Reasoned discussion evaporated at the monthly meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Council, or NDCAP.
The public comment period, in one council member’s words, devolved into shouting about the process. The subject, before devolution, was evaporation of water from the closed Pilgrim nuclear power plant’s spent fuel pool. In its 50 years of operation, the plant produced the radioactive isotope tritium. It occurs organically when the sun’s rays pass through the atmosphere.
We are thus exposed to 600 curies of it a year. It binds with water. When water evaporates, it releases tritium into the air.
When the plant operated it released up to 40 curies of tritium year. It now releases a fraction of one. Critics of the decommissioning say that’s too much.
They verbally attacked vice-chair of the council, Pine duBois, who had called for the plant’s closure for three decades.
