The Indian Point Energy Center is located in Buchanan, New York. It draws cooling water from the Hudson River. There are three Westinghouse pressurized water reactors at the Center. Unit 1 was put into operation in 1962 and permanently shut down in 1974 because it did not have an emergency core cooling system. Unit 2 was built by Consolidated Edison and began commercial operation in 1973 with a license to operation until 2014. The New York Power Authority built Unit 3 and put it into commercial operation in 1976 with a licensed to operate until 2016. Unit 2 and Unit 3 are currently generating two thousand megawatts of electricity. Around 2000, Unit 2 was purchased by Entergy from Consolidated Edison and Unit 3 was purchased by Entergy from the New York Power Authority.
The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about two hundred and seventy five thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about seventeen million people. Although Indian Point is located on an active fault, the NRC estimates that there is a moderate risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant. Entergy says that Unit 2 and Unit 3 can withstand an earthquake of 6.0 on the Richter Scale.
Indian Point has had numerous problems since it was constructed and has been included in lists of the worst nuclear power plants in the United States. In 1973, Unit 2 had to be shut down because the steel liner of the concrete dome enclosing the reactor was buckling. In 1980, a hundred thousand gallons of water from the Hudson River flooded the Unit 2 reactor building undetected by safety equipment. Two pumps failed to remove the water because they were not operating. Problems continued to arise up to the year 2000 when a radioactive steam leak caused the plant to be shut down for eleven months.
In 2001, there were a series of leaks in a non-nuclear area of the plant. In 2005, the operators discovered a leak from the spent fuel pool. Water contaminated with tritium and strontium-90 was leaking into the Hudson River. In 2006, radioactive nickel-63 and strontium-90 were discovered in the groundwater under the plant. In 2007, after a history of transformer problems the plant experienced a fire in a transformer in Unit 3. The NRC fined the operators in 2007 because the emergency sirens at the plant did not perform as required. In 2010, around six hundred thousand gallons of radioactive steam was deliberately vented after an automatic shutdown. Later in 2010, there was an explosion at the main transformer for Unit 2 which spilled oil into the Hudson River.
In 2007, Entergy applied for twenty year license extensions for both Unit 2 and Unit 3. Anti nuclear activists in Friends United for Sustainable Energy filed legal papers with the NRC to stop the relicensing citing lax design standards imposed on the original construction of the plant by the NRC. Later the NY Dept of Environmental Conservation, the Office of the NY Attorney General, the NY Governor at that time and other non-governmental organizations joined the legal challenge to the relicensing of the plant. New York City officials support the relicensing because the city relies on electricity from the plant. The current Governor of NY opposes relicensing.
With respect to Indian Point, we have concerns about the original design, poor construction, inoperable equipment, leaks of radioactive material into the environment, fires, unplanned automatic shutdowns and a host of other problems. Once again we have opposition on the part of state government and environmental groups to the relicensing by the NRC of dilapidated and unsafe nuclear reactors.
Photo by Daniel Case:
