Indian Point owner considers warning public about nuclear danger with phone messages
Greg C. Bruno
The Times Herald Record
June 10, 2005
Buchanan - It's 4 a.m., and hell is freezing over at the Indian Point nuclear power plant. Temperatures in Reactor 2 have climbed out of control, and engineers, desperate to avert disaster, can't stabilize the core.
Alarms sound. Sirens wail. Radiation begins wafting over the lower Hudson Valley. Then your cell phone rings.
"Hello, this is Gov. George E. Pataki," the voice on the other end of the line might say, his voice calm and soothing.
"Indian Point has just experienced a release of radiation. Please evacuate the region immediately."
Were such a scenario ever to occur at any of New York state's four nuclear power plants - a doomsday that's so far been left to the imagination - it's hard to envision notification coming in the form of a phone call.
But operators of Indian Point, whose twin nuclear reactors sit on the banks of the Hudson River 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, say that's exactly what they see.
As part of a plan to upgrade the plant's emergency warning system, Indian Point's owners are working to launch an automated telephone calling program that would dial home and cellular phones with recorded messages in the event of a radiological release. Unlike the current system, which relies heavily on 156 sirens scattered across a four-county region, the phone bank could disseminate detailed evacuation instructions within minutes of a disaster.
"The challenge for us, here in New York, is to make sure that we have the tools to reach the entire population" in the event of an accident, said Michael Slobodien, emergency programs director for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, Indian Point's owner.
With a phone system, Slobodien said, "not only do you get the alert that something's happening, but you get the message.
"This is not a pie-in-the-sky idea."
Others aren't so sure.
Michel Lee, a member of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, a citizen advocacy group that favors shuttering the plant, says she doubts a phone system could be effective. "Think about how people live," Lee said. "How many residents are going to be at the store and come home to a message on their answering machine that says, 'You're in danger. Take your kids immediately and head to the local shelter?' You have to visualize the reality of that."
There are other questions about the phone network, including potential gaps in the communication network.
Slobodien says Indian Point's system would be contracted to an outside vendor, who, in turn, would utilize commercial databases to compile lists of home and cellular numbers. County emergency operation centers would then be in charge of notifying the public, with information supplied by plant officials.
But a spokeswoman for Sigma Communications, an Indianapolis, Ind.-based company that has trademarked its own Reverse 911 software, acknowledges there can be problems reaching people with unlisted numbers.
Locally, it's unclear how that gap would be filled.
Talk of a telephone alert system comes as critics question the plant's ability to notify the public in the event of a disaster.
Earlier this week, a coalition of citizen groups refiled a petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission demanding backup power for notification sirens.
The filing drew attention to the fact that if a nuclear release occurred during a power failure, sirens at many of the nation's nuclear power plants - including Indian Point - wouldn't function.
The petition, already denied once by the NRC, has caught the attention of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
On Wednesday, Clinton told congressional leaders she was interested in including the backup power issue as a provision to the Nuclear Security Act of 2005. Despite the high-level politicking, Indian Point, which generates power for about 2 million homes, says pouring money into siren upgrades would be money wasted and is instead moving forward with its telephone notification system.
Tests are already under way at Entergy's Vermont Yankee plant near Brattleboro, Vt., Slobodien says. If trials are successful there, an Indian Point system could be online by Jan. 1.
"All sirens do is tell people to find out what's going on," Entergy spokesman James Steets said.
"A blackout does that, so it doesn't make sense (to add backup power) because there is very little gain. A battery would have a marginal impact."
Added Slobodien: "We're not saying backup power is idiotic. What we're saying is it's far more effective to use the best available technology.