Nuclear New York
Op-Ed
By WILLIAM TUCKER
New York Sun
May 23, 2003

One good place from which to view New York’s impending energy problems this week was Santa Monica, Calif. There, just a few yards from the beach, the Nuclear Energy Institute held its annual convention. Now, southern California weather isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The "June Gloom" cast a pall of fog across the entire Los Angeles basin so the sun was visible only intermittently. Yet this doesn’t seem to stop the western migrations.

"I lived in Connecticut until I decided I could no longer stand winter," said Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer Richard Rhodes, author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," who addressed the convention.

"I moved here from New York to write Hollywood scripts," echoed Investors Business Daily editorial writer David Isaac, who was covering the convention. "Now I like the weather so much I probably won’t go back." You meet these kinds of people all over the Sunbelt – former Northeasterners who have decided they can’t withstand temperatures below 50 degrees.

Of course, as soon as they get out there, they turn on the air conditioning and buy another car, which is why Sunbelt cities consume energy at almost twice the rate as New York City. Still, all this doesn’t speak well to people who think we’re going to conserve our way out of our energy problems.

The news from New York last week wasn’t much better. Even in the midst of a recession, electrical consumption is climbing faster than predicted. While power consumption increased 150 to 250 megawatts a year in the 1990s, it is now growing at 200 to 250 megawatts. "That’s particularly surprising because we’re in an economic downturn," a spokesman for Con Edison, Ed Petta, said. "Usually a recession produces a decline in energy consumption. This time it hasn’t happened."

The explanation is the usual one: People still like the temperature to be between 68 and 72 degrees.

"Just a few years ago our customers were adding 100,000 new air-conditioning units each year to our service base," Mr. Petta said. "Now we’re revising that figure upward to 200,000. People are no longer content to have air conditioning in the bedroom. They want it throughout the whole house.

More people are working at home now so they use it during the day. There’s also been a minor construction boom and new houses usually have central air conditioning."

To that you also have to add the fascination with electronic gizmos. "Computers and all the other electronic tools are driving up demand," Mr. Petta said. "Electricity is still the fastest-growing segment of the energy economy."

As a result, New York City’s peak consumption is expected to jump 5% this summer, from last year’s limit of 12,000 megawatts to 12,600 megawatts. Right now, the city just barely meets the New York State Independent Systems Operator’s requirement that 80% of this electricity be generated within our service area.

We only make this by including the 420 megawatts of "temporary" gas-turbine peaking power installed around the city over strenuous neighborhood objections in the last two years. Until something better comes along, those "temporary" facilities will probably become permanent.

"If we don’t have unusually hot weather and we avoid equipment problems, we may get through this summer," a spokesman for the New York Independent Systems Operator, Ken Klapp, said. "But if we have three or four 95-degree days in succession and equipment starts failing, we could be in trouble."

All this makes hash out of plans in Westchester County to close Indian Point. Of the 10,000 megawatts generated in New York and Westchester, one-fifth comes from Indian Point Nuclear Reactors 2 and 3. Another 2,000 megawatts are imported from upstate and beyond. As Mr. Rhodes, who considers himself an environmentalist, told the nuclear convention in Santa Monica, "Anybody who thinks we can close down Indian Point hasn’t done the math."

Undeterred, New York environmentalists are now talking about moving electrical generation out of our backyard and into someone else’s. Indian Point opponents are touting the "Empire State Connection," a proposed 140-mile underground transmission line along the New York Central rail lines that would bring 2,000 megawatts of upstate and Canadian power to Westchester. Conjunction LLC, a consortium formed by several veterans of the utility industry, has offered to build the project.

But completion is at least five years away and there are many obstacles. "We’ll have to start with an environmental impact statement," Mr. Klapp of the ISO said. "That opens up all kinds of opportunity for challenges. Historically, it’s been very difficult to build through a lot of backyards. New York hasn’t built a major cable project in 15 years."

Some environmentalists are already worried that the project may increase coal pollution upstate. "You always have to ask what’s at the other end of the transmission line," a representative of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Ashtok Gupta, said.

Meanwhile, the Cross Island Cable, a 350-megawatt transmission line already submerged between New Haven and Long Island, is also in limbo. Long Island environmentalists complain it will "destroy Long Island Sound." Last summer, as supplies ran low, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authorized emergency use of the cable to meet peak demands. Whether that order will extend into this summer hasn’t been decided. "We’re still awaiting a FERC decision," a spokesperson for the Long Island Power Authority, Michael Lowndes, said.

In the interim, environmental opposition has arisen on the Connecticut side as well. "We haven’t met our own power requirements yet, and here we are exporting electricity to others and degrading our own environment in the process," Connecticut State Senator Eileen Daily, who opposes activating the transmission line, complained. In any case, the Cross Island Cable won’t be of any use to New York City. Transmission lines across the Queens-Nassau border are almost non-existent.

Power officials talk wistfully about several pending projects. KeySpan should complete a 250-megawatt expansion of the Ravenswood plant by next fall. The Power Authority wants to add 500 megawatts in combined-cycle gas turbines to its Poletti station in Queens, and SCS Corp. is proposing a brand-new 1,000-megawatt gas plant in Astoria. Yet rising gas prices have cast doubt on both these projects and SCS has not yet secured financing.

Meanwhile, back in Santa Monica, the nuclear industry believes its future is getting brighter all the time.

"When you look at the advantages in cost, fuel security, and clean air, you can’t help believing we’ll eventually go nuclear," the president of NEI, Joe Colvin, said. "I predict there’ll be an order for a new reactor in this country within three years."

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