Gov. Cuomo has never been a fan of the Indian Point Power Plant, and now he has new evidence to support its closure.
A new report by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission shows 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.
"Frankly, that was surprising to me," Cuomo said. "One normally doesn't think of earthquakes and New York in the same breath."
Cuomo said the plant, which is just 24 miles north of the Bronx, poses too grave a risk to New York City.
"It should be closed. This plant in this proximity to the city was never a good risk," Cuomo said.
An MSNBC analysis of the NRC data places the odds of an earthquake disabling the core of Indian Point's Number 3 reactor at 1 in 10,000. That's much more likely than the 1 in 74,176 odds of the country's average reactor failing.
The Daily News points out that "In its 40-year history, Indian Point has suffered radiation leaks, useless warning sirens, transformer explosions and oil spills."
Cuomo's call to close the plant comes one week after a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, killing thousands.
Jim Streets, director of communications at Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which runs the plant, said the chances of a reactor failing are minuscule.
"I say only if a tsunami could make its way...up New York Harbor and the Hudson River, somehow avoid New York City, and drench our plant," Streets said. "It just doesn't seem very realistic to me."
The plants operating licenses are up for review in 2013 and 2015.
Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/17/cuomo-wants-indian-point-_n_836982.html
To defeat Indian Point's backup diesels (the reason the Japanese plants failed) the wall of water coming up the Hudson would have to be eight stories high.... 3 1/3 times the height of the Japanese tsunami.A wave that large would scour Manhattan island clean, sweeping all its skyscrapers into the Bronx, knocking over the GW bridge, the Tappan Zee bridge, the Whitestone bridge, the Brooklyn bridge, inundating Connecticut from the landward side, destroying Greenwich, Port Chester, & White Plains from the back side.
ReplyDeleteIn a case such as this, some radiation from IPEC will be the very least of people's worries. Surviving a tsunami 4 times larger than Japan's is not possible. We would all be dead.