Post by Ex_Nuke_Troop on Mar 11, 2014 14:45:58 GMT
NY Times : Living With a Nuclear Question Mark in the Backyard
By PETER APPLEBOME
Published: March 16, 2011
Charles Lynch, who traps nuisance raccoons, muskrats and coyotes for a living, remembers when Indian Point was a park with a swimming pool and dance pavilion on the Hudson River that drew people from New York City and beyond on sultry summer evenings.
But even as a catastrophe is playing out at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan, he’s fine with Indian Point’s current use as a nuclear plant in the heart of the nation’s most densely populated region, 25 miles from New York City.
“Not a bit,” said Mr. Lynch, 70, when asked if the Japanese disaster gave him pause about the plant in his backyard. “I’ve been here too long to worry about whether it’s safe. You have to trust that it is. The only people who complain about it are the people who move here from New York City.”
In Buchanan, a quiet, dog-eared village, and in nearby communities, Indian Point provides the jobs and the tax dollars. Elsewhere in the region, the attitude toward it is hardly so benign. And as the nuclear disaster lurches along in Japan, it remains to be seen what effect it will have on the future of Indian Point, whose owner, the Entergy Corporation, has applied for its two reactors to be allowed to remain in operation for another 20 years beyond 2013 and 2015, when their 40-year operating licenses expire.
For critics, who have tried for decades to shut down a plant they say could never be built today, it’s a moment of truth about the risks they say have been ignored for way too long.
“WHEN you see a tragedy like this unfolding halfway around the world, you can’t help but think: can it happen here?” said Paul Gallay, executive director of the environmental group Riverkeeper. “We understand the world better. We understand the earthquake risks better. When you factor in the impossibility of evacuation and the size of the population around it, this is a 40-year-old plant that shouldn’t have a future.”
So could it happen here? An Entergy spokesman, Jim Steets, said no, at least not the same crisis as the one in Japan. First, the earthquake risk and history there are incomparably more serious than in New York. And second, it wasn’t the quake that wrecked the plant. It was the tsunami, hardly an issue here. “The risk that Indian Point could be damaged by an earthquake is extremely low,” he said.
But indications are that the earthquake risk is worse than previously thought. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found that Indian Point sits at the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones, and could pose a greater earthquake threat than the plant’s design is expected to meet.
Officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say the site is safe and that its earthquake threat is on the lower end nationally and in the Northeast. But it is one of 17 nuclear sites being asked to review and reassess seismic issues. Still, said Scott Burnell, a commission spokesman, “The N.R.C. continues to believe that all U.S. plants are capable of withstanding the strongest earthquakes that can be expected at any given site.”
It is almost impossible to watch the horrific images from Japan and not think: That could be us, perhaps from something that is as unforeseen here as this level of tsunami was there.
Though Fukushima Daiichi is the ultimate nightmare of technology as sorcerer’s apprentice, we live a quieter version of it every day. We don’t want gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. We don’t want windmills off Cape Cod. We don’t want anything to do with coal or with a liquefied natural gas project like Broadwater in the Long Island Sound, but we want our infinite genie of infinite energy.
Indian Point in meltdown is our worst nightmare. But the plant, says Mr. Steets, has also kept millions of tons of pollutants out of the air over its lifetime. And none of the politicians who have jumped aboard the train to shut it have come up with a concerted plan for conservation and alternatives to replace the energy that accounts for as much as 30 percent of New York City’s electricity.
In Japan the brooms are going berserk, a Disney horror movie before our eyes. But we’ve also built a monster at home that has propelled our sublime technological joy ride. The nightmare in Japan should keep us up at night. But the one in front of our eyes should, too.
We don’t all live in Buchanan. But we do.
E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 23, 2011
The Our Towns column on Thursday, about the Indian Point nuclear power station, referred imprecisely to the distance between the plant and New York City. The plant is about 25 miles — not 35 miles — from New York City, with the nearest point being the Bronx. (It is Midtown Manhattan that is about 35 miles from the plant.)
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/nyregion/17towns.html?_r=0
By PETER APPLEBOME
Published: March 16, 2011
Charles Lynch, who traps nuisance raccoons, muskrats and coyotes for a living, remembers when Indian Point was a park with a swimming pool and dance pavilion on the Hudson River that drew people from New York City and beyond on sultry summer evenings.
But even as a catastrophe is playing out at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan, he’s fine with Indian Point’s current use as a nuclear plant in the heart of the nation’s most densely populated region, 25 miles from New York City.
“Not a bit,” said Mr. Lynch, 70, when asked if the Japanese disaster gave him pause about the plant in his backyard. “I’ve been here too long to worry about whether it’s safe. You have to trust that it is. The only people who complain about it are the people who move here from New York City.”
In Buchanan, a quiet, dog-eared village, and in nearby communities, Indian Point provides the jobs and the tax dollars. Elsewhere in the region, the attitude toward it is hardly so benign. And as the nuclear disaster lurches along in Japan, it remains to be seen what effect it will have on the future of Indian Point, whose owner, the Entergy Corporation, has applied for its two reactors to be allowed to remain in operation for another 20 years beyond 2013 and 2015, when their 40-year operating licenses expire.
For critics, who have tried for decades to shut down a plant they say could never be built today, it’s a moment of truth about the risks they say have been ignored for way too long.
“WHEN you see a tragedy like this unfolding halfway around the world, you can’t help but think: can it happen here?” said Paul Gallay, executive director of the environmental group Riverkeeper. “We understand the world better. We understand the earthquake risks better. When you factor in the impossibility of evacuation and the size of the population around it, this is a 40-year-old plant that shouldn’t have a future.”
So could it happen here? An Entergy spokesman, Jim Steets, said no, at least not the same crisis as the one in Japan. First, the earthquake risk and history there are incomparably more serious than in New York. And second, it wasn’t the quake that wrecked the plant. It was the tsunami, hardly an issue here. “The risk that Indian Point could be damaged by an earthquake is extremely low,” he said.
But indications are that the earthquake risk is worse than previously thought. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found that Indian Point sits at the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones, and could pose a greater earthquake threat than the plant’s design is expected to meet.
Officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say the site is safe and that its earthquake threat is on the lower end nationally and in the Northeast. But it is one of 17 nuclear sites being asked to review and reassess seismic issues. Still, said Scott Burnell, a commission spokesman, “The N.R.C. continues to believe that all U.S. plants are capable of withstanding the strongest earthquakes that can be expected at any given site.”
It is almost impossible to watch the horrific images from Japan and not think: That could be us, perhaps from something that is as unforeseen here as this level of tsunami was there.
Though Fukushima Daiichi is the ultimate nightmare of technology as sorcerer’s apprentice, we live a quieter version of it every day. We don’t want gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. We don’t want windmills off Cape Cod. We don’t want anything to do with coal or with a liquefied natural gas project like Broadwater in the Long Island Sound, but we want our infinite genie of infinite energy.
Indian Point in meltdown is our worst nightmare. But the plant, says Mr. Steets, has also kept millions of tons of pollutants out of the air over its lifetime. And none of the politicians who have jumped aboard the train to shut it have come up with a concerted plan for conservation and alternatives to replace the energy that accounts for as much as 30 percent of New York City’s electricity.
In Japan the brooms are going berserk, a Disney horror movie before our eyes. But we’ve also built a monster at home that has propelled our sublime technological joy ride. The nightmare in Japan should keep us up at night. But the one in front of our eyes should, too.
We don’t all live in Buchanan. But we do.
E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 23, 2011
The Our Towns column on Thursday, about the Indian Point nuclear power station, referred imprecisely to the distance between the plant and New York City. The plant is about 25 miles — not 35 miles — from New York City, with the nearest point being the Bronx. (It is Midtown Manhattan that is about 35 miles from the plant.)
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/nyregion/17towns.html?_r=0