Members of the Select and Planning boards indicated this week that, like most residents, they favor open space and recreation on most of the 1,531 acres around the former Pilgrim nuclear plant in Manomet owned by Holtec International. The company is in the process of decommissioning the plant, which stopped producing power six years ago.
The town has a right of first refusal if Holtec decides to sell the property. The company has not indicated whether it intends to do so. The price would be in the tens of millions of dollars.
But members of the boards are divided on what should happen on the 144-acre waterfront property that is home to the former power plant, as well as storage space for spent nuclear fuel. The town does not have a right of first refusal on that parcel, also owned by Holtec.
The boards met for a joint workshop session Tuesday for a presentation by Sasaki Associates – planning consultants hired by the town – to assess options for the larger 1,531-acre property.
“This could certainly be a prime site for something like small modular (nuclear) reactors if that was something that the community was in favor of supporting,” said Steve Bolotin, chair of the five-member Planning Board.
Select Board member Dick Quintal said he favored putting a small modular nuclear reactor on the site if – as Governor Maura Healey is urging – the Legislature removes a prohibition on nuclear reactors in Massachusetts.
Small modular reactors have a maximum capacity of 300 megawatts, less than half the power of the former 690-megawatt Pilgrim reactor. Because they are modular, they can be assembled at a factory and transported as a unit to a location. As a result, they are more affordable to build than large reactors. It is not clear whether the power generated at a small modular reactor would directly benefit Plymouth residents or would go into the grid, as Pilgrim’s electricity did.
Kevin Canty, the new Select Board chair, doesn’t think installing one or more small modular reactors is a good idea.
“Before we bring new nuclear reactors to Plymouth, it would be nice if we could get rid of the nuclear waste from the last one and not be the permanent depository of that,” Canty said. “If the state is interested in that type of thing they should be willing to go to bat for us to get rid of that stuff, out of this community, so that we’re not warehousing that in perpetuity, because as it stands right now, when Plymouth is celebrating its 1,600-year anniversary, we’re still going to have that nuclear waste on site.”
As with other closed power plants around the country, nuclear waste from Pilgrim plant will likely be stored indefinitely on site. A decades-long effort to open a single site for spent fuel storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has met with strong opposition.
Frank Mand, newly elected to the Planning Board, agreed with Canty.
“I am a little hesitant to endorse the notion of nuclear power plants, however new and innovative they are, in that zone because I think we don’t know what’s available, what’s possible, and all the problems that would be associated with them,” said Mand, who is known for his strong stands on environmental issues. “We do know without a doubt that they would be controversial.”
Newly elected Select Board member Deb Iaquinto said she likes the concept of small modular nuclear plants but would not want Plymouth to be “a beta site” for them.
“I definitely want to make sure that we would be very cautious along there and didn’t just jump in into something because we thought it would be a good revenue-generating thing to do,” Iaquinto said.
A final presentation with recommendations from Sasaki, based on the responses of residents and town boards, is due in July.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.