Junk Plant Pilgrim: Could Cape Cod Be Evacuated After The Current Blizzard

Update

NRC resident seem extremely rushed for time when I called. Said the NRC is trying to deal with the loop. It seems strange this busyness so many days after the LOOP and reconnected to the grid. She said the LOOP went pretty well. She said it was the switchyard that caused it and it was Entergy's gear.  

Pilgrim has had massive historic problems with the grid around their Plant. Its trips them many times and isolates them from outside power. Though shutdown this blizzard, they had very serious grid problems this blizzard.

Watching Pilgrim over the years, you can clearly see both Entergy and the grid owners haven't kept up with maintenance. These insufficient funding of maintenance and updating equipment issues have massively impacted Pilgrim's reliability and safety.  

Excerpts from the most Current Blizzard:   

“It’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks for everyone down here on the Cape and across the Commonwealth,” he said.

Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Matthew Beaton said the region has been dealing with an, “an unprecedented volume of outages in recent weeks.”

Several of the state representatives said in addition to the problem with the power failures, many Cape Codders lost cell service, specifically AT&T customers.

Hunt, who represents portions of the Upper Cape and Plymouth, said we can’t accept the excuse that being an ocean-side community leads to more outages.,

“You have to build your utility to withstand the conditions wherever your utility is,” Hunt said. 

“It does make me wonder if there’s probably a larger conversation we should be having about trees,” Baker said.

“The biggest question I have that needs to be answered is what is the state of the utility and electric supply out there with old telephone poles, old transformers and other things that have not been updated,” Cyr told the Herald. “When you have a stress like this — when it’s older equipment — it’s not as resilient.”

Cyr said in addition to keeping an eye on Eversource Energy’s power restoration efforts, he wants to know what is being done now to make sure the electric system stands up better to the next storm, especially with the expectation that the weather could grow worse as the climate changes. 

“Why do we have this failure?” he asked. “I think that’s what we are going to be working at. We have to have an electric supply system that can stand up in the environment we have out there.”

Eversource spokesman Mike Durand said the company has a comprehensive tree-trimming program and equipment upgrade plan.

“The reason for the devastation that we have seen in this storm and previous storms is the severe weather” that brought a foot of snow and hurricane-force winds to the Cape, Durand said.