The announcement that Pilgrim will close by July 2019 is a cause for celebration. But there is, when you think about it, a sobering side effect. The decision to close the plant because spending the money necessary to make it safe would make it unprofitable is an implicit admission that it is unsafe.
In fact, having announced their intention to close the plant, the owner, Entergy, has even less incentive to run the plant safely.
Until now the public has been repeatedly reassured that Pilgrim is safe and ready to go on for another 17 years. The whole rationale for continuing to operate a plant whose malfunction could endanger so many, especially the Cape’s 220 ,000 people, for whom there is no evacuation plan (and none imaginable), is that the plant is perfectly safe.
The company’s announcement that they propose to keep Pilgrim running unsafely for another three and a half years is outrageous.
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