NRC grants safety upgrade exemption to Massachusetts’s Pilgrim nuclear plant

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently granted several safety requirement exemptions to the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The exemptions allow the plant to disregard an order to harden its containment vent system and new
seismic and flooding regulations created following the radiation leak at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

The NRC said they chose to issue the exemptions, in part, because the power station is scheduled to close
in June 2019.

“We determined that in light of the plant’s remaining operational life span, the time to complete remaining flooding and seismic evaluations is insufficient to complete the assessments, design, and approval of changes to the plant,” Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC, said. “What’s more, we have not found that the implementation of changes in this area will result in a meaningful further improvement to the plant’s safety.”

Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke out against the granted exemptions. Prior to the decision, the Massachusetts delegation sent a letter to the NRC urging the commission not to grant any exemptions or extensions from critical safety requirement to the Pilgrim plant.

“When Entergy announced its intention to cease operations at Pilgrim, the NRC promised that it would hold Entergy responsible for running the plant as safely as possible until that time,” Markey said. “By providing exemptions from requirements meant to address the risk of terrorist attacks or severe accidents such as natural disasters, the NRC has broken its promise. I urge the NRC to rescind its decision, and to hold Pilgrim to the highest safety standard.”

Pilgrims officials released a statement stating they were pleased with the NRC’s decision, however.

“Our request was based on similar requests across the industry and our ability to show that the current wetwell vents installed . . . in 1988, along with additional enhancements to the plant made in 2015, as part of the lessons learned from Fukushima, allowed for this outcome,” Patrick O’Brien, a Pilgrim spokesman, said.