Indian Point: Vital or safety risk?
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- August
- 21
Today’s Community View by Rockland Business Association President/CEO drew comments. After all, it’s about Indian Point, which continues to be a 
hot-button issue in the Lower Hudson Valley. Samuels’ basic point? Well, here’s the “nut graf,” editor-speak for the sentence or sentences that summarize the essence, and context of the story or the “why it matters” statement:
Samuels says:
From a business standpoint, shutting down Indian Point’s 2,000 megawatts of safe, clean power would have a serious impact on our entire regional economy.
Here’s what one forum poster said about the siting of IP along the Hudson and near a major metropolitan area:
I’m not against nuclear power – but keeping this thing on the Hudson – one of largest fish (and so food) breeding estuaries in world is nuts. Even if the plant is safe there were things like 9-11 plane that flew right over and also the engineer from there that killed himself and his family. It’s too risky.
Another countered that power generation in the area is sparse and necessary:
I retired from 30 years with Con Ed.I know just what a “power pocket” the Hudson valley is. Aside from the ex-Con Ed power plants in NYC ( whose power exclusively serves NYC), there is NO generation in this area.
No generation, that is, except Indian Point.
Shut IP down, and you’re looking at 3 or 4 blackouts a year, forever.
Another pointed out the Hudson’s pollution from old industries that once dotted its banks, but found Indian Point an exception:
Indian Point helps clean the Hudson up, by not using diesel oil, coal, or any other “dirt fuel”, which would end up in the river. Nutcase phobias won’t help us survive Mr. Obama’s Great Depression II, but a smoothly running Indian Point will.
What do you think of Samuels’ view, and Indian Point?
2007 FILE PHOTO: Indian Point nuclear power complex in Buchanan, as seen from Tomkins Cove, across the Hudson River.
This entry was posted
on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 11:14 am by Nancy Cutler.
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The old arguments against Indian Point were never fact-based. They stemmed mainly from a 5-year tooth’n’nail advertising effort by Robert F Kennedy jr’s Riverkeeper to smear nuclear, and Indian Point, by adopting the old exaggerations of 1970’s antinukers like Harvey Wasserman, and because the assertions were warmed over, overemotional, and ludicrous, people hereabouts never warmed to them. Kennedy himself gave up on it 5 years ago, and no longer mentions the subject. (Once bruised, twice shy).
As a person who actively seeks out all commentary on the subject, I can tell you that interest in Indian Point is at a low ebb, and has been, ever since the stock market debacle of October 2008.Even in 2007, the Manhattanville poll showed 67% not caring about IP, ( 70% in 2008).
Those who are engaged in trying to survive the downturn realize all too well what a luxury it had been to oppose a viable, functioning infrastructure item, one that could only be replaced (if ever) at the cost of 4 to 5 billion dollars in new construction.
With China now planning 72 new nuclear power plants, and actually having broken ground on 30 of those sites, it becomes obvious that the Chinese, and not Jackson Browne (an antinuclear performer) are going to decide whether nuclear power is a big part of 21st century life.
America will certainly fall behind China in the next decade in all financial parameters, but here, along the Hudson, we need not fall as far as other areas where coal, oil & gas will be used, wreaking environmental havoc, making us look like a third world country.
We can avoid the soot, the CO2, the mercury, and the ash, by simply letting Indian Point continue to give us clear skies, no ash piles, no coal trains, no oil trucks, and 2000+ megawatts of stable local generation, enabling both our high civilization AND local environmental purity.
Actually, the poster who declared the Hudson estuary to be a major fish-breeding, food-breeding area was dead wrong. All food fish in the Hudson have been off limits since 1974 due to PCB & mercury levels in the water. No one eats fish from the Hudson, and DEC has instituted a new program to warn minority folks who still insist on fishing the Hudson, not to eat their catch.
With today’s E-Coli situation, the Hudson will not be providing food fish for the foreseeable future. Many towns along the estuary have stormwater runoff systems that double as emergency sewer catchments in the event of heavy rain. In a year like this year, the apparent economic benefit of combining the 2 functions, is swamped by the drawback of almost constant raw sewage influx into the river. There are no plans to repair this situation, the cost would bankrupt the state.
Add to this, newly discovered medical waste runoffs, which put estrogens, androgens, barbiturates, and nsaids into the estuary are a major danger, since these effluents can cause partial sex change, physical deformations, and nerve damage simulating human autism , all caused by irresponsible dumping into the Hudson river. Again, there are no plans to fix this situation.
Therefore, any assertion that the Hudson river is a food provider, is simply based on misinformation, and/or imagination.
As we sit here, in the second great depression, in an America so bloated with conflicting social agendas that our economy is dead, with zany social-experiment nonsense pushed at us from all sides, we lose sight of just how great it was, to live in a unified country, with tight borders, a working social compact, and the moral strength to just do what is needed, to make life better for all.
China, (The New United States) is in this enviable position today. We, in the USA, now live in a technological backwater, in the third world.
If you doubt this, read this article:
http://tinyurl.com/nd8hlp
China is mass-producing nuclear power plants. 72 new plants are planned. 30 are in construction. Using modular techniques, the Chinese create 4, 6, or 8 nuke plants in a single long construction project at a single site, thus doing it for 1/3 of the price, in 1/4 of the time.
This is reality.
Enjoy!