Plymouth Fights Dumping of Nuclear Waste into Cape Cod Bay

Folks in Plymouth turned out for a rally on Plymouth Town Hall Green on Monday night to protest the possibility that more than one million gallons of potentially radioactive wastewater from the former Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station could be dumped into Cape Cod Bay.

Boston's WCVB TV Channel 5 reported taht "Holtec, the company overseeing the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, has not yet ruled out the discharging of the wastewater into Cape Cod Bay."

WVCB reported that during a meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (DCAP) on Monday, Holtec agreed to "perform split-sampling testing, which allows the company and an independent laboratory to conduct safety samples on the water first."

Town residents say disposing of the wastewater in the bay is illegal, and they vow to stop it.

Boston 25 News reported in July that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote a letter to Holtec warning against "releasing any potentially radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay."

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The station reported in May that Holtec was considering three options for disposing of the wastewater: "trucking it out, evaporation, and dumping it into Cape Cod Bay."

Holtec argues that levels in the wastewater are low enough that it would be "innocuous to marine life."

The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office reached a settlement agreement with Holtec in 2020 for the decommissioning of the plant that Channel 5 said is "stricter than federal requirements."

Holtec Senior Compliance Manager David Noyes reportedly told Monday's DCAP meeting, "If it is determined to be illegal, we will not discharge the water."