AG Scores Victory In Bid To Shut Down Indian Point (lohud.com)

mdsolar quotes a report from The Journal News: Federal safety regulators used the wrong data to analyze the potential economic impacts of a severe accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, a panel of commissioners for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled Wednesday. The ruling, which reversed an earlier finding, will force the NRC to conduct a fresh analysis of the costs of a devastating accident and cleanup at the nuclear power plant in Buchanan, 24 miles north of New York City. The decision was hailed by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, whose office is spearheading the state's challenge to Indian Point's efforts to renew federal licenses for its two reactors. Schneiderman estimates that some 1.5 million workers would be needed in to take part in decontamination efforts in the event of a nuclear mishap, with cleanup costs surging as high as $1 trillion.

Comments

mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

So it seems

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

This gov't has its sights set on closing down (and not building) as many nuclear plants as possible.

Ok, fine, then I ask you this gov't:
How are you planning on replacing the power loss? You're wiping out the coal industry as well.

What's left?

Re:So it seems

[Smidge204]

How are you planning on replacing the power loss?

The same way they replaced the power loss when the either or both of the plant's reactors are unexpectedly taken offline due to equipment failure, fires, accidents etc. There have been dozens of incidents that have knocked the plant offline without little or no warning and I doubt anyone not paying close attention has ever noticed. The plant is plagued with incidents from control rod failures to transformer explosions to errant bird shit. Somehow NYC has been spared from crippling brownouts.

As it turns out, the grid is remarkably resilient! So even if you were to replace the now 40-year-old reactors with something "less reliable" like wind and/or hydro (if only there was a large body of flowing water nearby...) there would demonstrably be no deficiency in power.

All that is on top of the numerous close-calls and safety violations the plant has been written up for over the past two decades. The place is almost literally held together with duct tape and bailing wire, because maintaining it is expensive and that's bad for the shareholders. The latest tritiated water leak (which is by no means the first, or worst) is just possibly the straw that breaks the regulator's back.
=Smidge=

Re:So it seems

[Sooner Boomer]

As it turns out, the grid is remarkably resilient!

Aaaahhhh.....actually, not so much. This is an example of what can happen. And it happened in the New York/NYC area as well.

It's the economy

[jbmartin6]

some 1.5 million workers would be needed in to take part in decontamination efforts in the event of a nuclear mishap, with cleanup costs surging as high as $1 trillion.

So what is the problem? This is called "economic stimulus".

Re:It's the economy

[AmiMoJo]

So the solution to our economic problems is to go around smashing windows to drum up business for glass manufacturing and glaziers. Maybe we could total a few random vehicles too, just to give the motor industry a boost.

What actually happens when there is a large scale disaster is that the government is on the hook for all the insurance liabilities that the plant operator now has. There will inevitably be lawsuits, because it's not just a case of decontaminating and rebuilding everything. By the time that's happened many of the communities are no longer viable as key people have moved away permanently, and the property there is almost worthless. So there are legal challenges, more money to try to turn those areas back into liveable places again, but it never goes back to how it was.

So the government has crippling costs, the power company gets massive bailouts so that the lights can stay on and they can keep working on the remains of the plant, and the area never fully recovers and many lives are ruined. It's basically unfixable in any meaningful sense.

Champlain Hudson Power Express

[mdsolar]

This transmission project obsoletes Indian Point. http://www.chpexpress.com/abou...

Re:Champlain Hudson Power Express

[fnj]

Hydropower is not clean energy. Hydropower plant operation produces large amounts of Co2 per kilowatt hour.

You need a citation for that, because on its face that is an astoundingly stupid claim. And don't even think of dredging up this weak-ass story, which is void of any evidence, and actually seems to be conjuring up a fairy tale of methane release, not CO2.

Also, the loaded terms "clean" and "dirty" referring to CO2 are manipulative and ignorant. CO2 is not "dirt". It is a colorless, odorless gas, food for plant life.

Re:Champlain Hudson Power Express

[thegarbz]

AHAHHAHAHAHAHAH mdsolar called someone a shill. OMG. This is the quote of the week. I'm printing this out and nailing it to my cubical wall so I have something to look at whenever I get worn down by dealing with stupid people.

Thankyou!

Also show me a nuclear accident which did as much damage in terms of death and unusable land as the Banqiao Dam hydroelectric plant. Actually combine all the deaths and damage from all nuclear accidents and throw in a Hiroshima and Nagasaki too while you're at it and you're still not at the damage and chaos caused by this single hydro dam failure.

Re:Champlain Hudson Power Express

[mrchaotica]

Here's one.

The lesson here is that different power sources are appropriate in different areas: hydro is good in areas where it doesn't destroy the fish habitat, but bad in areas where it does. Nuclear is good in the middle of nowhere, but bad in close proximity to NYC. Solar is good in the desert, but bad on north-facing slopes in cloudy areas. Wind is great on bare ridges and offshore, but not so great for forested valleys. Every form of electricity generation, except fossil fuels, has its place.

Re:Champlain Hudson Power Express

[plague911]

page 2

http://www.clf.org/wp-content/...

"Overall, life cycle GHG emissions per unit of electric energy production are lower for hydropower than for fossil fuel sources (though in some cases net hydro emission ranges may be nearly 2/3 those for a natural gas power plant), and may be in the same range as other renewable sources and nuclear (though reservoir hydro emission ranges are likely higher than those for at least some other renewable options, depending on the specific site and the level of indirect emissions, which are not included in Table 1 above)".

New York Real Estate

[SeattleLawGuy]

The problem is it's New York Real Estate, money, and political capital. You are *sixteen miles* from the Tappan Zee and thirty miles from the West Side Highway. It makes zero sense to have any risk of a meltdown someplace where real estate is that expensive, the population is that large, and a major chunk of the world economy goes through that population's daily business.

Re:1.5M more jobs?

[Mr D from 63]

some 1.5 million workers would be needed

I hereby suggest we allow the plant to continue operation. After all, we need to create more jobs for Americans, or so I've heard.

CAPTCHA: proper

A completely fabricated number. Nowhere near that will be required. Of course, accuracy doesn't matter in the FUD laden world of anti-nuke activism.

Running Indian Point to Failure

[mdsolar]

Much like Vermont Yankee, Entergy is running Indian Point into the ground. The AG also forced new safety inspections an those showed Entergy had let a known problem slide past any other reactor known to date. http://www.lohud.com/story/new...

Re:Running Indian Point to Failure

[110010001000]

Yet both plants have been providing massive amounts of clean energy for decades with no notable accidents and no loss of life.

Re:Running Indian Point to Failure

[BCGlorfindel]

Much like Vermont Yankee, Entergy is running Indian Point into the ground. The AG also forced new safety inspections an those showed Entergy had let a known problem slide past any other reactor known to date. http://www.lohud.com/story/new...

Who upvotes this FUD?

The very article linked above references the actual report from the NRC. Far from letting a known problem slide past any known to date, NRC article notes that the Indian Point reactor in question was shutdown for routine maintenance. A new check of bolts that had been known to wear from experience revealed that a great many of them needed replacement, so they were replaced before the reactor was brought back online.

The other way to spin the NRC report is that routine and standard maintenance procedures at Indian Point have allowed it to continue it's operating record of zero work place fatalities, zero emissions and zero radiation escaping the plant. How many coal plants can claim ANY of those points let alone all of them?

Seriously, the anti-nuclear crowd is leaping on standard maintenance as proof of 'problems' looks an awful lot like those declaring even more missing links in evolution every time a new link is posted.

Re:Cheap nuclear

[mdsolar]

Indian Point 3 probably isn't built to withstand the seismic risk now known for the site. https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Re:Cheap nuclear

[ultranova]

if Indian point had a fukishima style issue Wall street is unlivable, un workable.

But I'm sure there would be a bad side, too.

Score one for global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a hard time believing that environmentalists really believe AGW is an existential threat to humanity while they applaud nuclear plan shutdown. They even applaud hydroelectric plant shutdowns.

Re:Indian Point is out of service

[110010001000]

All the time? Indian Point has 99.85% uptime since it was first commissioned. Extremely reliable, even when it is cloudy outside!

Re:Opportunity Cost

[Elledan]

"most expensive" is of course only true in post-1970s Western countries. Meanwhile countries like South-Korea, India and China are pushing ahead with cheap, safe nuclear power, with the latter implementing a fully closed fuel loop, meaning no nuclear waste at all.

The whole problem with nuclear power in the West is simply that it's stuck in the 1960s with crushing regulatory burdens worsening the problems of maintaining 60+ year old reactors and preventing any improvement there.

Re:Too close to NYC

[Mashiki]

Define "close" after all here in Ontario we have Bruce Nuclear which is the 2nd largest generating plant in the world and is downwind from Toronto by ~150 miles. And Pickering Nuclear which is under 50mi away. Seems to me that the US has more of a anti-nuke fear mongering group of environmentalists then Canada does. I live downwind from Bruce nuclear as well, around 45mi give or take a little bit. I sure don't worry about it, I have a bigger worry that there will be a train derailment and massive problems then that. Especially since the main Ontario CN track runs around 300m away from my house and trains come running by every hour of the day. Luckily there has never been an accident in either case, and CN has become extremely vigilant in checking the lines over the last 5 years usually quarterly inspections.

Re:Cheap nuclear

[Mr D from 63]

IP3, just like any other US Plant, has a lot of margin in its seismic design basis, and will handle a quake much bigger than the licensing spec. We saw this proven with the plants in Japan, they all handled a much bigger earthquake than licensing spec, and all shut down safely. Of course, Fukushima plants were deluged by the tsunami, which the plant was not designed to handle, causing the accident.

Re:Cheap nuclear

[MrKaos]

If there is some other way it could be deluged, I would agree it should be shut down.

Indian Point is a reactor that is pretty fragile and vulnerable to LOCA attacks in quite obvious ways. An tsunami is not the only way to trigger that scenario.

Essentially you are suggesting that it is unreasonable to get an assessment of it's true state and the likely cost of upgrades.

, but a 'mishap' will result in an event like Three Mile Island, where essentially nothing is released, and the surrounding area remains perfectly safe.

Well thats a fiction because strontium-90 was released at TMI. Also dosimeters that measured the reactors effluents were overloaded very early into the accident and could not be replaced, so the reality was we don't know how much was released. It wasn't as massive as Chernobyl however it certainly wasn't zero either.

People that actually worked at TMI during that accident used to frequent this forum long before you were shilling here and they reported a comedy of errors preventing the reactor accident being much worse than it was.

It must be the NIMBY's fault because hippys and hicks can stop billions of dollars worth of reactor investments being deployed. You nutty nutty nukkers and yer crazy talk, it doesn't even make sense.

If you want to really help the nuclear industry you should lobby to repeal the Price Anderson act, that's what is really holding the nuclear industry back. How fortunate it is there to stop the Nuclear Inddustry growing any further.

Re:Cheap nuclear

[Mr D from 63]

"LOCA Attack"? I like how creative folks can be when making stuff up. And also conspiracy theories regarding TMI. Its public information what happened, yes there where human errors and design issues, and yet the entire event never hurt anyone. The amount of release was so small, you could be right at the effluent point and receive less than a medical x-ray dose. But of course, you read somewhere on someone' blog that it was much more and a big cover up and you certainly like that better.

Re:Cheap nuclear

[Coren22]

https://www.google.com/search?...

WTH is a LOCA attack?

The facts speak louder than any of these envirowackos, even including the deaths from the nuclear bombs, nuclear is still safer than ANY other power source we have.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/...

But let us all hide under the table in fear of the big bogeyman that is nuclear, we can't have cheap power because someone might cry in fear over the nuclear plants.