New York gets heated over power plant's future
By JEFF PRUZAN.
18 July 2002
Financial Times (FT.Com)

Entergy, the New Orleans-based company, spent $602m last year on buying Indian Point, a nuclear power plant on the Hudson River about 70km north of midtown Manhattan. After years of poor safety and local opposition, t he previous owner, the utility Con Edison, was happy to accept what many considered a low price.

The date was September 6 2001. Five days later American Airlines Flight 11 flew directly over the facility on its way to destroying the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Within a week, dormant fears of the prospect of a successful air-based terrorist attack on the plant reached a level not seen in years. People spoke of the annihilation of everything in a 80km radius - home to some 21m people, including all of New York City.

In Buchanan, New York, residents who have worried over Indian Point's woeful safety since its 1974 opening are demanding the plant's closure with new fervour - particularly amid months of vague terrorism warnings from the White House.

But the plant's defenders shudder at the thought of Indian Point's closure. The facility delivers a significant fraction of New York City's power baseload. Estimates vary but aver age about 16 per cent. To some, the economic and social risks of a shutdown - business failures, heat-related deaths or riots - are just as scary as an accident.

The issue is thorny enough to have forced for-or-against declarations from all three serious candidates for governor of New York. George Pataki, who is seeking re-election, favours keeping the plant open; Andrew Cuomo and Carl McCall, the two Democrats vying to unseat Mr Pataki, favour its orderly closure.

The controversy also skirts the age-old American tussle between environmentalism and capitalism. Each side insists that its efforts will save the entire New York City area, perhaps even the entire nation, from pandemonium and destruction.

Supporters and opponents disagree on virtually everything: Indian Point's necessity to New York City's power supply, its vulnerability, and whether shutting it down would make the sit e any safer. Both sides rest their cases on credible but contradictory studies, statistics and science.

Entergy Nuclear Northeast, Indian Point's owner, insists that its contribution to New York's power supply has no substitutes. Larry Gottlieb, the company's communications director, says existing infrastructure cannot bring more energy to the region. "You would need new substations and new power lines," he said, while efforts to bring more natural gas to the local grid have been mired in local politics and regulatory processes.

Others doubt Indian Point's necessity to New York City's baseload. "There's enough generation capacity throughout the region to replace all the power from Indian Point," insists Dan Rosenblum, senior attorney at the Pace Law School energy project.

California cut its energy consumption by 10 to 12 per cent during its recent energy crisis, Mr Rosenblum says, adding that New York City could do likewise.

Closing the plant would do "absolutely nothing" to make Indian Point less vulnerable, argues Bill Brier, the vice-president at Edison Electric Institute, the US power industry's principal trade group. The business costs of an indefinite shutdown warrant continued operation, Mr Brier says.

But Stephen Kent of Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition counters: "The sooner we shut it down the sooner the clock starts on cooling spent fuel. This may make the plant safer or even less attractive to terrorists."

What would happen in a September 11-style attack? Nothing, insists Entergy's Mr Gottlieb. The US government now considers it among the safest industrial facilities of any kind in the world, he says, since a direct hit from a fuel-filled Boeing 747 would not penetrate the layers of concrete and steel surrounding its energy-producing core.

By contrast, anti-Indian Point activists see only an incredibly vulnerable facility, completely exposed to air and river traffic. If the core is attacked, opponents argue, the explosion would destroy everything within 28km kill or sicken everyone within 80km.

"There's no other plant in the US whose destruction would have as big an impact on the population or the economy," said Ipsec's Mr Kent, who lives 6.5km from the facility. Somewhere between terrified locals and furious industry officials lies the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog dedicated to safe nuclear power.

David Lochbaum, a UCS nuclear safety engineer, says calls to close Indian Point "wouldn't be as broad based" were the facility's safety record not so terrifying. Only removing the spent fuel to a permanent waste repository could make a decommissioned Indian Point safer, he added.
Although the Senate approved such a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, this month, the vote was far from the last word on the matter, with advocates on either side expecting years of lawsuits and controversy.

BACK TO TOP