Feds To Conduct Safety Review Of Indian Point Power Plant In Wake Of Japanese Earthquake

The earthquake in Japan has put New York's Indian Point Power Plant in the spotlight.

From the New York Daily News:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will soon inspect the plant on the banks of the Hudson River, 25 miles north of the city, U.S. Energy Secretary David Chu said Sunday.

Gov. Cuomo, who has long advocated closing the Buchanan plant because of its close proximity to 21 million people, demanded a top-to-bottom examination of the aging double-reactor plant last week.

"It is an issue. We're going to have to look at whether this reactor should remain" in operation, Chu said on "Fox News Sunday." "This is not to say that we believe that reactor is unsafe."

The Westchester Board of Legislators will meet today to look into the disaster preparedness plan at Indian Point.

The Entergy Corporation, which owns Indian Point, also announced plans last week that it will conduct an internal review of its readiness to respond to a catastrophic occurrence.

A report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists showed the Indian Point had many engineering vulnerabilities, which, they claim, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have largely ignored. An MSNBC analysis of NRC data suggested that, of American plants, the Hudson River facility is the most vulnerable to a quake because one of its reactors is on a fault line.

Comments

[Score123]

01:49 PM on 03/22/2011

Shutting down Indian Point would be detrimental and have a huge economical impact on the states energy source and economy. The owners of the plant has demonstrated and proven that safety is their number one priority. While many public officials and activists promote the fact that the plant should be closed, not one of them has shown us any alternatives to replacing the necessary power needed. Just imagine if the plant was closed for one day that’s an outage of 2,000 mega watts (equaling 2 million homes and businesses) that would be affected.

[peaceonearth]

11:42 AM on 03/22/2011

Indian Point sits atop the intersection of two active seismic zones. From the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America: "Indian Point is situated at the intersection of the two most striking linear features marking the seismicity and also in the midst of a large population that is at risk in case of an accident," says the paper. "This is clearly one of the least favorable sites in our study area from an earthquake hazard and risk perspective."

It's old and has a horrendous safety record. Based on NRC analysis of USGS data, a quake causing core damage at IP in the next year is more likely than buying a powerball ticket and winning $100.

Over 10 million people live within 25 miles of this powder keg. Its continued existence would be folly greater than any that humankind has ever committed. I pray Cuomo is successful in shutting down this facility.

[me again]

10:00 AM on 03/22/2011

Indian River needs to be shut down....too many problems there already, no one with the cojones to make it happen.

[QuantProgrammer]

01:15 PM on 03/21/2011

Perhaps a good compromise is to shut down Reactor 3 at the end of its 40 year license in a few years but renew the license on reactor 2, which is 1/3 as dangerous as Reactor 2 and much safer than a number of the country's nuclear plants.

[realitybaby]

12:32 PM on 03/21/2011

aint it sad - everytime I see the word FEDS I know for sure its gonna whatever they are involved in is gonna get effed up!

[tribilin219]

10:42 AM on 03/21/2011

I can tell you what your going to find? NOTHING! There, save all that money.

[banker67]

09:09 AM on 03/22/2011

Seems like that old plant has an incident, a denial followed by an admission of the problem, an investigation and assurances of complete safety just about every five years. As you say, no matter what the problem is, was or could be, Entergy always wins.
Maybe Cuomo will have enough clout to close it. Maybe not. I never bet on government to protect the people when Big Money has investments to protect.
You would think that even a one-in-million chance that radioactivity would blanket the New York City area would be more than enough for sane people to say no. But greedy people are rarely sane so we've had this enormous pile of plutonium in our back yard for decades. Obviously, the perpetual flow and power of the Hudson River could never be tapped to provide power. Glad we got that out of the way.