Two Massachusetts Democrats are warning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission against renewing a license for the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth, Mass., without considering effects on endangered fish and birds.

Reps. Ed Markey and William Keating told NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko in a letter today that extending Entergy Corp.'s plant license for an additional 20 years without studying the impacts would be a blow to commission transparency.

They also questioned the NRC staff's April 20 recommendation that the five-member panel renew the license despite the challenges.

The staff said the NRC is "not compelled to await exhaustion of administrative or judicial appeals before renewing the operating license" and asked that commissioners approve New Orleans-based Entergy's permit to keep the plant going past June 8, when its current license expires.

"If the commission takes the unprecedented step of granting the staff's request to short-circuit these proceedings and appeals, it will be undermining the very spirit of transparency, participation and collaboration to which it claims to be committed," Markey and Keating wrote.

Environmental and anti-nuclear groups are asking a three-judge NRC licensing board to reject the agency’s staff's request to approve the re-licensing request and hold oral hearings on whether continued operation of the plant would harm five whales, four turtles and the Atlantic sturgeon. The groups are also arguing that continued operation of the plant could harm the roseate tern, a seabird whose population is in decline.

Mary Lampert, the director of the anti-nuclear group Pilgrim Watch, said approving the license extension without considering those creatures would violate the Endangered Species Act, the Administrative Procedures Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

"NRC commissioners don't have the right to play referee, blow the whistle, declare the winner in the second quarter of the game and say 'everybody off the field,'" Lambert said.

The licensing board threw out an earlier request to incorporate lessons from the Japanese nuclear crisis in Entergy's license extension. Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was crippled last March by an earthquake and tsunami that triggered explosions and radioactive leaks. An internal NRC study pulled lessons from the disaster, but the agency is still finalizing rules and orders for nuclear plant safety upgrades.

Although Jaczko sympathized with Lampert's request, the majority of the five-member commission denied it (Greenwire, Feb. 23).