Holtec says it didn’t think legislative ban would pass
Amonth after announcing an eight-year delay in the decommissioning of Indian Point, the company doing the work said at a Dec. 6 meeting that it is no closer to determining what to do with the nuclear plant’s radioactive wastewater.
Holtec representatives who attended the meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board blamed the delay on recent state legislation that prevents it from discharging radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River. They said the firm has not ruled out suing the state.
The legislation was sponsored by State Sen. Pete Harckham and Assembly Member Dana Levenberg, whose district includes Philipstown. Both sit on the oversight board.
Companies decommissioning other nuclear plants have found ways to dispose of wastewater besides discharging it into a body of water, but those solutions have encountered pushback with Indian Point.
Boiling the water away, as was done at Three Mile Island, would transfer the radioactive material, specifically tritium, into the air. Shipping it off-site, as was done at the Yankee Pilgrim plant in Vermont, is considered to be an environmental justice issue since the region would simply be dumping its problem into someone else’s backyard. And storing the wastewater in tanks on-site for 12 years — the time it would take for the tritium to decay to half its current potency — has been criticized because the tanks are notoriously leaky, and would have to be vented, allowing some of the tritium to escape.
Theresa Knickerbocker, the mayor of Buchanan, where Indian Point is located, has refused to grant the permits required to store the wastewater on-site because of fears of leakage, evaporation or accidents. Knickerbocker has criticized the anti-discharge legislation for delaying the decommissioning and when the site will be given to the village.
She also criticized members of the board for not discussing the legislation with her while it was being developed, although she noted that before Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the bill in August, she called Knickerbocker to hear her concerns.
Knickerbocker also asked why, if the discharge of tritium into the Hudson is so problematic, the issue hadn’t come up during the time that the plant was operational and discharged into the Hudson on a routine basis.
“I have been saying for the past 20 years that the nuclear plant has been discharging to the air and the water,” said activist Marilyn Ellie during the meeting. “And nobody really took that seriously.”
Holtec has begun examining other options. A company called Viola has proposed using a modular detritiation system to remove the tritium, although the technology has not been used at a commercial site in the U.S., would require an enormous amount of energy and take 10 years. Holtec also entertained a proposal from a company offering to use the water to irrigate hemp grown on-site, which would suck up the tritium.
Holtec is not seriously considering this option, as they would need clearance from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to grow hemp at the plant, and because the tritiated hemp would then have to be disposed of. Presumably, the tritiated hemp would also release tritium into the air while photosynthesizing.
Until the wastewater issue is resolved, Holtec said that its work will be severely hampered because it can’t determine which buildings on the site can be taken down since it’s not known which ones may be needed. When asked why the company did not have a backup plan for the wastewater, Holtec’s Frank Spagnuolo said it “did not believe this law would pass because it’s unreasonable.”
Levenberg said that, between the public opposition to the discharge in the Hudson Valley as well as opposition to discharges in Cape Cod and at the Fukushima plant in Japan, the company should have prepared alternatives. “Within the world of nuclear power plants, you always have to have those backup plans,” she said.
“There are 500,000 people who have signed a petition in New York State about this,” added Harckham. “This was not Pete and Dana and a couple of tree huggers. This was something bigger than all of us.”
Later in the meeting, while discussing the process of segmenting the reactor heads, the topic of the plant’s refueling water storage tanks came up. Holtec said the tanks do not leak and are built to withstand seismic activity.
“If you can store this contaminated water for many years in these tanks that don’t leak, why can’t we do that with the spent fuel pool water?” asked Levenberg.
“Because you wouldn’t fully be able to decommission the facility,” said Holtec’s Patrick O’Brien.
The next meeting of the Decommissioning Oversight Board on Feb. 29 is scheduled to include a presentation by Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear engineer and nuclear industry executive turned whistleblower who proposes storing the wastewater in tanks but with a balloon-like apparatus over the vents to trap the tritium that escapes.
