A warning about radioactive air pollution from Pilgrim
By JOE HODGKIN, SUSAN RACINE and BRITA LUNDBERG, CommonWealth Beacon
Published on February 26, 2024
Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth.
Andrea Campbell filed a civil lawsuit last week against Holtec, the company decommissioning the Pilgrim nuclear power station in Plymouth, for releasing asbestos air pollution during their demolition process. Asbestos is a known airborne carcinogen that causes malignant mesothelioma, lung cancer and ovarian cancer.
Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility applauds the lawsuit but believes another hazard lurks unseen at Plymouth – radioactive air pollution. Release of microscopic radioactive airborne particles – radionuclides – is currently happening during the decommissioning of the Pilgrim nuclear station.
When most nuclear power plants in the US are decommissioned, their radioactive waste is hauled off site. But not so at Plymouth. Instead, Holtec has lobbied state and federal regulators for a cheaper option–disposal of large amounts of radioactive waste here locally in Massachusetts, which avoids the costs of long-distance transport.
Holtec first tried to get rid of Pilgrim’s waste by dumping 1.1 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. That action was blocked by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
Now, Holtec has placed heaters in the reactor cavity to evaporate this radioactive wastewater, putting dangerous radioactive contaminants into the air.
Initially, Holtec did not publicly disclose these actions. They came to light only because a whistleblower last summer alerted the public about serious health concerns that could result. At that time, Holtec temporarily stopped the forced evaporation of radionuclides–which, by the company’s own admission, is “damaging to the environment.”
These radionuclides are also damaging to humans. The radioactive elements known and suspected to be released from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station are carcinogens known to cause lung cancer, bone cancer, thyroid cancer, and adult and childhood leukemia. Yet last November, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the company the green light to resume the forced evaporation of radioactive wastewater.
Public health experts are extremely concerned about the health repercussions of this decision. Almost a year ago, Dr. Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist and marine radiochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, expressed concern about the high levels of radioactivity in the wastewater now being forcibly evaporated at the Plymouth plant.
Testing of the wastewater by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health revealed very high levels of Cesium-137 and other radionuclides. “Compared to background levels of radiation found in Cape Cod Bay, the tritium levels in the untreated wastewater are a million times higher and Cesium-137 is 200 million times higher,” Buesseler said. “Removing 99 percent of the Cesium-137 would still result in water with 400 times [more of this isotope] than what is allowed in US drinking water.“
In other words, even after extensive cleaning and filtration, significant radioactive contamination will remain in the wastewater.
In an online report, Buesseler said Cesium-137 levels are elevated in the reactor water, so it can be assumed that additional high level radioactive elements of concern like americium and plutonium are also present, although they were not tested for by the Department or Public Health.
By evaporating the radioactive wastewater, Holtec is releasing radionuclides directly into the air we breathe. These airborne radionuclides will also fall into Cape Cod Bay and local aquifers where they will end up in fish, shellfish, and drinking water and can be ingested.
“Whatever is in the reactor water can evaporate along with the water,” said Dr. Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The idea that only water comes out is wrong.”
At the January community meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in Plymouth, a 12-year-old boy stood up and asked what the risk was to him. “My house lies within 800 feet of the plant. What effect is it going to have on my health?” he asked.
According to public health expert and pediatrician Dr. Philip Landrigan of Boston College, children are at high risk from exposure to radiation. While high-dose exposures to these materials are the most highly carcinogenic, Landrigan said any exposure to radiation carries measurable risk of cancer. “Exposures in utero during pregnancy and exposures to young children are especially dangerous,” he said.
Like other toxic pollutants, such as PM2.5, lead, and benzene, Landrigan said there is no safe level of radiation exposure.
Daniel Hirsch, retired director of the program on environmental and nuclear policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said “there is no credible expert who believes that [disposing of this nuclear waste in this way] is safe. It is no safer to evaporate it than to dump it into Cape Cod Bay.”
Early in the history of the Pilgrim reactor, there were aerosol releases of radionuclides.
Dr. Richard Clapp, former Massachusetts state cancer epidemiologist and emeritus professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health, studied the effects of these radioactive releases from the Plymouth nuclear station more than four decades ago. He found that negative health effects showed up relatively quickly.
Clapp said airborne releases from Pilgrim in 1974 and 1975 “were due to bad ‘cladding’ on the fuel rods, which required that radioactive steam had to be released out of the reactor building stack to relieve pressure. If this steam had not been released, the plant would not have been able to keep operating.”
Clapp’s study showed that infant mortality, thyroid cancer, and leukemia were all significantly increased after this venting of radioactive vapor. “The cancer ‘footprint’ from this practice,” he said, “started showing up early: the excess leukemias showed up in the 1982-84 time period, but infant mortality increased even earlier– in the mid-1970s– earlier than the leukemia excess. This is consistent with the timing of the [aerosol] radiation releases.”
Clapp noted that because so many Pilgrim workers had exceeded their annual allowed radiation dose, the plant was shut down for extended maintenance at one point in the 1980s. “News coverage at the time indicated that Pilgrim had over-exposed more workers than any other US nuclear plant during the same time period,” he said.
Holtec has told the Plymouth community that aerosolizing radioactive waste is a safe method of disposal. Yet they have provided no data to support that claim.
Holtec has also reassured the public that their wastewater is safe because it is filtered.
But there are several problems with that assertion. The radionuclide tritium cannot be filtered because it is part of the water molecule. Holtec has not shared the radionuclide content of the water they are releasing. And Holtec has not disclosed whether it has removed the high level radionuclides like americium and plutonium with their filtration. These were not even tested for in their previous analysis.
Indeed, Holtec revealed at the same public forum that their own monitoring is detecting radionuclides in vented air. They did not disclose which radionuclides they are detecting.
Holtec has also confirmed that they are using the air evaporated from the reactor cavity to heat the building during decommissioning. This poses a hazard to their workers – and to the public.
The Massachusetts Medical Society has called for scientific study of the Pilgrim nuclear plant decommissioning process and potential health effects on workers, residents, and the environment. Likewise, Buesseler of Woods Hole has called for a radiological impact assessmentand a “re-analysis of the water by an independent lab and using more sensitive methods to make a more complete analysis.”
Aerosol release of radionuclides via evaporation of radioactive wastewater poses a clear risk to the health of surrounding communities. This release of radionuclides is a form of air pollution. Massachusetts has taken action on asbestos released during the Pilgrim decommissioning process, which is an important measure that will benefit health. But the state must go further, enforcing our air pollution laws, which prohibit the emission of radioactive materials into the ambient air.
The surrounding communities of Pilgrim have already been disproportionately subjected to the negative health impacts of excess radiation exposure and deserve better. Releasing this radioactive contaminated air is a risk to health and safety-– an unacceptable one.