Pilgrim’s progress
by Jennifer BruniNational Guard troops protect the entry and scrutinize visitor identification. Cement pylons snake around parking lots and line the main buildings’ entrances. Grenade nets and metal body barriers form strategic placements along hallways, while sharpshooters look out from barricaded towers to prevent anyone from scaling fences and walls.
“Unlike the police and other law enforcement, these guys can shoot to kill without warning,” says Dave Tarantino, Pilgrim Nuclear Station spokesman, as he points up at one of the towers.
Once inside, beeper-like dosimeters and shower-stall-sized radiation-detection machines track and scan for atomic particles as people enter and exit the reactor core. Sticky floor mats at the foot of elevators attract stray atomic particles clinging to the soles of shoes.
The clear memory of 9/11 and the specter of future terrorist attacks adds to tensions long associated with this power plant located right in the middle of Plymouth County. Yet the world’s growing concern about global warming and the nation’s precarious dependence on Middle East oil is placing an entirely new, greener light on the importance of nuclear energy.
For Pilgrim, in the midst of a relicensing process to extend operations to 2032, the timing could not be more fortuitous.
Built by Bechtel Power for its original owner Boston Edison, Pilgrim Nuclear Station began operating in December 1972. With dazzling views of Cape Cod Bay, Pilgrim’s 1,600-acre campus hums with both human and mechanical activity; its 540 full-time plant employees and undisclosed number of full-time security forces keep the plant running year-round. Pilgrim’s boiling-water reactor generates 680 megawatts at peak capacity, creating enough electricity to power all of the South Shore’s 170,000 homes.
Pilgrim provided about 5 percent of New England’s electricity in 2006. Based on current market prices and Pilgrim’s capacity, CRA International’s Scott Englander estimates that owner Entergy Corporation earns about $340 million a year in energy revenue from the plant.
The cost/benefit balance
With Pilgrim Nuclear’s 40-year operating license set to expire on June 8, 2012, Entergy has applied for a 20-year operating renewal with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission covering the Plymouth County facility and four other Northeastern plants.
Adding another 20 years to each plant’s operating license makes sense because “nuclear energy is now the lowest-cost way to generate electricity – without emitting any air pollutants or greenhouse gasses that may worsen climate change,” the company noted.
However, Duxbury-based Pilgrim Watch, located only a few miles away from the plant, couldn’t disagree more.
While the group acknowledges that Pilgrim probably will be relicensed, Pilgrim Watch has won regulatory review of some key demands involving Entergy’s emergency planning and safety upgrades for spent fuel storage tanks.
“Plants were originally placed in areas that were sparsely populated,” said Pilgrim Watch head Mary Lambert. “[The plants] were built before terrorism. And the resources aren’t available to get people out.”
“[But] the way the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) dealt with this was to take the issue of spent fuel off the table, which is insane, because there are ways to decrease the health and safety risks [of living near the plant],” she added.
“Stop playing games. Let’s see what we can do to have real emergency planning. Let’s see what we can do to decrease the health impact on the area’s residents. We have neighborhood watches for criminals. Why can’t we have real-time meteorological and radiation detectors placed in vicinity of the plant, as recommended back in 1990 by the Southeastern Massachusetts Health Study, which, by the way, found a four-fold increase in adult leukemia in the area around Pilgrim?” she asked.
Because of Pilgrim’s large local economic footprint, many Plymouth County businesses, including the South Shore Chamber of Commerce, want the plant to get its license renewed. The plant has 700 full-time employees and pumps about $135 million a year into the local economy, including more than $8 million in property taxes paid to the town of Plymouth.
Pilgrim’s workforce consists of nuclear physicists, engineers, mechanics, electricians, cleaners, welders, pipe fitters, operators, industrial safety experts and inspectors, carpenters, painters, radiological technicians, with lawyers, executives and administrators rounding out the mix.
Meanwhile, the economic impact is significant for Entergy itself. The relicensing fees for a single unit reactor such as Pilgrim can cost between $8 million and $10 million; multiply that by the eleven plants that Entergy owns and it is an $88 million to $110 million expense.
Unless opponents such as Pilgrim Watch win hearings to review elements of the relicensing process, the NRC will not require Entergy to upgrade its technology to improve efficiency or safety. Nor does it address the quandary of where Pilgrim’s spent fuel will go after it runs out of storage in 2014.
The high price to apply for a nuclear license causes the NRC and each applicant to work closely together to address issues that arise along the way. The NRC even has a small office onsite at Pilgrim – as it does at every nuclear plant in the country – all of which can add up to an additional eight months of review time to the standard 22-month process.
There are 103 nuclear power plants operating across the country, accounting for about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Thanks to hefty federal subsidies in place since the late 1950s, nuclear power has remained a low-cost, high profit-margin business for Entergy and other utilities, especially in states with deregulated power grids such as Massachusetts.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 contains several billion dollars of new assistance for the nuclear industry, including subsidies for research, plant decommission and new construction, operating tax credits and a 20-year extension of the liability cap for accidents.
Where will our energy come from? And at what price?
Pilgrim’s relicensing process underscores growing concerns that demand for electricity is overwhelming supply. That’s reflected by our state’s energy prices – the fourth highest in the nation behind Hawaii, California and Vermont. The resulting cost – combined with the lack of a cohesive energy policy in Massachusetts – is causing many businesses to think twice before expanding or even locating here.
Then, there are pockets of local opposition, including Duxbury’s Plymouth Watch, as well as the ever-present twin forces of NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing, Anywhere, Never at Anytime).
Yet, other than Cape Wind, which is pending further federal review and approval, there are no new energy plants coming online any time soon. While ISO New England, the nonprofit that oversees the region’s bulk electrical power system, lists 80 new proposed generators and transmission upgrades for approximately 14,000 megawatts of power, the bulk of these new projects aren’t projected to go online until 2009 or later.
In the meantime, ISO New England predicts demand will climb between 1 percent and 2 percent a year.
“Other parts of the country are more open to accepting new nuke plants,” said Joyce McMahon of MassAREA, a group of business, labor and community leaders committed to finding clean, low-cost and reliable electricity solutions. “If [a new reactor] ever happens here it will probably be at an existing plant. Pilgrim has room for one or two more units,” she added. “We have to realize that the price of electricity is going to be high and remain high. There’s no silver bullet, no easy solution to this problem.”
Dave Tarantino, Pilgrim’s spokesman, agrees, saying that while Entergy looks to site new plants in the South and Southeast that incorporate new, greener technologies, similar expansion here would be prohibitively expensive.
“There has to be new plants built,” Tarantino said. “[Pilgrim is] at our maximum capacity right now, but we are limited by things like our main condenser, for example. It would be too expensive to invest in new technology [in New England] to increase capacity.
“We could put another power plant here,” he added. “We have 1,600 acres, but public opposition is too strong. New England is politically not the place you want to begin new nuclear.”
Environmental considerations and spent fuel
Pilgrim imposes two stresses on the environment: its reliance on sea water and the challenge of storing its spent nuclear fuel.
Pilgrim dedicates two full-time employees to address the plant’s environmental impact, including its use of Cape Cod Bay water to cool the plant’s reactor. The plant’s environmentalists monitor the waters around the plant, tracking everything from water temperatures to baby winter flounder – the plant replenishes thousands of fish marked with dye into the bay each spring.
Ocean water – 315,000 gallons of it a minute – condenses the steam produced in the nuclear reactor. Sea water cools the reactor, then shoots back out via a discharge canal into Cape Cod Bay, where the water must be no more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the bay’s water temperature, which ranges from 32 degrees in the winter to a high of 65 degrees in the summer. “The ocean is used to condense the steam back into water that flows through the reactor. The salt water never comes in contact with the reactor water,” Tarantino explained.
Entergy also works with local environmental groups, recently giving a $15,000 grant to the National Marine Life Center in Buzzard’s Bay for its sea turtle and seal rehabilitation programs.
Then there is the issue of radioactive spent fuel storage.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan agrees with Pilgrim’s Tarantino that while the plant can continue for the next few years to store its fuel onsite, ultimately there has to be a plan to store the fuel in a larger offsite facility – especially if Pilgrim gets its license renewed until 2032.
“Europe reprocesses its spent fuel,” Sheehan said, “but it’s not up to the NRC to determine nuclear policy.” He points out that the federal government is spending $3 billion to complete the Yucca Mountain waste storage facility in Nevada. But so far, no material has been transferred. Meanwhile, Washington has collected $20 billion from nuclear utilities since the early 1980s to address the waste storage problem.
“They haven’t done anything with the [utilities’ and taxpayers’] money. It’s a disgrace,” said Tarantino.
The NRC does not take spent fuel storage into account as part of its relicensing process, but spokesman Neil Sheehan has: “We do believe that fuel can be stored onsite safely until then,” he said.
The best-case scenario has Pilgrim able to store spent fuel through the next seven years. After that – if the Yucca Mountain facility is not yet an option – Pilgrim will be forced to build dry cast storage for its spent fuel tanks.
With this process, spent fuel rods are placed in large metal canisters, which are sealed and drained of pool water. The canisters are put into large concrete vaults, where conductive air flow keeps the waste cool without water. The fuel pools can then be used again to store new spent fuel rods.
What role will Pilgrim play in our energy future?
“A lot of people say [we’re] not going to address the global climate change issue without seriously building nuke plants,” said Tarantino. “We’re not opposed to Cape Wind or other initiatives, but you still can’t depend on wind and solar for baseload generation 100 percent of the time.”
Tracing Pilgrim’s energy output on the grid is impossible since power flows where it is needed. In general, Southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire produce surpluses that the rest of Massachusetts and Connecticut quickly gobble up, while Maine and Vermont tend to use as much as they produce.
With rising oil prices, global warming and terror threats to our energy independence, nuclear energy clearly is back on the nation’s agenda.
“Listen, there’s no way to produce large amounts of electricity that don’t have some inherent risks,” Entergy’s Tarantino said.
“If you look at oil, for example, you have [spills like] the Exxon Valdez; with coal, there’s black lung disease and air pollution; gas is volatile and can go ‘boom’; hydro causes floods and other environmental damage.
“There’s no free lunch in the energy business, not even wind – it doesn’t blow all the time and it kills birds; and solar panels create toxic waste when it comes time to dispose the panels,” he added.
Published in Plymouth County Business October/November 2007 and Cape Business January/February 2008
Cape Business Newsletters
Keep up with the latest issues affecting your business and your life! To sign up for any of the Cape Business newsletters, click here.