I am back in the states for a few days visiting family in the Boston area. They live just outside the Emergency Planning Zone near the Pilgrim Plant, a General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor operating since 1972 and now the only operating nuclear plant in Massachusetts. Originally operated by Boston Edison Co., the plant is now owned and operated by Louisiana-based Entergy Corp. The operating license was renewed earlier in 2012 after resolution of a number of challenges. Pilgrim had its ups and downs in the 1980s when equipment and management problems resulted in a prolonged plant shutdown. FEMA also identified emergency planning deficiencies that had to be addressed at a time when Governor Dukakis' administration was actively fighting the licensing of the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire on emergency planning grounds and seemed to follow a policy of benign neglect at Pilgrim.
We used to take the kids up to Massachusetts for summer holidays and walked Green Harbor and Duxbury Beaches and could see the plant across Plymouth Harbor in the distance.
A number of local citizens and advocacy groups were active in the restart proceedings in the late 1980s when I worked for Commissioner and then Chairman Carr. Carr appeared at a congressional field hearing in Plymouth after an inspector general report criticized the NRC staff's handling of some restart issues. Perhaps demonstrating best that there is room for mutual respect across varying viewpoints on nuclear energy, one of the local activists to this day sends Admiral Carr flowers on his birthday.
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