Says it will not wait for state endorsement
Holtec International, the company decommissioning the Indian Point nuclear power plant near Peekskill, announced at the Feb. 2 meeting of a state board overseeing its work that it plans to release radioactive water into the Hudson River before autumn.
Although filtered, the water will contain tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen difficult to remove. The firm says the release will cause minimal problems because the water will disperse, and an engineer on the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board said it may be the least-worst option to empty the plant’s cooling pools.
At the meeting of the oversight board, Rich Burroni, a Holtec representative, said that the company plans to release the water in late August or early September, although he would not rule out dumping it sooner.
“We may be real efficient and be able to move it up,” he said. In a follow-up statement to The Current, Holtec said that the amount of water that would be released has not been determined.
Burroni was asked by Richard Webster, a member of the oversight board who works for the environmental group Riverkeeper, if Holtec would consider delaying the release until the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) gave its support.
“Full transparency? No,” Burroni replied. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you a different story. We want to meet this 12- to 15-year requirement” to finish the decommissioning and return the land to the Village of Buchanan. “I understand the emotional part about the discharge to the river,” he said.
Burroni later said he would be willing to discuss the matter with community members at a smaller meeting, and that Holtec would provide a month’s notice before the wastewater was released.
“I’m not going to appease everybody,” he said. “But at least we have some basic science and some basic facts behind what we do.”
Holtec may also have the law behind it. The state DEC only regulates the non-radioactive materials that Holtec discharges. The radioactive materials are under the authority of two federal agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Throughout the evening, members of the oversight board repeatedly said that members of the public concerned with Holtec’s plans should contact the EPA or NRC. In Massachusetts, the EPA has put a hold on a Holtec plan to discharge radioactive water from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant into Cape Cod Bay until a third-party can verify that the release would be safe.
No risk-free options
During the meeting, Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and former director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists who serves as the oversight board’s technical expert, outlined his reasoning that releasing the treated water into the Hudson poses the least public risk.
Boiling the water to evaporate it, as was done at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in the early 1990s, would release the radioactive material into the air instead of the Hudson, where it has a greater potential of being ingested or inhaled, he said.
According to Lochbaum, solidifying and burying the water, as was done when the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant shipped out its waste in hundreds of truckloads to be buried in Idaho, could possibly be an environmental justice issue. [In fact, a NRC representative said in a later email to The Current, while NorthStar, the company decommissioning the plant, received permission to send the waste to Idaho, it instead sent it to Texas.] The projected annual radiation dose to residents in Idaho would be 483 to 770 times higher than what New York residents would experience from the water being released into the Hudson, he explained.
Lochbaum also argued that if burying the wastewater in Idaho is considered safe, it might as well be buried in the Hudson Valley.
The wastewater also could be stored in tanks at Indian Point. Tritium has a half-life of 12.5 years (as opposed to the thousands of years of other radioactive materials), so a release could be delayed until it has decayed.
But Lochbaum cautioned against this. He explained that the water tanks would have to be vented, meaning that some radioactive material would be constantly evaporating into the air. And the tanks used to store radioactive wastewater are notoriously leaky: At Vermont Yankee, a tank failure led to 83,000 gallons draining into the Connecticut River. At Browns Ferry in Alabama, the gauge that was supposed to detect if the tank was leaking failed, and the leak was only discovered when a building next door began filling up with radioactive water.
Lochbaum said that there have also been numerous cases in which a tank leaks even as it’s being filled, and technicians keep filling the tank anyway. “You’d think it shouldn’t happen more than once,” he said. “But while lightning may only strike once, stupidity strikes like a jackhammer.”
If Holtec releases the water from the pools into the Hudson, it wouldn’t be the first time. In 2009, Entergy, which owned Indian Point at the time, emptied the cooling pool at Indian Point 1, which had closed in 1974, into the river. (The two remaining reactors closed in 2020 and 2021.) And tritium has been released into the Hudson by Indian Point every year, at levels far below the maximum allowed. Lochbaum estimated that even multiplying the estimated levels of radiation that would be released into the Hudson by the pool’s wastewater by 10 would still be less than 5 percent of the allowable limits.
That’s assuming you accept the validity of the federal limits, and a number of speakers did not, noting that the standards have not been updated in 50 years and were calculated by estimating the effects of radiation on healthy white men in their 20s and 30s — essentially, the scientists working on the Manhattan Project. It’s unknown if women, children and the elderly would be more vulnerable. The state DEC, for example, sets limits based on a person’s age and gender for how many fish from the Hudson can be consumed each month as a result of ongoing PCB contamination.
Speakers also suggested that any effects of radioactive water should be considered in conjunction with other environmental contaminants, such as the poor air quality from Peekskill’s Wheelabrator Incinerator and the fact that the Hudson River has been officially classified as a Superfund site by the EPA for nearly 40 years.
Releasing the water into the Hudson, they argued, is being pushed by Holtec not because it’s safe but because it’s cheap and easy. “All the cost goes on to the public,” said Michel Lee, an attorney who works with United for Clean Energy. “All the benefit would go to Holtec.”
Two other disposal options came up during the meeting. One would involve keeping the pools filled until all of the other radioactive material was moved off-site. This would not only give the tritium time to decay, but serve as a fail-safe if a dry cask that stores the spent fuel failed and needed to be cooled immediately.
“That’s not our business model,” Burroni responded.
The other option would involve having the federal Department of Energy filter the tritium from the water, an expensive proposition. State Assembly Member Dana Levenberg, a Democrat whose district includes Philipstown, asked what would happen to the tritium.
“You’re not going to like this,” Lochbaum said. “It’s used to make nuclear weapons have bigger bangs.”
“That’s why they call it ‘H-bomb boiling,’ ” added Webster, of Riverkeeper.
Near misses
Later in the meeting, Burroni revealed that the NRC recently cited Holtec after a federal inspector discovered that an equipment hatch did not have adequate controls to ensure that radioactive emissions would not escape. The issue has been remedied, Burroni said. “This was a good lesson learned for us,” he said.
“Did those lessons include finding out why your team didn’t find this problem before the NRC inspectors did?” asked Lochbaum.
“We could’ve done a better job there, Dave,” said Burroni.
Burroni also said he was “not proud of” the fact that, in the past few months, the plant has had two “near-miss” events and three work-related injuries. In a follow-up with The Current, Holtec said that the near-miss events were a rigging device that broke while lifting a load, and a lifted load that went too close to workers.
Holtec said the causes of these events included workers using the wrong tools, faulty body posturing and hand/eye coordination, a pre-existing condition (a worker re-injured a shoulder) and the material condition of the facility.
Its corrective actions include designating a “coach of the week” to ensure standards are being met, and better housekeeping procedures. “I was disappointed in some of the housekeeping things I saw,” said Burroni. “I’ve told all the guys, and everybody acknowledges, that just because we’re a decommissioned plant it doesn’t mean we let our standards go.”
Sinking farther
Holtec was not the only company on the hot seat at the meeting. Enbridge, the firm that oversees a 1,129-mile natural gas pipeline that passes under Indian Point, was asked about a sinkhole that opened over the pipeline on Dec. 24 in a park in Yorktown.
John Sheridan of Enbridge said the only damage to the pipeline was an abrasion, “similar to a scratch that you would get on your hand,” and that it remains in good condition. He said that he had no information about the cause of the sinkhole.
Tina Volz Bongar, a community member who had made a presentation at a previous oversight board meeting about the inconsistencies between Enbridge and Entergy’s emergency plans, noted that Enbridge’s monitoring systems failed to detect the sinkhole, and that the company only found out after a Yorktown resident walking a dog called the police.
“That tells you what Enbridge’s integrity-management system really is,” she said.
Webster asked if the sinkhole occurred in an area where Enbridge knew sinkholes were a possibility.
“I don’t have that information this evening,” Sheridan said. “I hate to speculate until we have all the facts in front of us.”
“You should have had the facts before you put the pipeline there,” replied Webster.
The next meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board is scheduled for April 27.
Do we really have to allow this?
Tritium, which has a half-life of 12.5 years, will become 1/16 as concentrated in 50 years. That’s worth the wait. It also reinforces the lesson that the area generating the waste should be responsible for absorbing the full consequences of their failure to stop the plant from being built in the first place. The local community reaped the so-called benefits of the plant. It’s the best of a bad bargain to not deliberately release radioactive waste.
Your article was accurate in reporting what was said at the Decommissioning Oversight Board on Feb. 2. With that said, I would like to make the following clarifying statements.
Richard Webster did ask me during the meeting if Holtec would not release effluents to the river (my words) until the “DEC gave its final support.” I respectfully said, “No,” but I want to be perfectly clear that we have the necessary approvals to discharge to the river per regulations imposed by the NRC, DEC and EPA. Support is granted by these organizations. The meeting is available for review on the NYS DOB website.
The article states that “The firm says the release will cause minimal problems.” I don’t disagree with this statement, but after reviewing the tape, I can’t see where this was said or who exactly is the “firm.” Please let me know where that’s located on the tape.
Lastly, we don’t “dump” to the river, we “discharge” to the river. That’s not a play on words. Dumping would imply that we, along with all other nuclear plants in the world, simply open a couple of valves and dump effluents to rivers, oceans and lakes. As I’ve stated at previous meetings and what the DOB Technical expert described was that all effluents are treated and analyzed prior to being released to the river. My ask here is that in future columns, please use the word discharge when talking about effluents to the river at Indian Point.
At these meetings, as with all communication with local, state and federal officials, I am as transparent as I could possibly be. Please continue to ask follow-up questions following these meetings if the need arises.
Burroni is the site vice president at Indian Point for Holtec Decommissioning International.
The firm is Holtec, of course, and it has said on multiple occasions that the release into the river will cause minimal problems. The article doesn’t state Burroni said it at the Feb. 2 meeting.
When safer alternatives were proposed, Burroni’s replied, “That’s not our business model.” Between that and some of his other comments, I feel like this guy should be twirling his mustache and clutching money bags like a cartoon villain. When the public face of Holtec is this smug, this condescending and this open about putting profit before people, it says everything about the company and its trustworthiness. [via Instagram]
So tanks to store the water are a bad option because they could … leak the radioactive water into the river? The solution is to put the radioactive water directly in the river?
Something tells me that humanity in 2023 can figure out tanks that don’t leak and leak-detecting gauges that have redundancies.
The argument is that while a controlled discharge could be done slowly to minimize impact, a leak would be uncontrolled.
I’m no scientist but the use of fungi to absorb radiation sounds interesting enough to at least explore.
Tritium is generated when cosmic rays spallate nitrogen in the atmosphere: 14N(n,t)12C. Producing ~410 grams of natural 3H annually. If you bother to quantify the release (no number given in any of the reporting), you will find this proposed release is negligible to the natural tritium levels. Even all the tanks at Fukushima, taken together, contain just over 2 grams of tritium. This is a huge nothing-burger.
Richard Burroni of Holtec may not want us to use the term “dumping” about the company’s planned release of Indian Point’s radioactive water into the Hudson River this summer. Whatever you call it, it’s a bad choice for the seven communities that draw drinking water from the Hudson; people who swim, boat and fish in the river; and the children who play along its banks, not to mention the fish and river life.
Several experts, including Ed Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer of Fairewinds Energy Education, have said that the best solution would be to leave the water where it is, in the fuel pools emptied of the fuel rods. That would allow the tritium (which can’t be separated from the water) to decay over time into non-harmful helium. Lyman said: “Keep storing indefinitely and eventually the problem will solve itself.”
Federal regulations allow 60 years for decommissioning. Spent fuel could remain at the site even after the decommissioning is completed, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The mayor of Buchanan, Theresa Knickerbocker, wants Holtec to complete the decommissioning in the shortest possible time so the site can be repurposed. Holtec wants to oblige her by cutting costs and corners, and keeping as much of the $2.4 billion in decommissioning funds it has received — collected from ratepayers when the plant was operating — to line executives’ and shareholders’ pockets.
But the soil and groundwater on the property are contaminated, and it’s highly unlikely that Indian Point can be transformed for use as a park, shopping center or housing. The site should be remediated to the degree required, but residual radioactive elements to which people should not be exposed are likely to remain.
The wisest adaptive reuse would be for a large, utility-scale solar array with battery storage, and possibly wind energy, since the Hudson is somewhat of a wind tunnel. The new owner could generate renewable energy at a site already ideal for grid interconnection, and provide revenue to Cortlandt, Buchanan and the Hendrick Hudson school district.
So Holtec, leave the water where it is. It’s cheaper than moving it anywhere and better for everyone up and down the Hudson River.