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The controversial Indian Point nuclear plant near New York will close in 2021, a casualty of low energy prices and relentless criticism by environmentalists, the power company announced Monday.
Under an agreement with New York State, Entergy plans to shut down one of the two operating units at Indian Point by April 30, 2020, and the second unit will close a year after that.
Entergy attributed the decision to close the decades-old plant to shifting energy economics. Among the changes, power prices fell as much as 45 percent due to natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation in New York and Pennsylvania, part of the American shale boom.
"Key considerations in our decision to shut down Indian Point ahead of schedule include sustained low current and projected wholesale energy prices that have reduced revenues, as well as increased operating costs," said Bill Mohl, president of Entergy wholesale commodities.
Entergy said it would look for other opportunities for the 1,000 workers employed at Indian Point.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and environmentalists applauded the news since the plant, located within 30 miles of New York, has long been a concern due to safety problems and worries that an accident at the aging facility could affect some 20 million people.
Lower energy prices cited by the article have not been reflected in customer electricity bills. Indian Point supplies 30% of New York's power, so if the post-Indian point power supply drops by the same amount the high prices New Yorkers currently pay per kwh will climb even higher.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:02PM
I'm a rabid environmentalist too. I'm positively anal about recycling every little thing I can for instance, and I really, really hate it when people throw recyclables (cans, bottles) in the trash instead of the green container. I'm quite annoyed about stupid Trump's push for more coal.
But I really don't understand the anti-nuclear hysteria. We have a certain demand for electrical power, and it has to come from somewhere. Yeah, we could probably be doing a lot better with wind and solar, but protesting nuclear plants and making it impossible to run them is just going to result in more coal and oil-fired plants, which means instead of some nasty pollution that's contained in a few 55-gallon drums and stored somewhere, we have vast quantities of nasty pollution pumped into the air which we have to breathe. What we need to be doing is pushing to shut down the nasty coal-fired plants, and making solar and wind more economical so that those will be used more and more, which eventually should make nuclear power simply uneconomical and uncompetitive with them so those plants are phased out. Finally, it's quite likely renewables won't be able to supply all the power we need for some time, due to their more intermittent nature, so it's better to have some large and extremely modern (meaning safe designs, unlike the crappy old designs they used 40+ years ago) nuclear plants supplying our baseload power with the rest being supplied by renewables, rather than burning fossil fuels and polluting our atmosphere (with both global warming gases and also more short-term pollutants that cause health problems and more immediate environmental problems like acid rain).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:09PM
is just going to result in more coal and oil-fired plants,
This is Marcellus territory we're talking about so its natgas all the way. That means fracking compounds in surface and drinking water. Hopefully, not much. Realistically, too much. Better than coal? Well, probably maybe lots of handwaving? Better than nuclear? oh hell no.
(Score: 3, Informative) by rcamera on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:59PM
the assumption here is that we're not over-capacity already, and therefore require a 1/1 "replacement". there have been huge amounts of additional generated power added to the system over the past decade, and usage is on the decline based on efficiency improvements at the consumer and transmission levels.
/* no comment */
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 11 2017, @10:20PM
It's probably arguable whether natgas/fracking is worse than coal, but I think coal is probably worse. At least with contaminated groundwater, you can personally mostly avoid it by just not drinking it, and sticking to properly reverse-osmosis filter water (plus, properly-treated municipal water should have this stuff filtered out too I would think; it's the well-water drinkers that really need to worry). It's pretty hard to avoid breathing pollution in the air unless you want to run around with a gas mask.
Of course, this is a lot like arguing whether Hitler or Stalin is worse....
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:06PM
protesting nuclear plants and making it impossible to run them is just going to result in more coal and oil-fired plants
8-(
instead of some nasty pollution that's contained in a few 55-gallon drums
...drums made of stuff that will corrode-through is a single human lifetime.
Again: 8-(
and stored somewhere
Current experience says that will continue to be within a half mile of where it was created i.e. on the grounds of the nuke plant for decades and decades and decades.
renewables
in 2016, USAians were offered a presidential candidate who had as a major part of her platform a Green New Deal that would create jobs with renewables as a major part of that.
While Trump got $6B in media coverage, gratis, other candidates got little and Green Party candidate Jill Stein got roughly zero.
Lazy people who are eligible to vote made little effort to discover her and her platform.
They instead looked to Lamestream Media to get their "information".
Those people got what they deserved.
It is unfortunate that the rest of us are now subjected to that result.
N.B. Trump's "press conference" this morning demonstrates what we're in for:
A thin-skinned sociopath who seeks the approval of the already-rich. 8-(
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