Back at the beginning of the 1970s the Pilgrim Nuclear power plant was built.
It stands on the shore of a section of Plymouth, Massachusetts where it can use sea water for its reactor cooling system.
It was to stay in operation for about forty years, but it was granted a 20 year extension in 2012 regardless of the problems it was having.
For example, on April 11, 1986 a recurring equipment problem forced an emergency shutdown, and there have been subsequent shutdowns for a variety of reasons, some complicated, some rather mundane.
Because the temperature of water drawn from Cape Cod Bay exceeded 75 °F at one point, the plant had to reduce output during a heat wave.
On August 22, 2013 all three of the plant’s main feedwater pumps tripped causing a drop of the reactor water level ala The China Syndrome. The emergency core cooling system automatically activated. The cause of the electrical trip to the feedwater pumps is still under investigation.
During the January snow storms at the beginning of this year, the plant underwent a storm-induced unplanned shutdown.
Its spent nuclear fuel is stored in an on-site storage pool, which has been filled to capacity requiring an additional storage area to be built to house the excess. The original storage tank, bring on the roof, glows in the night sky.
According to Senator Dan Wolf whose constituents are from the Cap and Islands, and is a friend of mine:
“Pilgrim is storing more than 3,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, submerged in water, in a tank sitting atop the plant that was originally intended to hold 800. These fuel rods are many times more radioactive than the reactor core itself.
Pilgrim’s design, very similar to Fukoshima’s, is first generation and obsolete.
Effective evacuation in the event of a disaster seems impossible for Cape Codders, given that pretty much everyone on our side of the bridges would be forced to head toward the plant to try to escape it — the alternative being, as Truro artist Susan Baker put it years ago on a popular T-shirt, “Swim East.” There still is no solid understanding of the lessons of Fukoshima, not only whether multiple failures could lead to a similar situation here but also why unexpected spikes in radioactivity in the water now cooling the crippled reactors have forced a halt to the attempted cleanup”.
There are thousands of people who live year round on Cape Cod, with the number increasing five times during the heavy summer tourist season, and the evacuation plan is for anyone on the Cape at the time of a disaster to shelter in place until all the people in the danger zone on the mainland are evacuated before the all clear is given for everyone on the Cape to head for the two bridges crossing the canal. Anyone who has come to the Cape on a turn-over weekend in the summer can imagine what this will look like.
Each resident gets two free sodium iodide pills that will protect the thyroid gland for 72 hours.
A 220-foot tower and a 160-foot backup is supposed to provide continuous readings on wind speed and direction, and air temperature. This is important to Cape Cod.
Four years ago the backup tower was shut down because of canceled preventative maintenance on it, and on eight occasions between March 12, 2012 and Aug. 15, 2015, when the 220-foot primary meteorological tower was non-functional there was no instrumentation available on either tower for the necessary continuous readings. If a radiological emergency had taken place, Pilgrim operators would have had to rely on the National Weather Service for data.
At the time, federal officials said the finding on the plant was rated only as low in safety significance because nothing bad had happened as a result.
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Pilgrim spokeswoman Lauren Burm said in response to this bit of news, “The NRC accurately determined that the station response to restoration of back-up meteorological monitoring was not timely. Since the issuance of the finding, the completion of the new MET Tower is well underway. In accordance with our emergency procedures, we utilized the National Weather Service as backup.”
The NRC has placed the plant at the bottom of the performance list.
Security is so lax that two people were able to walk through the main gate and into the building without seeing anyone who could have stop them. After taking pictures, they finally found someone to present themselves to.
Groups like Cape Downwinders have been demanding the close of this Fukoshima style plant for a long time, pointing out the safety and environmental dangers, the multiple off line events, poor construction, and vulnerability to attack from land and air. I wanted to see the plant one day and drove down the long access road right up to the gate which is not too far from the main building. If I had the intention and the right equipment I could have done some damage.
Entergy, the Louisiana based company that owns the plant has decided to shut it down by 2019, sooner if it decides not to go through with a scheduled refueling.
It reasons?
It’s becoming too expensive to run even as the owners maintain that the plant remains safe, although it needed millions of dollars in upgrades.
Also cited were “poor market conditions, reduced revenues and increased operational costs.”
The company also claimed that state energy policy “picks winners and losers.”
Sound familiar? See Thursday’s blog.
Bill Mohl, president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities stated, “When we look at energy policies in Massachusetts we see a proposed clean energy standard that excludes nuclear, a preference for Canadian hydro power and the subsidization of gas pipeline capacity through electric ratepayers, and put that all together … and it became clear to us that we needed to make the decision to retire Pilgrim”.
The problem with this statement is that no one is condemning nuclear power, just the lack of safety at the plant.
“Entergy doesn’t have the financial ability to get Pilgrim out of the dog house, but it will continue to operate for four more years with many safety violations and mechanical failures,” said Arlene Williamson of Cape Downwinders.
The spent nuclear fuel at the site will be “safely” placed in storage onsite and could be there for decades. I put safety in quotes as the history of the plant reveals there is a wide dfference between the owner’s concept of safety and common sense.
Gov. Charlie Baker, who in the past has expressed confidence in the plant’s safety, said, “Losing Pilgrim as a significant power generator not only poses a potential energy shortage, but also highlights the need for clean, reliable, affordable energy proposals.”
In spite of the financial reasons for closing the plant, it is my suspicion that those who have been pointing out the problems with the plant and its potential danger to those who live near or downwind from it, won the day and the owners just need to save face.
(This blog contains some cartoons I did between 2011 and the announced closing of Pilgrim to help educate the public and support those who wanted the nuclear plant closed.)