Outgoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko voted yesterday against a license renewal for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass.

Jaczko's vote, seen as a protest of the commission's stance on the plant, will likely be in the minority. Typically in the renewal process, commissioners submit decisions in writing. The decisions are then tabulated by a secretary and released together.

But Jaczko made his vote public before the other commissioners vote. He is urging the other commissioners to delay their votes while litigation against the plant remains unresolved.

"While I appreciate the need to have an appropriate procedure for bringing this process to completion, the current approach that my colleagues on the commission support is unprecedented," he wrote.

His vote comes a month after NRC staff recommended the commissioners vote to approve the renewal. The commission has never rejected an application, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said. The six years the commission has spent considering Pilgrim's license renewal is more than any other power plant in the country.

The plant's opponents argue that plant operator Entergy Corp. cannot do enough to ensure safety, especially with aging pipes, problems with electrical cables and lack of a sufficient cleanup plan.

"All the NRC commissioners except Chairman Jaczko have caved to industry and political pressure and abandoned the NRC's own procedure that requires hearings on a license renewal application is completed before license renewal is granted," said Mary Lampert, director of Pilgrim Watch.

In the past two months, Jaczko has voted against the license renewals of nuclear power plants in South Carolina and Georgia (David Abel, Boston Globe, May 25). -- JE