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A LETTER TO THE GAZETTE FROM JOEL GINGOLD ON THE ISSUE OF HOLTEC, TRUST, AND MORE
April 30, 2023
To the Editor,
Judging by the April 27 meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board (DOB), it appears likely that, despite widespread and vocal opposition, Holtec will be dumping large quantities of tritiated water into the Hudson over the next several months. It was noted that Holtec’s proposed releases are well within the limits promulgated by the federal government. Federal and state officials, as well as some members of the DOB, itself, presented detailed data ostensibly demonstrating that such releases will be well below established standards and will not pose a risk to health and safety.
And it was reiterated that it is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) alone that has jurisdiction over radioactive releases, and, even if the Harckham-Levenberg bill is adopted by New York State, the state cannot prevent the dumping unless legal precedents can be overturned.
So why then are so many people, including many of our public officials, so vehemently opposed to these releases? The answer boils down to a single word—TRUST.
People simply do not trust Holtec to abide by the rules and do the right thing. And worse, they do not trust the NRC to adequately regulate the decommissioning process and hold Holtec to an acceptably high standard. There are even those who do not trust that the standards issued by NRC and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will effectively protect the health and safety of the public, especially when it comes to women and children.
There are many reasons for this loss of trust and it would take too much space to reiterate them here. But because of the absence of trust, many are concerned, or even fearful, that the proposed dumping will create a danger for themselves and their families, for recreation in the Hudson, for the river’s ecosystem, and even for the health of industries in our area. And nothing that was said by the NRC, the EPA, relevant state agencies, or members of the DOB dissuaded them from these concerns.
Why? Because they do not trust those bodies to look out for their interests. The psychological impact on the residents of the Hudson Valley of Holtec’s dumping is as important, or maybe even more important, than any actual physical threat.
So what is to be done to resolve this dilemma? If people do not trust the regulators to adequately oversee the disposal process, the process itself must be changed.
There are a number of alternatives for disposal of the contaminated water, none of them particularly good, but we can choose the least worst. As is being done at the Vermont Yankee plant, the water can be solidified with clay-based material to immobilize the bad actors, and then buried at a licensed burial site—in Texas in the case of Indian Point—along with all of the other radioactive components of the plant. The solidification can be effected either at the Indian Point site, at the burial site, or at some intermediate location.
This will obviously be more complicated and expensive than simply dumping the water into the river, but with the widespread loss of trust in all of the institutions designated to protect us, it is the only way that the thousands, or millions, of people in the Hudson Valley will be comfortable that they will not be harmed and that the contaminated material is safely deposited deep underground where it cannot injure anybody.
Some have called for storing the water on site in the (vain) hope that some magic solution will appear in a year or two. But we are really talking about decades, or even centuries, of storage before the vast majority of the tritium has decayed. And there are numerous other problems involved with onsite tank storage.
In parallel, we must bring pressure to bear on our federal officials—after dithering for a year or more, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand and Congressman Lawler have finally taken notice of this situation—to force the NRC to once again become a true regulatory agency and compel Holtec, and all of the other decommissioning contractors, to follow rigorous and comprehensive regulations that actually protect public health and safety—just like it says in the federal statutes. Then, perhaps, that lost trust might be restored.
Sincerely,
Joel E. Gingold
Climate/Environment Chair
CCoHOPE Indivisible
