News Archive 2003

Closed or Not, Indian Point and Its Perils Won't Vanish
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
The New York Times
January 28, 2003

BUCHANAN, N.Y., Jan. 24 — Two weeks after a state-sponsored report said emergency planning was inadequate to protect residents from an extensive radioactive release from the Indian Point nuclear plant, four nearby counties have come to the same conclusion and refused to certify the evacuation plan required by federal officials to keep the plant in operation.

Gov. George E. Pataki faces a Friday deadline to certify the same plan. As that day approaches, opponents of the plant here, 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, feel they are closer than ever to achieving something never before done: persuading the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to force the permanent closure of an operating nuclear plant.

In fact, with the press of a button, technicians can drop carbon rods down inside the nuclear reactors at Indian Point, ending the splitting of atoms and the generation of electricity.

Despite the widespread post-9/11 security concerns that have made Indian Point the subject of enormous anxiety across New York's northern suburbs, its future is dependent on a complicated web of safety and economic issues, with or without the possibility of a calamitous terrorist attack.

Even if the plant stops generating energy, it will remain the repository for tons of spent radioactive fuel, which must be stored and protected at great cost, and will remain a potential terrorist target for the forseeable future.

Ending electricity generation at the plant, which provides at least 10 percent of the entire state's power, could carry enormous costs. Although the plant's opponents question the most severe predictions by the owner, the Entergy Corporation, even they agree that the public may pay more for power and experience shortages during peak periods if the plant stops producing.

In addition, Entergy, based in New Orleans, which bought Reactor 3 at Indian Point from the New York Power Authority in 2000 and Reactors 1 and 2 from Con Edison in 2001, is already suggesting that if the plant is shut down it may file lawsuits to recoup the $1 billion or so it spent to buy the reactors and the hundreds of millions more it has paid for security and upgrades.

"It could be lawsuit city," said a spokesman for Entergy, Jim Steets.

Mr. Pataki's aides have been reviewing the report, which was done by James Lee Witt, a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as the governor prepares for his decision on the evacuation plan. Even if he does not endorse that plan, however, the plant would not close immediately.

But opponents say that withholding approval would give a vital boost to their efforts through legal and administrative channels to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to shut down the plant.

Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper, an environmental organization leading the effort to close the plant, said removing a grave danger to the public would be worth the consequences of closing the plant. What is needed is the political will to act, he said, adding that the financial effect would not be as dire as Entergy has asserted.

"It depends on whether we are serious or not about doing it, closing it down," he said, "but it is completely doable."

In any case, New Yorkers will be living with the plant for many years to come, whether it is running or not.

"It is not as simple as flipping off the switch," said Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Reactor 1 opened in 1962 on the site of the former Indian Point Amusement Park, a destination for day-trippers on the Hudson River. It was one of the earliest commercial nuclear reactors and was built by Consolidated Edison to help keep up with the surging demand for electricity that accompanied the explosive growth of suburbia after World War II.

A Radiation Legacy

Con Edison closed Reactor 1 permanently in 1974 because it lacked an emergency cooling system for the reactor core, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission required for continued operation.
And there it sits. Most of its spent fuel was shipped to a reprocessing plant in West Valley, N.Y., about 35 miles south of Buffalo, which was eventually closed because of safety concerns. About 35 tons of Reactor 1's radioactive fuel remains at Indian Point in a pool that is leaking about 25 gallons a day.
Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say the water is being recovered in a drain and reprocessed and is not a hazard to the public.

No spent fuel from Reactor 2 or 3 has ever left the property. About 900 tons of the used radioactive fuel is submerged in water treated to prevent nuclear reactions in the 40-foot deep pools, which sit largely underground in a metal building next to the containment domes that house the reactors.

Essentially, the fuel has no place to go, so completely shutting down Indian Point and removing its radioactive material remains impossible.

Since the late 1950's, the federal government has been seeking a place to dump highly radioactive nuclear waste. It has designated a remote desert site in Yucca Mountain, Nev., but does not plan to open it until perhaps 2010, and the State of Nevada has filed a legal challenge.

"Spent fuel is one of the least certain of the problems needing to be solved," said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester County Democrat and a leader among those seeking to close the plant. "I am not frankly sure what is best to do with it."

The option preferred by many people who want to see Indian Point closed permanently is to store the waste in what are known as dry casks, thick reinforced-concrete containers.

Entergy already plans to move some of the spent fuel next year into such casks because it is running out of space in the pools.

Riverkeeper and several elected officials have advocated moving all the spent fuel into dry casks if the plant is closed and decommissioned — the process of dismantling it — although some fuel would remain in the pools for five years so that it could cool enough to be transferred to the casks.

Mr. Matthiessen, of Riverkeeper, suggested storing the waste in 10 to 20 casks buried underground on the Indian Point site.

"It would be more defensible" in a terrorist attack, he said, "and the consequences of an attack would be less severe."

Entergy, however, believes that such talk gets well ahead of the game.

It plans to fight any attempt to decommission the reactors and would argue that either the state or the federal government would have to foot at least a sizable portion of the decommissioning costs, which the regulatory commission has estimated would exceed $1 billion.

Every nuclear plant must maintain a decommissioning trust fund and make payments to it each year until the plant's 40-year operating license expires. (Reactor 2's license expires in 2013, and Reactor 3's in 2015, though Entergy has said it will seek a 20-year extension for both.) By then, in theory, the fund should have enough money to cover the costs of decontaminating and dismantling the plant.
About $650 million has been collected for all three reactors, according to a 2001 report to the regulatory commission, the most recent available.

If the owner closes a reactor before the license expires, the license-holder must pay the difference between the money in the fund and the cost of decommissioning. What happens if the commission forces an owner to close, however, remains legally unclear.

Entergy has also said it would seek reimbursement for the "hundreds of millions of dollars" it invested for security and for improved equipment, as well as some if not all the money it spent to buy the plant. It acquired the reactors for nearly $1 billion, with an up-front payment of more than $300 million.

"Entergy has put in hundreds of millions of dollars in this plant," said Larry Gottlieb, an Entergy spokesman. "Who is paying us back for that?"

Assemblywoman Sandra Galef, a Democrat whose district includes the plant, said she was concerned that if Entergy is financially weakened, its decommissioning work might be shoddy.

Ms. Galef said she opposed an immediate shutdown partly because Buchanan, which she represents, relies on the plant for 95 percent of its tax base. Many of the 1,500 workers at the plant also live in her district.

A 2,000-Megawatt Void

She has also expressed doubts about replacing Indian Point's power, an issue that has engendered yet another debate.

Indian Point sells much of its 2,000 megawatts of power to Con Edison and the New York Power Authority for distribution to some two million homes and businesses.

Reactor 2 feeds Con Edison, and Reactor 3 serves the power authority, which in turn distributes electricity to municipalities and most of the government buildings in New York City and Westchester. It provides the power for the subways and Metro-North commuter trains and La Guardia and Kennedy airports.

Entergy and Mr. Witt's report say Indian Point provides 20 percent to 40 percent of the electricity for New York City and its northern suburbs.

The question of what would happen if those 2,000 megawatts were lost has fed an argument between Entergy and those who want to shut the plant. The two sides have produced conflicting reports about whether the electricity could be made up and at what cost.

What is known is this: New York's demand for electricity has been rising while the supply has been stagnant. The New York Independent System Operator, the nonprofit organization that runs the state's power grid, has said the city alone will need 2,000 to 3,000 additional megawatts by 2005.
State regulators have approved proposals for several new conventional power plants, but construction has been delayed by financing problems resulting from the weakened economy and the scandal over the energy company, Enron.

An analysis in May by the Independent System Operator said closing the Indian Point reactors would diminish the reserve of electricity it maintains to guard against blackouts from unexpected plant shutdowns, unanticipated demand and routine maintenance.

If New York lost Indian Point, the analysis said, existing constraints on the transmission system meant that the state would still be able to import power only from New England, and that it might not be able to acquire enough electricity to maintain the full reserve, which is supposed to be at least 18 percent of the projected peak demand for a given year.

When New York set a record for demand on Aug. 9, 2001, it came dangerously close to exhausting the reserve.

The Independent System Operator also calculated that if Indian Point were not operating, wholesale electricity prices would increase 35 percent to 100 percent, but probably closer to 35 percent in a single year.

"It's a competitive market, and like any market, if you take supply out, prices go up," said Ken Klapp, a spokesman for the Independent System Operator, which has not taken a position on whether the plants should be closed.

Mr. Klapp said he could not predict how an increase in wholesale prices would affect the average customer bill because the rate structure varies widely among utilities and among residences and businesses.

Mr. Matthiessen said the average increase for consumers could be limited to 5 percent to 8 percent during the high-demand summer months if the state adopted stringent conservation measures. In addition, he said, a report Riverkeeper commissioned from an energy consultant indicates that the state's and the city's forecasts of their power needs were outdated because they were made before the economy turned sour, and also do not factor in the additional power that new plants will eventually supply.

Entergy fires back by saying long-term power projections must be considered because the economy eventually will improve, bringing with it a resurgence of building projects, which will include the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. Mr. Gottlieb said it would be dangerous to shut Indian Point on the assumption that the new plants will be built in the next several years, given the delays that are already occurring.

One option suggested by Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester county executive, and some lawmakers is for the county to acquire Indian Point and convert it to a natural gas plant. The county has set aside at least $300,000 for a feasibility study of that proposal, though it is unclear whether that would be enough to complete the study.

Mr. Spano estimated the purchase and construction costs of such a conversion at $2 billion to $3 billion, at least twice the amount of the county's annual budget, and said the study would address where the money would come from.

Entergy steadfastly says it will not sell. It has put its faith in federal regulators and, if necessary, the courts to block any attempt to close Indian Point.

"If there is no reason to have the license removed, then certainly you have the right to question that in a court, because that is where most things end up," Mr. Gottlieb said. "Entergy has good reason to believe we are being falsely accused of a crime we never committed, because there hasn't been a crime."

Commission Has Final Say

The ultimate decision on shutting the plant rests with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has ordered plants closed temporarily because of safety concerns, but it has never canceled a license over something like the perceived inadequacy of evacuation plans.

The commission's regulations give it wide latitude, even in the case of emergency planning. For instance, even if it determines that an evacuation plan is inadequate, the commission can give the plant owner an opportunity to show that the plan is actually adequate or that it can address the problems. The commission can also let the owner offer "other compelling reasons for continued operation."

Those who have watched the commission for years remain skeptical that it would ultimately withdraw Entergy's license over emergency planning, in part because of consequences to New York City's power and the precedent such action might set for the nation's 101 other working reactors; some of them also sit in heavily populated areas, though none are in an area as dense as Indian Point's surroundings.

"You can have hostile takeovers, but I don't think you can have a hostile decommissioning," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group that has been critical of safety at the plant.

Joan Aron, a former regulatory commission official, was more emphatic.

"I see no possibility of the N.R.C. closing the plant on emergency grounds," said Ms. Aron, the author of "Licensed to Kill? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Shoreham Power Plant" (1998, University of Pittsburgh Press), on the stillborn Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island. "I don't think they would even consider it because they conduct emergency planning exercises once a year, and I think they are very satisfied with the way they go."

Opponents remain firm in saying there is widespread support for closing it down. Since 9/11, there have been public hearings and denunciations of the plant by a wide range of lawmakers, interest groups and residents.

"The earthquake of the last 10 days has coalesced public opinion," Mr. Brodsky said.

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