nuked into steam to drive turbines then condensing back to water again. But what to do with what’s left in a huge pool?

Hey, wait a sec, why didn’t we think of this sooner? Let’s dump it into Massachusetts Bay!

The assurances now trot out:

It’s radioactive water but hey, not really all that radioactive. Besides, mixing into millions of gallons of sea water will spread those little isotopes all over the place.

This is the latest in a long industry strategy, always offered with a straight face:

The solution to pollution is dilution.

As we know, there are too many times when that hasn’t worked out very well.

Have I mentioned that fishing and shellfishing take place in these waters? These iconic industries employ thousands, feed hundreds of thousands, and funnel millions of dollars a year into the economy — and that’s just on Cape Cod.

How would you feel knowing that radioactive water is being dumped where your food is coming from? Would assurances from “Holtec” make you feel better? If the day comes when a sincere grad student in environmental studies at UMass-Boston identifies a radioactive isotope in a quahog along the shore, what do you think happens to the market for Massachusetts fish and shellfish?

But even this combination of public perception and real threat doesn’t hone to the key point:

Who the hell do these people think they are, assuming they have a right to dump anything, from radioactive water to a candy wrapper, into the bay?

And isn’t $900 million enough to figure out something other than using the Commonwealth’s waters as a radioactive flush toilet?

I’m not getting paid $900 million, but I can do a little research. Turns out the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, similar in design to Pilgrim, began decommissioning earlier (with a different company in charge). Lo and behold, they had radioactive water to get rid of as well.

Their solution? Load it onto trains headed to a landfill in Idaho. The water is combined with clay to make stable blocks or substrate, then buried in a dump.

If I came from Idaho I might not love this either, but at least no one is eating anything that comes out of that ground.

So why hasn’t this ocean dumping idea been dismissed as insulting corporate hubris, criminal if anyone else did it?

Understand that when the nuclear power industry was first proposed, with promises of electricity so cheap it wouldn’t need to be metered (always a lie, nuclear power companies knew if that was the case they wouldn’t be able to make a profit), there was a big problem:

Nothing could get built without insurance, and insurance companies looked at the monstrous liability of a meltdown and said, ‘No way, unless we’re protected.’

Federal legislation was rammed through to do just that, capping insurance company payouts in the event of a nuclear accident.

Plus, to ensure that the industry had a preferred playing field, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was declared sole arbiter of everything to do with nuclear power. The Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators, cities and towns, selectmen, governors, members of Congress, all have zero final say. The NRC trumps (no pun intended).

That includes whether Holtec dumps into Massachusetts Bay. 

One thought is that Holtec needs to offer the feds multiple alternatives for how to get rid of contaminated water, so inserted an ocean dumping option, checking a necessary box without real intention.

No, and no again. When options are put into formal documents and sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, they become real. And if they cost out as the cheapest alternative, they gain momentum.

A few paragraphs ago, I asked a question I didn’t answer:

Who the hell do these people think they are, assuming they have a right to dump anything, from radioactive water to a candy wrapper, into the bay?

It’s called entitlement, exercised by a multi-national corporation with no community history or engagement.

And it’s no additional indictment to say that this entitlement is mission-driven, because push to shove Holtec, like all corporations, must accomplish one thing or cease to exist:

Make a profit.

Think dumping radioactive water into the bay will help them do that for 9,999 years?

NEXT: OYSTERS AND BEARS HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON — THEY BOTH HIBERNATE!

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