The Mail Edison's Power Plant

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I wish to bring to public attention the fact that no public hearings are planned on the operating license application of the Boston Edison Company for their nuclear power plant in Plymouth. Massachusetts. Compared to the considerable public attention that other nuclear plants throughout New England and the country received, the Plymouth station has been almost completely overlooked by members of our community.

A public hearing on an operating license application for a nuclear power plant is required by the Atomic Energy Commission only when some concerned citizens request one. On April 23, the Atomic Energy Commission gave notice of its intention to grant an operating license for the Plymouth plant in the Federal Register. If there is to be a public hearing a valid request must be filed within thirty days of the appearance of the notice. Therefore, unless some action is taken before May 23, the right to a public hearing on the Pilgrim Nuclear Station will be lost by default.

The possible repercussions of the nuclear plant's presence and operation on the public health and safety could be fully evaluated in a public hearing. . . .

Hearings should be requested so that basic questions about the Pilgrim nuclear power plant's safety and emission controls might be asked and satisfactory fly answered before the station be allowed to operate. The key safety device presently missing at the Yankee power station in Vernon. Vermont, is, I am assured by a call to the Boston Edison Company, present in the Plymouth reactor. This does not mean, however, that all cause for concern ceases. A common characteristic of the two plants, for example, is that they are both boiling water reactors. This type of reactor (pressurized water reactors are the alternative kind of reactors in current use) has a record of annually emitting hundreds of thousands of curies of radiation into the environment. Pressurized water reactors, on the other hand, emit hardly any radiation. Why was the more polluting kind of reactor chosen? What kind of hazard is posed by the emissions of the boiling water reactor? These are the kind of questions that the public should ask of the power company before the reactor is allowed to operate. Yet no opportunity to raise such questions will be had if the date of May 23 quietly slips by without a petition for a hearing being filed by concerned citizens.

Petitions for a hearing on the operating license application for the Pilgrim nuclear power plant should be made in conformation with AEC rules, which the local newspapers should publish, and be sent to

The Secretary of the Commission

The Atomic Energy Commission Washington, D.C. 20545