Decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth is ongoing as the 2019 shut down date looms on the horizon.
Members of the state's Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel held their second meeting last night where they voted on new leadership and further set the agenda of the 21-member panel.
Heather Lightner is the President of Concerned Neighbors of Pilgrim, a former member of the town of Plymouth’s Nuclear Matters Committee and a member of the State's Nuclear Decommissioning panel. She says at the meeting panel members approved two new co-chairs, Sean Mullin and Kurt Schwartz, of Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.
Lightner tells WGBH News the panel is not working outside the scope of state statutes and says recent criticism about the focus of the panel was cleared up during the two-hour long meeting.
“We talked about the top priorities for discussion over the next six months. All of those things are related to decommissioning and not to day-to-day operations of the plant, not a critique of how the plant is operating right now … these things are all relevant to decommissioning,” said Lightner.
Earlier this week Michael Twomey, a top official with Entergy, which owns the Pilgrim Plant, wrote a letter saying panel members were overstepping their purview in some of their discussions and agenda.
Lightner says the panel voted to shorten regular meetings to 90 minutes.
She says her concern is safer storage of spent fuel and where storage pads are located and how close they are to Cape Cod Bay.
To listen to Heather Lightner's entire interview with Marilyn Schairer, click on the audio player above.
