Attentive audience listens to one of the four panels
GARRISON – About 100 people crowded into a basement meeting room at the Desmond Fish Library for a day-long forum on how to safely decommission and defuel Indian Point. The two ancient and active nuclear reactors will shut down in 2019 and 2020.
Four panels covered broad aspects of shutdown.
“A huge industrial cleanup” is how a Geoffrey Fettus, senior
attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council put it.
“In an urban area I think even more is required regarding safety, monitoring and other things because there’s a lot more chance of low probability high consequence problem that could affect a lot more, essentially, uninvolved people.” An extreme example cited by Fettus could a container with spent fuel, on a major highway, hit by a terrorist missile.
The economic fallout is another issue. Tim Judson is the executive director of the Nuclear Information Resources Service, a networking center for citizens and environmental activists.
“Some of that impact is going to be mitigated by a fund that the state has set up to assist communities of power plants with property taxes for a few years after a plant closes,” Judson said. “But, the community is going to need to be really proactive both in terms of how it negotiates with Entergy over what its property tax assessments are going to be and those sort of things as well as looking to the future economic development in the community.”
That, Judson said, could include assisting Entergy employees as their positions are phased out over time, and attracting new business and appropriate industry to the area.
Westchester County Legislator Catherine Borgia, in the audience, said the session was raising a lot of questions, and provided some answers.
“Gave me more clarity in what I think we need to advocate for at the county level along with our stakeholders at the state and local levels, from the federal government to make sure that the environmental hazards are as clearly understood and there’s a plan that is as robust as possible,” Borgia said. “Seems like there’s a lot of things we don’t even know for the future, but, as robust as possible taking into consideration some of the concerns that were raised today.”
How to shut it down
Decommissioning options:
Immediate dismantling and cleanup of systems and structures and removal of radioactive fuel
Safe Storage, or delayed decommissioning, under continued maintenance and monitoring to allow radioactivity to decay
Planned decommissioning and site restoration, to minimize long-term risk to economy, health and safety
Entombment, similar to what was done at Chernobyl following the worst nuclear plant disaster in history
