Attorney General Maura Healey and the Baker-Polito Administration announced a comprehensive agreement that ensures critical environmental, public safety, and financial protections for Massachusetts residents during the dismantlement and cleanup of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth.
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The settlement agreement reached with Holtec Pilgrim, LLC, and Holtec Decommissioning International LLC (Holtec) resolves a petition the Commonwealth filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to challenge an application to transfer Pilgrim’s federal license from Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. and Entergy Nuclear Generation Company to Holtec.
The agreement also resolves two lawsuits (September 2019 and January 2020) the Commonwealth filed to challenge the NRC’s approval of the license transfer application, and several administrative challenges Holtec filed to challenge conditions in the January 2020 state water permit for the plant.
The agreement establishes a robust set of financial assurances and related reporting mechanisms to ensure that sufficient funds will be available to promptly and safely dismantle the nuclear power plant, clean up radiological and non-radiological contamination, restore the site, and manage spent nuclear fuel onsite until it is transported out of the state.
Under the terms of the agreement, Holtec must maintain at least $193 million in funds until it completes most of the cleanup and site restoration work and, after that point, $38.4 million in funds until the spent nuclear fuel is removed from the plant.
The $193 million will ensure funds are available to cover future cost increases and unforeseen contingencies such as project delays and newly discovered contamination, and the $38.4 million will ensure that funds are available to cover the costs to transport the spent nuclear fuel out of state and clean up the land where the spent nuclear fuel will be stored.
Holtec is also required to obtain $30 million in pollution liability insurance and secure performance bonds for certain contracts.
The agreement requires Holtec to provide monthly reports to the state in order to monitor the progress of the work at the plant and to foresee any financial issues.
The agreement requires Holtec to comply with the state’s strict cleanup standards when it comes to radiological and non-radiological hazardous materials such as oil and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs).
To advance the cleanup work, the agreement requires Holtec to submit to MassDEP and DPH an initial site assessment of the property to ascertain the types of contamination at the property and where such contamination may be located, and establishes clear guidelines for the removal and decontamination of structures, including radiologically contaminated structures, at the site.
MassDEP and DPH will oversee the cleanup work to ensure that public health and environment are protected.
To aid in that effort, the agreement secures future funding for DPH so that it can continue monitoring air and food sources outside of the plant’s boundaries for any offsite radiological contamination.
The agreement will ensure that the property is cleaned up to a level that will allow for its future reuse to benefit of surrounding local communities, including the Town of Plymouth.
The agreement includes specific emergency preparedness requirements to protect the public in the event of a radiological emergency at the site.
To further those requirements, MEMA will receive continued funding each year to perform its emergency preparedness functions until the risks decrease.
Without the agreement, most of the existing emergency preparedness requirements and related funding for MEMA would have been eliminated because the NRC decided earlier this year to exempt the plant from federal emergency planning requirements by removing the requirement to maintain a ten-mile emergency planning zone (EPZ) around the site perimeter.
To further enhance public safety, the agreement also requires Holtec to implement cybersecurity measures to limit threats that could compromise plant systems designed to safely secure plant assets such as the spent nuclear fuel that will remain stored onsite.
These requirements are not currently required by the NRC. ■