NRC officials get an earful

Mar 30 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Patrick Cassidy Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.

The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is safe, according to the plant's owner and the regulatory agency that oversees the United States nuclear industry.

"We wouldn't allow this plant to continue to operate if we did not think they were operating safely," Pilgrim's senior resident inspector for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Max Schneider said during an open house held by the agency Thursday night at Plymouth Town Hall.

But residents of Plymouth and Cape Cod weren't buying that assessment.

For about two hours, Schnei-der and about a half dozen other NRC officials were battered by questions from about 50 residents from communities around Plymouth and Cape Cod, most of whom weren't impressed by the NRC forum to answer questions about the plant's safety.

"I think this is an eighth grade science fair," said Wedge Bramhall of Plymouth. "It's a joke."

The forum was designed so the public would learn nothing, said longtime Pilgrim opponent Mary Lampert of Duxbury.

"This is a PR stunt that fell flat because we're not stupid," she said.

Interest in safety issues at Pilgrim has spiked since the disaster last year at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan and in anticipation of the June 8 expiration of Pilgrim's license to operate. Entergy Nuclear, which owns the 40-year-old plant, has asked the NRC for a 20-year extension of its license.

Most of the angst Thursday night focused on the Pilgrim plant's design. The plant's reactor is a GE Mark I model, the same type as three that melted down in the earthquake and tsunami-fueled disaster at Fukushima.

The Mark I's containment area is too small and vents meant to avoid the buildup of potentially explosive gases should be filtered and automatic, according to opponents of the relicensing effort.

Schneider, who lives in Sandwich, said he and a second inspector run tests every day at Pilgrim and are on call around the clock.

"Our sole purpose is public health and safety," he said.

Schneider said the safety protocol includes two tracks: findings evaluated for significance, and performance indicators.

Pilgrim had one so-called white finding because of an unplanned shutdown caused by human error last year. That finding has prompted greater NRC oversight this year, Schneider said.

Bramhall is chairman of the Freeze Pilgrim Committee, a group sponsoring a ballot question before Plymouth Town Meeting May 12 calling for the suspension of action to relicense Pilgrim until all Fukushima-related safety improvements required by the NRC are in place.

Similar ballot questions are on the warrant at town meetings in about a half-dozen Cape Cod towns and other communities around Pilgrim.

Bramhall, who is a lobsterman and whose family has lived in Plymouth for centuries, said he's been fighting the plant's operation since the 1980s.

"I'm not leaving because of this," he said about the likelihood that Pilgrim will be relicensed. "I think they should dry up and go away."

Bramhall's biggest concern: spent fuel kept at the plant.

"All we need is a lack of electricity," he said about what could lead to the spent fuel heating up or catching fire because of the loss of the plant's cooling system.

Entergy is moving forward with plans to move the spent fuel from a wet pool inside the reactor building to so-called dry cask storage, according to the company's spokeswoman Carole Wightman.

Doing so will take some time to prepare the site, she said, adding that she believed the first transfer of fuel could occur by 2016.

Entergy's critics, however, argue that the company plans only to move into dry casks the amount of fuel that it offloads during a typical refueling operation, leaving the spent fuel pool overloaded.

Diane Turco of Harwich said NRC officials told her that Cape Cod could be evacuated in the event of a meltdown at Pilgrim.

"Did you drive here from the Cape?" she said, referring to the backup caused by maintenance work on the Sagamore Bridge and the unlikelihood that a mass evacuation of the Cape is possible.

David Agnew, founder of the Cape Cod-based anti-Pilgrim group Cape Downwinders, said Harwich will likely have a ballot question on its warrant this spring calling for a emergency plan for the Cape and Islands.

"Everyone on Cape Cod is a downwinder," he said about fears that any accident at Pilgrim will have effects on the Cape.

The NRC informational session was followed by a debate between a proponent of nuclear energy and an opponent of the technology.

"You have an opportunity to send a message to Congress," said nuclear expert Arnold Gundersen, speaking in favor of suspending action on Pilgrim's license.

Gundersen's opponent in the debate, retired nuclear engineer Howard Shaffer, argued that the ballot question would have little effect and that the alternative to nuclear is coal and its associated health and environmental costs.

"From a legal point of view, the ballot question will send a message but it's not going to change what the NRC does," Shaffer said.

NRC and Entergy officials declined to participate in the debate.