| Lawmakers Step
Lightly Along a Nuclear Tightrope
James C. McKinley Jr.
The New York Times
8/7/2003
Edward McGaffigan, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
must live in a fantasy world of unrivaled proportion. What
else explains the top NRC official's rose-colored assessment
this week regarding Indian Point nuclear power plant? He told
The Journal News in an interview that the commission's five
members had seen little so far to indicate that emergency
plans for Indian Point could not provide "reasonable
assurance" that the public would be protected in the
event of a plant emergency.
That early assessment tends to strain incredulity and invite
skepticism of the government's oversight, given mounting evidence
pointing to a contrary conclusion — or at the very least
calling into question long-held assumptions about contingencies,
chiefly those concerning the evacuation of millions of people.
McGaffigan's opinion is important: His panel is, as McGaffigan
puts it, the "ultimate judge as to whether a plant needs
to be shut down or whether the (emergency) plan gets fixed."
Hope is that the full NRC panel will be more circumspect
when it finally passes on the adequacy of contingencies for
the plant, which is based in Buchanan. The region's future,
quite frankly, could rest on the NRC's making a thoughtful,
intelligent determination.
In January, former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director
James Lee Witt released a report commissioned by Gov. George
Pataki concluding that emergency evacuation plans for the
10-mile area surrounding Indian Point would not work, particularly
in the event of an emergency sparked by terrorism.
That report prompted Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange
counties to withhold their annual certifications of the emergency
plans. The state Emergency Management Office also refused
to certify the plans. Against this backdrop, FEMA is conducting
an unprecedented review of the contingencies. Indian Point's
neighbors total some 20 million people.
There was additional grist this week for those who are skeptical
of the emergency plans — fears heightened by the realization
that one of the Sept. 11 terrorist jets flew past Indian Point
enroute to the World Trade Center, and solidified by everyday,
and increasing, battles with nightmarish traffic.
A study commissioned by Entergy Nuclear, owner
of Indian Point, found that it would take nine hours and 25
minutes to evacuate the 10-mile zone around the plant; that's
nearly twice as long as the determination in a 1994 study
— a review criticized for assuming that fear-stricken
people would stay home and wait until told when and how to
evacuate.
The newly released review, called "comprehensive and
thorough" by Entergy, also concluded that it would take
as many as 11 hours to evacuate a wider region — an
interstate beltway stopping at Interstate 87 to the west,
Interstate 287 to the south, Interstate 684 to the east and
Interstate 84 to the north. Indian Point critics contend that
the figure hardly reflects likely reality.
"This study is worse than the last one (in 1984),"
Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Greenburgh, told Journal News
staff reporter Roger Witherspoon. ". . . (T)his report
assumes no one in Greenburgh or Yonkers will do anything.
No one in New York City will do anything. No one in New Jersey
or Connecticut will move either. They all stay home."
McGaffigan, meanwhile, said his statutory responsibility
was to determine if there was "reasonable assurance of
adequate protection of public health and safety. Many of our
critics, I believe, carry in their head a standard of absolute
assurance. That is not what the standard is." In the
event of a mishap, he noted, some people will die.
No reasonable person disputes that reality. And no sensible
regulator, be it FEMA or the NRC, would ignore real-world
conditions or behavior when considering the future of Indian
Point.
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