If Indian Point leaks

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At first, sirens would blare for five minutes, a signal that nearby residents must turn on their TVs and radios and listen for Emergency Alert System announcements.

The State Disaster Preparedness Commission would urge people to shelter in place, with doors and windows closed and locked, and air-conditioners and fans off. Then they would have to sit and wait for more instructions.

It’s a scenario envisioned in the Rockland County government publication “Emergency Planning for Indian Point: A Guide for You and Your Family,” which outlines what people should do in the “unlikely event” that the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, in Buchanan, New York, melts down, causing a major radiation release. 

Now imagine you’re at home — and your kids are at school, cut off from you — in a meltdown. They’re safe, you keep telling yourself, but you can’t stop worrying. Despite the government’s best-laid plans, you cannot contain yourself. Your heart beats faster, and you start to sweat. You panic.

Don’t forget to take a potassium iodide pill to ward off the radiation, you tell yourself. What about your kids? Will they take their pills?

Naturally, you leave your home to try to get to them — and get caught behind a line of cars filled with parents vying to grab their kids and go. Meanwhile, the radiation plume, carried by the wind, slowly envelopes you.

In your rush, you forgot to take your pill, leaving your thyroid gland open to radiation poisoning.

You have to wonder: Is this how we want to produce energy — under constant threat of an apocalyptic disaster? Indian Point sits 24 miles north of New York City, on the Hudson River — at the intersection of two active earthquake zones. The city alone is home to nearly 8.5 million people. Add millions to that figure in surrounding counties.

On Feb. 5, Entergy, which operates Indian Point, reported “alarming levels of radioactivity” — 65,000 times greater than normal — in three groundwater wells below the power plant, according to U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney.

“This latest failure at Indian Point is unacceptable,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has also called for the plant’s closure. Cuomo directed Basil Seggos, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and Howard Zucker, commissioner of the Department of Health, to investigate the extent of the leak and “its potential impacts to the environment and public health.”

Why is this plant still operational? It has a terrible record of mishaps dating back to its opening in 1962. Yup, the plant is more than five decades old, built by Con Ed at a time when scientists were irrationally confident in their ability to contain the elemental forces of the universe in what are essentially very thick concrete casks.

Indian Point’s Unit 1 nuclear reactor operated for 12 years before it was shut down because “the emergency core cooling system did not meet regulatory requirements,” according to the NRC. Thankfully, there was never a meltdown, as there was at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania, in 1979 — only five years after that plant opened.

Radiation did, however, leak from Indian Point’s Unit 1 into the groundwater. Its Unit 2 and 3 reactors remain online to this day, and the leaks continue. Entergy’s 20-year license to operate the reactors is up for renewal. A decision by the NRC is expected later this year.

Our guess: Sadly, the license will be renewed. Entergy calls itself an “economic boon” to New York, employing 1,100 people and paying $75 million a year in taxes. Its union contracts would be worth $1.3 billion over the next 20 years. And Indian Point lights 2 million homes.

Historically, governments haven’t considered the price of a meltdown — until it’s too late.

A version of this editorial originally ran in our sister publications, the Long Island Herald family of newspapers.

Indian Point

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