The Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station is located in Plymouth, Massachusetts and draws its cooling water from Cape Cod Bay. It is a General Electric boiling water reactor built in 1972 by Boston Edison with a six hundred and ninety megawatt generation capacity. It was sold to Entergy Corporation in 1999. The original license expired in 2012. In 2006, Entergy applied for a twenty year extension which was granted.
The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about seventy six thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about four million eight hundred thousand people. The estimated risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant is moderate.
In 1983, the plant was shut down for ten months to replace cracked recirculating piping that had only lasted for ten years when it was supposed to last for forty years. In 1986, the plant experienced a series of forced shutdowns due to recurring equipment problems. Repairs and replacements of equipment were made over the next couple of years and the reactor was restarted at the end of 1988. It was shutdown do to the fact that the equipment monitoring the core was not functioning. The problem was fixed and the reactor was restarted. It was shut down because of inoperable breakers for the drywell vacuum. The problem was fixed and the reactor was restarted. It was shut down because of a leak in the instrument air system. The problem was fixed and the reactor was restarted. It was shut down after a failure of the main transformer. The transformer was replaced and the reactor was restarted and reconnected to the power grid. The plant was shut down for two and one half years and the owners had to spend over a billion dollars to correct the series of problems.
The NRC had told the operators that the reactor had serious problems in 1986 but had not insisted that the reactor be shut down to correct the problems. The reactor automatically shut itself down due to problems after the NRC notification. The operators restarted the reactor and two days later it automatically shut down again. This time the NRC insisted that the problems all be addressed before the reactor was started again. Critics are concerned that the NRC did not require a shutdown when the problems were known and waited until two automatic shutdowns before insisting that the problems be fixed. An internal report at the NRC said that some staff had not provided accurate information on the problem but they were not fired or disciplined.
When Entergy filed for the license extension in 2006, local activists challenged the renewal on the basis of all the problems that the plant had had. The NRC voted to grant the extension anyway. The state of Massachusetts filed suit to prevent the license extension. Ultimately the federal courts denied the legal challenge and the license extension was granted.
Once again we have a case of poor design, ignored warnings, problems with repairs, incompetence of NRC staff and poor oversight on the part of the NRC. In addition, this is another case where a state did not want a trouble reactor to be relicensed but the federal courts overruled the state authorities.
