Pilgrim: MUST rallies at Plymouth Rock

Approximately 100 people gathered in Memorial State Park Saturday morning to call on the town and state to improve safety at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Manomet.

The new organization Pilgrim: MUST initiated the rally leading a coalition which included Massachusetts Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, C-10 Foundation and Toxics Action Center.

Pilgrim: MUST co-founder Anna Baker read the group's safety improvement demands: "Until the lessons of Fukishima have been learned and the above fixes have been put in place, state and federal officials should ensure the plant takes appropriate safety measures before they grant a license extension. It is also critical that we involve a third party expert - not simply the NRC - in the review process."

That final demand would mean the state and federal governments would respond within 13 months.

Public involvement in the license review process began six years ago when NRC officials and Entergy employees far outnumbered members of the public at a hearing in Memorial Hall. Then, as this weekend, most of the commenting public arrived from out of town.

Several people addressed the gathering, most noting that Plymouth's nuclear power plant has the same design as the Fukisimia, Japan power plant that had a partial melt-down in March.

The Pilgrim plant's license to operate expires in June of next year. Entergy, the nation-wide corporation that owns the plant, has applied to extend the license another 20 years. The plant began producing electricity in 1972.

The "Must" of Pilgrim MUST stands for Make Us Safe Today. Anna Baker, of Marshfield, and Daniel Ryan, of Duxbury, organized the group not to oppose nuclear power, but to improve its safety locally.

Long term nuclear activist Mary "Pixie" Lampert, of Duxbury, told those at the rally that accidents have ocurred at nuclear power plants on average every 11 years.

"Shut it down," some people shouted in response.

Most of the participants came to the rally from Kingston, Duxbury, Marshfield and Cape Cod.

Pilgrim MUST has five demands:

1. Add no more spent fuel rods to the storage pool at Pilgrim than the original design allowed.

The spent fuel rod pool was designed to hold 880 assemblies, it now holds approximately 3,000. The designers assumed the federal government would have a permanent national storage facilty before the onsite pool reached its 880 capacity. The government currently still has no plan.

2. Improve electrical power supply to the plant with new, moisture-resistant cables and additional electrical generators off-site.

The spent fuel rod pool and the reactor core require a constant supply of water for cooling. In case of a failure, electricity produced off-site would run the circulation pumps. The plant has electricity stored in batteries and it has two back-up electrical generators powered by diesel. The Fukishima plant failed becasuse it had no external source of electricity and its back-up generators didn't work.

3. Upgrade emergency planning and extend the emergency zone from 10 to 25 miles.

The current zones do not include Cape Cod or Cape Ann which could be affected by a radioactive release, depending on seasonal prevailing winds. Japan required evacuation of residents within 20 miles of the Fukishima plant.

4. Increase the number of monitoring wells around the plant and increase the frequency of testing.

Pilgrim's monitoring wells have detected the radioactive element tritium in ground water. Tritium causes an array of human reporductive disorders.

5. Delay the relicensing until the corporation complies with te first four safety demands.

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