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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: 2) by SacredSalt on Thursday January 12 2017, @03:40PM
Yeah, lets look at this egg from another angle. To get the nuclear materials one needs to mine them. This process generates huge amounts of radioactive waste, contaminates huge amounts of water, and this pretty much forever maintenance on those sites. If you need some examples of what can go wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill [wikipedia.org] Then you have the issue of separation, and you end up with neighborhoods like mine: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/seven-more-nuclear-waste-hot-spots-found-in-north-st-louis-county-missouri-suburb/ [cbsnews.com] (*sites like Niagara Falls are worse, and there are hundreds of these around the country already). Then you have to enrich the materials and you end up with sites like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1BLMosusRI [youtube.com] There are about 30 of those equally as bad that I know of. This process uses as much electricity as you get from the nuclear power plant for many years, for most its around 10-15 years as they have a lot of downtime. Thats just to get the break even energy point. You then *maybe* get 15-20 more years of "relatively safe" operation of the plant, followed by about another decade or two of cooling off waste to be able to potentially store it. The entire time you ARE contaminating the surroundings even in normal operation: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43475479/ns/us_news-environment/t/radioactive-tritium-leaks-found-us-nuke-sites/ [nbcnews.com] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/grndwtr-contam-tritium.html [nrc.gov] Nuclear materials are also *vented into the air* during *normal operation of the plants*. Yes, I did just say that, and most people don't know that. You doubt me? Ask the NRC. Now we move on to the next ***100,000*** years of storage for this waste and we don't even have a way to handle it medium term much less anything like that. Are these companies that generate all of this going to be around and taking care of it for the next 100,000 years? No. They get the profit, if there is any, we take ALL of the risk, and we get almost all of the liabilities.
So the end up with multiple radioactively contaminated sites, contaminated ground water, rising tritium levels in the environment, 100,015 years of having to manage the problem for a short time 15-20 year energy gain. This makes sense to you how? This is the side of nuclear power you aren't being told. Geological storage makes a nice public relations sound bite, but no one has figured out a way to do it long term that works. If you think "Oh we can just dump it in the oceans I point you to Somalia as an example of why that isn't a good idea. I could just as easily point you to Britain or France though. I could also point you to Japan and the United States. If you geologic storage is workable, you need to be able to follow the heat curve of the waste. Those first 10 years, and more often 30 years the high level materials have to be stored in water to keep them from igniting from the radiation being released. A spent fuel bundle is a heck of a lot more dangerous than a fresh one. I could keep a fresh one on my desk without too much concern. I wouldn't survive 10 minutes in a room with a spent fuel bundle that wasn't under about 20ft of water. This is why hydraulic rams have to be used to move these things around. In the US this waste then goes into dry storage casks that have to be continuously cooled for a great length of time by air circulation. Then we still don't have a good way to dispose of it, otherwise we are just passing a Somalia or a Cold Water Creek onto some future generation. The stuff can't even be transported without continuous cooling. Any geological storage system is basically the equivalent of putting a candle that never burns out into a Styrofoam box. That heat has to go somewhere, and it will eventually cause cracks in the structure even if other elements like say water don't also erode the structure. Have a weather forecast for the next 100,000 years that is accurate?
I haven't even mentioned nuclear plant accidents at this point; they do happen and quite a bit more frequently than the public has ever been made aware of. The consequences are also much more severe than anyone will admit to. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about MSR's like Santa Susana (one of the better covered up nuclear accidents) just out of Los Angeles or we are talking about high pressure water reactors like Fukushima. If I look at an incident like the NRX reactor at Chalk River, its pretty much the same accident as Three Mile Island, just more off site contamination at NRX. That doesn't mean the government or the plant operators were honest about the levels of off site from TMI -- they were not. Canada covers up its accidents as does Britain, Japan, Russia, the United States and France. That doesn't mean they don't admit that something happened, but they always downplay the severity of it. They also use health models that somehow magically contain the radiation to external sources. I suppose we are supposed to live our entire existence out in rubber protective suits and never eat or drink anything to make it fit with their model? --- Internal exposures carry far higher risks.
One last bit of note. Due to neutrons, the entire plant has to be treated as nuclear waste. Even the concrete ends up radioactive from a variety of elements that are formed. Nuclear embrittlement of materials is a real issue. It doesn't just affect metals, it affects concrete under the reactors. Many of these are built in coastal areas and are further eroded by salt air as well. Future generations are going to look back upon us and curse our names and our unbelievable stupidity for leaving them this legacy.