2004 Indian Point articles, editorials, letters, op-eds

Here are 2004 articles, editorials, op-eds and letters about Indian Point in chronological order with the most recent first. You can also find news from 2007, 2006, 2005, 2003, 2002 and 2001. If you find an article that should be included, please send it to ipsecpc@bestweb.net.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Public Citizen

For Immediate Release: Contact: Michael Mariotte, NIRS(202) 328-0002

Dec. 20, 2004 Michele Boyd, PC (202) 454-5134

NRC Move to Make Nuke Plant Licensing Hearing Secret is Illegal, Irresponsible

Staff of Nuclear Industry Regulator Seeks to Shut Out Public in Wake of Agency’s Security Lockdown

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) today asked an adjudicatory board to conduct a licensing hearing for a proposed nuclear fuel refinery under a “protective order” which, if approved, would effectively make the entire proceeding secret and closed to the public, said Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS).

“This proposal is an affront to the principles of citizen participation guaranteed by law,” said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.

NIRS/PC have contested the application of Louisiana Energy Services (LES), a multinational consortium led by the European firm Urenco, which is seeking a permit to construct and operate a uranium enrichment plant in southeastern New Mexico. The groups charge that the company’s plans fail to meet regulatory standards in the areas of radioactive waste disposal and need for the plant, among other things.

The NRC says its motion is a remedy to a situation that has made it impossible for parties in this case to meaningfully participate: On October 25, the NRC unilaterally blocked public access to virtually all of the electronic documents posted on its Web site pending a security review “to ensure that documents which might provide assistance to terrorists will be inaccessible.” Most of these documents remain unavailable to the public.

Without access to essential documents, such as communications between the applicant and the NRC, parties to the proceeding—including the State of New Mexico —are left operating in the dark, unable to file timely and complete motions, briefs, and testimony in order to present their case before the ASLB. Pre-filed testimony is due Dec. 30, and the hearing is scheduled to begin Feb. 7, 2005.

The NRC Staff’s rationale for making this entire licensing case secret is that in order to meet deadlines in the context of the NRC security review, parties to the proceeding must enter into a non-disclosure agreement that would allow them access to essential documents while agreeing to keep these potentially “sensitive” materials—and thus the entire proceeding in which they are considered—closed to the public.

“A real solution to the problem would be to suspend the schedule of the hearing until access to NRC files is restored, as NIRS and Public Citizen have asked the Board,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of NIRS. “Shutting the public out of the licensing process would violate NRC regulations, which require public hearings. It also would violate the public trust, which is served by open and transparent nuclear licensing proceedings. Such hearings are the major way the public can learn about the issues—such as radioactive waste disposal—that arise from the proposed construction of nuclear facilities.”

Counsel for NIRS/PC issued a formal plea to the ASLB on Dec. 15 to suspend the schedule of the hearing until access to the hearing file is restored; formal responses to this motion are due today, but the NRC staff has filed a concurrent motion to make the case confidential.

“It is inexcusable that the NRC is attempting to circumvent public scrutiny in this case, and it sets a poor precedent for future licensing actions,” added Michele Boyd, legislative director for Public Citizen. “This unjust and inappropriate request ought to be rejected outright by the ASLB.”

To read the motions of the NRC staff, as well as earlier motions by NIRS/PC, please go to www.citizen.org/cmep or www.nirs.org.

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COMMENTARY-Ruminations by Rita J. King

The growth of civilization is tied to energy

Since I announced a moratorium on political discussions with family members just in time for the holidays, we found ourselves conversing about other issues. My father-in-law asked me what I learned while writing a series of articles on the nuclear industry, and if my feelings about the industry changed as a result.

When I first took this job, I didn’t know anything about Indian Point. I knew I didn’t like living within the so-called “peak fatality zone.”

For months, I resisted the invitation to tour the plants. Finally, Indian Point spokesman Jim Steets convinced me to bite the bullet, so to speak, and so I did. Standing on the edge of a spent fuel rod pool, I silently hoped the fuel would forever remain so innocuous-looking at the bottom of the water, and the nuclear fires some experts and scientists fear will never come to pass.

One thing I’ve learned in writing the series is Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano is correct when he says for every Ph.D, there’s an equal and opposite Ph.D. One expert will swear a nuclear fire from the spent fuel can render much of the eastern seaboard uninhabitable for thousands of years, cripple the world economy with the loss of New York City and kill hundreds of people right away, as well as thousands down the line.

Another will say that the very idea is preposterous.

The energy crisis in this world, and in our country, is indicative of the path of human nature.

Ever since humans discovered fire, our consciousness has depended upon the evolution of our energy acquisition. The sun is burning in the sky, ours for the taking, but we have not yet learned how to harness it. Our ability to change and grow as a civilization is largely tied to energy. People used whale blubber until the animals became scarce and kerosene was then used instead. Every period in human history, from the invention of the wheel to the dawn of the industrial age, is coupled with energy acquisition.

Perhaps we need to burn through all of our fossil fuel in order to evolve to the next level of intelligence. Nuclear power seems to provide a cheap alternative, but the problems associated with spent fuel are too potentially catastrophic to ignore. Part of my research was aimed at understanding the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Some correctly point out what happened in Chernobyl can’t happen at an American nuclear facility because of design differences.

But the spent fuel is another story. There are no containment structures to prevent a nuclear fire, and regardless of anyone’s best efforts to prevent it, this world is full of hazard, and I haven’t met an expert yet who believes that a moment of uncontrollable chaos couldn’t result in unimaginable devastation.

The prevalent idea seems to be that such devastation is “extremely unlikely.”

Besides, we need power.

Thanks to a number of sources, including Joel Bakan’s powerful book and film, The Corporation, I came to understand the role of corporations in our culture and the hazardous relationship they share with the government. Books can be found detailing dark deals and denial between all kinds of regulatory agencies and the industries they are intended to monitor and shape. The truth is, we aren’t safe anymore. We rely on linguistic tricks and illusions, as well as the basic faith on which this nation was founded to feel that our government is really protecting us. Many industries, nuclear included, are operating legally within an established framework and can’t be faulted for not insisting on greater restrictions and safeguards. The whole point of regulation is to keep industries safe for the public.

Money, apparently, is what makes the world go round.

But the fact remains; ideas can be applied like a filter on a lens, and all viewpoints can be enhanced by open-mindedness. Clinging to old ideas hampers the progress of all humanity.

I firmly believe that we will be stuck in the dark ages, not too much better off than when they ushered children under desks to give them the illusion of protection against the threat of Russian nukes, until we embrace the inevitable necessity for solar, and other renewable, forms of power. If history is any indication, we probably won’t get to that point until we are forced into a corner.

Would the world be better off without nuclear power? Only if we can come up with a viable alternative, and really put the money and time into understanding renewable energy sources. The current alternatives aren’t really much more appealing.

We can’t escape the fact that each life unfolds in specific historic circumstances, and this is our time. I believe each one of us is a cross-section of eternity, and that our species, blessed with consciousness, is capable of wonders we can’t even imagine at this stage in our development, the same way our ancestors couldn’t have imagined refrigerators or airplanes.

We’ve never been this advanced as a civilization, and we’ll never be this young again. As the marvels of human consciousness continue to unfold, our descendants will certainly look back and wonder why we acted the way
we did.

But they will also be grateful for the achievements and efforts that allowed them to build upon the knowledge that came before. We have to work tirelessly, to save us from ourselves. Creation and destruction are simultaneously eternal. The nuclear question, from safety and security, to energy and non-proliferation, is one of the great philosophical questions of this period in history.

The jury is still out.

###

December 10, 2004

Poughkeepsie Journal

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/today/localnews/stories/lo121004s9.shtml
A long-simmering dispute over the effectiveness of warning sirens for the Indian Point nuclear power plant flared up yesterday as plant officials prepared to test a system Westchester and Rockland County officials claim is broken.

At issue are the 156, 500-pound rotating sirens in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange counties which are to alert more than 300,000 residents of an emergency situation at the Buchanan site.

Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano said some of the sirens fail to rotate and, as a result, there are "dead spots" behind them covering entire neighborhoods. In a true emergency, he explained, these residents would have to be notified by police using bullhorns traversing every street in the affected area.

"If they don't rotate," Spano said, "half the people who are supposed to hear the sirens do not hear them. We don't have the manpower to notify them."

Dan Greeley, assistant director of fire and emergency services for Rockland County, said his agency has no way of knowing if all the sirens are working and have to send out police with bullhorns through many areas.

"We addressed this problem with the NRC and they just sent back a reply that we might as well just ask the utilities," he said.

Officials at Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns the plant, declined to comment.

Spano said Entergy should pay for a new, better working system.

"If they can advertise on the Yankee games, they have the money to fix the [expletive] sirens."

###

Green light for Indian Pt means less scrutiny

North County News, December 1, 2004

by Rita J. King
With green safety ratings across the board for the first time, Indian Point will soon operate without intensified scrutiny by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

NRC's safety rating system is color-coded, ranging from red to yellow, then white and green.

Indian Point 2 was the first nuclear power plant in the nation to garner a red rating following a steam generator tube failure in February 2000, according to NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.

A "deviation memo" is in effect for Indian Point, Sheehan said, because of concerns raised by retired software manager William Lemanski about cable separation issues at Indian Point.

Lemanski came forward last March claiming cables were improperly separated at the facility, a condition that could jeopardize the redundancy necessary to protect the system from an emergency.

Indian Point spokesman Jim Steets said criticism about a slow response to the whistleblower at Indian Point was justified, but he explained the tardy action.

"When software is updated, anomalies come out," Steets explained.

For example, color-coding for cables has changed over time, so new software doesn't understand the terminology for older systems.

NRC inspectors worked on the perceived problem, Steets said. He interviewed half a dozen workers who deal with cables.

"To me and you, [the cables] are like hair on our heads," Steets said, referring to the sheer number and entanglement of the cables to one who isn't familiar with the path and function of each.

To those who work with the cables, he went on to say, the system is clearly labeled and understood.

The effort to trace the separation of each cable is ongoing, Steets said, and once the process is completed to the satisfaction of the NRC, Indian Point will enjoy greater autonomy and fewer specialized inspections, owing to the green safety rating. The point of cable separation is to ensure redundancy in an emergency.

On February 20, 2004, Lemanski wrote a letter to the NRC in which he noted for two years he'd been complaining to Entergy about perceived the safety concern, but was ignored.

On March 22, 2004, environmental watchdog organization Riverkeeper and two other Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) member organizations filed a formal allegation with the NRC stating the "concerns raised by William Lemanski potentially speak to a much more extensive problem regarding improperly sorted electric cables at the Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant."

Riverkeeper issued a statement earlier this year addressing the cable concern.

"The problem Lemanski has raised is similar to an industry-wide problem that was serious enough to have prompted the closure of the Maine Yankee nuclear plant in 1997. The owners of the Maine Yankee plant decided to decommission the facility after finding cable problems so abundant that correcting them would have been too expensive," Riverkeeper noted.

The NRC requires nuclear plants to separate certain cables by distance or fire barriers so that a single fire or other accident doesn't cut power to both a vital system and the equipment that's supposed to back it up in an emergency.

According to Riverkeeper, "The regulations stem from a 1975 fire at one of the Browns Ferry reactors in Alabama that burned cables for both primary and backup systems and nearly triggered a meltdown."

Mr. Lemanksi's concerns were reinforced on March 16, 2004, when the NRC issued a report that noted an incident at Indian Point 2 had revealed the agency's criteria for keeping power cables separate were not being met.

The NRC report states the event "might represent a significant degradation of plant safety."

Steets said no problems have ever been found to confirm Lemanski's belief that cable separation is problematic at the plants.

"Every cable is physically inspected," Steets said. "We're still doing that, and we're encouraged so far."

Sheehan said once the cable separation issue is satisfied, Indian Point's green safety status will kick in fully. The plants will still be subjected to a "baseline level of inspections."

"These inspections are significant," he said.

All plants should aspire to a green safety rating, Sheehan said.

"This means they're doing what we expect them to do," he noted.

Too many unplanned shutdowns or workers being exposed to high levels of radiation are two examples of incidents that might result in the loss of a green rating. In the meantime, the utility will be responsible for regulating itself in some areas formerly handled in special inspections by NRC, and the regulatory agency is relying on Indian Point employees to come forward with complains, should any arise.

"At Indian Point, we see no reluctance on the part of workers to come to us," Sheehan noted.

Steets said the public should "take comfort" from the green safety rating.

"The primary responsibility for operating plants safely rests with the utilities," Steets said.

But some experts, like David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said NRC hasn't been on top of serious accidents and incidents at other plants, Ohio's Davis-Besse, for example.

Davis-Besse is a study in what can go wrong when a utility is left to inspect itself. When asked, Sheehan said Davis-Besse had a green safety rating while a reactor head slowly corroded over the course of several years.

"The Davis-Besse plant did have green inspection findings and performance indicators prior to the discovery of the corrosion on its reactor vessel head," Sheehan said. "I would add, however, that there have been many lessons learned that have come out of the Davis-Besse experience that we have incorporated into our Reactor Oversight Process. We are constantly looking for ways to strengthen the program and believe that, on the whole, it paints an accurate picture of plant performance."

On December 4, 2001, the NRC didn't force the Davis-Besse plant to shut down, even temporarily, despite concerns about possible cracks of nozzles passing through the reactor lid. In February, the plant was shut down for routine refueling, and plant operators announced five cracks in the nozzles. A month later, NRC announced that acid had leaked from the nozzles to decay six inches of steel.

On January 3, 2003, the New York Times reported NRC's Office of Inspector General found top agency safety officials delayed shutdown because it didn't want to hurt the plant owner financially.

NRC had drafted a letter on November 16, 2001, requiring the 25-year-old Davis-Besse plant to shut down, but the Inspector General's report said the "agency backed off when plant owner FirstEnergy Corporation said such a shutdown would be costly and could cause wintertime power shortages in northwest Ohio."

According to the UCS, "less than two years after another similarly skipped inspection contributed to an accident at the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant, the NRC allowed Davis-Besse to skip the mandated 2001 year-end inspection."

Steets and Sheehan claimed NRC inspections were "robust," even when plants have a green safety rating, but UCS scoffed at the notion.

"The NRC must stop allowing plant owners to conduct fewer inspections and to defer inspections for economic reasons," UCS wrote in a paper on Davis-Besse. "It would be a huge surprise for the NRC to someday put safety ahead of financial considerations. But that's a far better surprise than the surprise from finding a gaping hole in a reactor vessel head. It's a sure bet that there are nuclear power plants operating today with safety equipment degraded by aging. Will NRC surprise these gremlins or will they surprise NRC, again?"

###

Residents scrutinize emergency preparations
--------------------

By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer

November 18, 2004

Communications, vaccinations and preparedness topped the list of
residents' concerns at a meeting last night to outline the town's
emergency response plans.

Speaking at a forum convened at Town Hall by the League of Women Voters
of Greenwich, First Selectman Jim Lash and a panel of safety and health
officials and representatives of Greenwich Hospital and the American Red
Cross discussed their efforts to develop response plans to terrorist
attacks and other potential catastrophes.

Lash said that while the safety and health officials are working to
address every contingency they can conceive of, there are areas where it
is hard to answer questions.

"We're work together and discover our insufficiencies together," Lash
said. "Of course we don't have an answer for everything that could
happen."

Residents asked how town officials would work together, and aired
concerns about the town's ability to notify residents to danger, the
risk of radioactive fallout from Indian Point Energy Center, and other
hypothetical disasters.

Lash touted the town's plan to acquire an emergency notification system
capable of contacting the town's residents by phone with emergency
messages.

"It would be capable of calling thousands of phones per minute, leaving
emergency information," Lash said. "When the bad thing happens you could
customize the message to the situation."

Greenwich is awaiting a $467,000 emergency preparedness and law
enforcement grant from the state Department of Homeland Security,
Emergency Operations Management Coordinator Paul Connelly said. Other
planned acquisitions are protective equipment for emergency personnel
and live training drills and exercises.

"Isn't the town short on generators currently?" one attendee asked.

Over several years the town will purchase high powered generators to
keep town government running amid widespread power failures and
confusion, Lash replied.

"But they cost upwards of $250,000 so in the past we haven't bought
many," Lash said. "But now we need them."

Spencer Adkins, a psychologist, criticized the federal government's
decision to limit smallpox vaccinations only to public health and
military personnel.

"I grew up in a time when people would get the vaccination," Adkins, a
Columbia University professor, said. "Why can't we decide for
ourselves?"

Health Director Caroline Calderone Baisley told Adkins that in the event
of a smallpox outbreak the government has a mass vaccination plan.

"You have a few days to get vaccinated after you get exposed," Calderone
Baisley said.

Christa Hartch, a registered nurse, asked where to find the best
information to create a disaster plan for her family, and evacuation
plans if there were fallout from a terrorist attack at Indian Point.

In response to Hartch's question Edward L. Wilds, the state's Department
of Environmental Protection's director of radiation said that major
fallout spreading from Indian Point, a nuclear power plant about 16
miles from Greenwich, was a remote possibility, but Stephen A. Meyers ,
a physicist in the audience said the spent fuel rods stored at the site
could cause a "doomsday scenario."

"You could have a radiation cloud traveling hundreds of miles," Meyers
said. "There have been well-modeled studies."

Meyers, who is advising local officials on an emergency notification
system, said that an old fashioned town-wide siren system could serve as
a back up if more high-tech methods failed.

Town officials said the siren system would be expensive, and unpopular
because of how loud it is.

Hartch said she came to the meeting trying to get a better sense of what
she can do to protect her family. A representative of the Red Cross
advised her to find information on disaster plans at her organization's
web site, www.greenwich.ctredcross.org.

"I think individuals need to have a more detailed plan and get more
information from the government," Hartch said. "I want to know what I
can do."

--------------------

This article originally appeared at:
http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/local/scn-gt-emergencyforonlinenov18,0
,5656114.story?coll=green-news-local-headlines

###

Debate over future of Indian Point nuclear plants won't end overnight

This is the final article in a series on the nuclear industry

by Rita J. King
While a growing cacophony clamors for the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan, many who work at the facility or live in the communities supported by it are just as fervent about keeping the source of their economic security thriving.

Nuclear power, supporters ardently argue, is a cheap, clean alternative to burning fossil fuels. But many believe the energy can come from other sources to eliminate the hazard of deadly nuclear waste and the possibility of terrorism or accidents.

Scientists and other experts in the middle of the debate study traffic, radiation plumes and escape times. But even former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) James Lee Witt, the top expert in emergency planning in the nation, was virtually ignored when he issued a litany of concerns about the emergency evacuation plans.

Other sources of concern are the age of the plants and the density of the population in the metropolitan New York City area. Combined with the threat of deliberate sabotage or malfunction, many feel the only real solution is to decommission Indian Point.

Indian Point's slogan, Safe, Secure and Vital, has been vocally challenged in board rooms, classrooms and courts. Environmentalists, legislators and concerned citizens have adopted a dark-mirror mantra of their own: Unsafe, Unsecure and Fatal.

But no matter which side is ultimately right or wrong, the fact is nobody can flip a switch and shut down a nuclear plant overnight. Many issues related to nuclear power and Indian Point have been passionately debated in a variety of forums, and now a study is being conducted so Westchester County can look at some of the practical issues of shutting down Indian Point permanently.

Indian Point Retirement Options
In 1978, the Republican majority on the Westchester County Legislature blocked a two-part referendum from appearing on the ballot. The referendum would have permitted the county to set up a utility agency, and to sell revenue bonds totaling up to three quarters of a billion dollars to fund the takeover of Con Edison's electric distribution system in the county, including Indian Point.

The following year, voters did have the opportunity to approve a county utility, but 55 percent shot it down, owing largely to the staggering price.

Now, almost 25 years later, Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano is awaiting the results of a new study that will decipher some of the more pressing intricacies surrounding the permanent closure of Indian Point, such the as the cost of buying the facility from Entergy and the economic impact on local communities.

In April 2003, Spano started looking for an independent firm to study the county's options. A month later, the Boston-based firm Levitan & Associates, Inc. (LAI), a consulting firm specializing in the energy industry, responded to the call.

Tentatively entitled "Indian Point Retirement Options and Issues," the study will focus on options for closing the plant, the issue of replacement power and local economic impacts that could result from the loss the facility.

Several months into the study, LAI Vice-President and Principal Seth Parker, along with other consultants working on the project, gave a press conference at the Westchester County Center. Unlike other heavily attended meetings where emotionally charged speakers railed against emergency evacuation plans and other perceived hazards, few were scattered in the empty seats.

"Today's meeting isn't emotional, it's analytical," Westchester County Legislator Michael Kaplowitz (D) said at the time. "It's a cold, hard look at the energy market."

The $300,000 study was commissioned by the County of Westchester Public Utility Service Agency (COWPUSA).

Former Westchester County Attorney Alan Scheinkman, a consultant for the study, said the scope of the project doesn't include "evacuation plans or terror strikes."

"Those are important issues," he said, "but this study is intended to develop conclusive data in support of a rational policy decision."

Parker, interviewed this week, didn't want to say much about the report, which isn't due until the first quarter of 2005, at the earliest. He did say Westchester County only has two real options: condemnation or negotiation.

Should the county choose condemnation of the aging facility, a judicial proceeding would be required, Parker explained. Negotiation is a different matter.

"The county would have to see if Entergy would be willing to work out a deal," Parker said.

When looking at replacement power, the LAI study will focus strictly on conventional power sources, such as the viability of a natural gas pipeline, and not renewable or alternate energy. Parker said he's a "strong believer" in such sources, but the county didn't include them in the scope of the project because of funding limitations, according to Westchester's Director of Communications Susan Tolchin.

"Some people are saying shut it down, some are saying keep it open," Tolchin said. "The county executive has said we need a study to determine the effects of those decisions."

Spano has repeatedly expressed his desire to see Indian Point decommissioned. Tolchin said his feelings about the nuclear facility changed after September 11, 2001, as he supported the facility prior to that day.

The county has been swimming upstream since then. Two years ago, Spano and his colleagues from three neighboring counties, Putnam, Rockland and Orange, refused to sign off on checklists verifying emergency preparedness, believing the move would leave the FEMA no choice but to find the plans inadequate.

"We're suing FEMA," Tolchin said. "For two years, they haven't provided us with any information. FEMA now says they don't need our information to approve the plans. They hold all the cards. From our point of view, they set rules and regulations and when we didn't provide 'reasonable assurance' they broke their own regulations. We asked them to tell us why, but they haven't provided us with anything other than, 'It's fine.' We're so angry."

The federal government's management of the evacuation plan debacle embodies the frustration of legislators trying to get information.

Congresswoman Nita Lowey criticized NRC, the agency responsible for regulating the nuclear industry, on September 3, 2003.

"Once again, NRC has put the cart before the horse," said Lowey. "It took the agency less than a day to rubber-stamp approval of the emergency evacuation plans for Indian Point without an independent review. Now, it is declaring emergency response plans for all our nuclear facilities adequate before a review is complete. These kinds of presumptions and outright negligence have no place in post-September 11th security procedures."

NRC Chairman Nils Diaz sent her a letter in response. "Although the studies will not be fully completed until the fall of this year," he wrote, "it is already clear that the planning basis for off-site emergencies remains valid in terms of timing and magnitude for the range of potential radiological consequences of a terrorist attack upon the reactors or spent fuel pools."

The evacuation plans will not be included in the LAI study, but other, more tangible aspects of life near Indian Point will be put under an economic microscope.

"This is a challenging assignment," Parker said of the project.

The study will employ "sophisticated modeling," Parker said, to determine various scenarios and the ramifications of each on the local economy.

Westchester County is also trying to see if a buy-out of Indian Point might be possible.

NRC has never ordered the decommissioning of a plant, according to their spokesman, Neil Sheehan. A utility must make the decision and inform the NRC of its intentions.

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute's statistics, 18 plants across the nation are either closed or in the process of closing down. Sheehan said utilities like Indian Point 1 have chosen in the past to shut down permanently for several reasons.

"Some realized they couldn't meet safety standards," Sheehan said.

But wouldn't the NRC already be aware of the failure to meet standards and force a plant to close down in the absence of volunteerism?

It hasn't happened yet, Sheehan said, although the NRC has the authority to "order a decommissioning when there's clear evidence a plant can't operate safely."

"If we saw evidence that safety standards weren't being met, we would discuss it very seriously," he said.

When the LAI study was discussed at a press conference this fall, watchdog environmental group Riverkeeper's former Senior Policy Analyst Kyle Rabin started to discuss environmental hazards, such as accidental radioactive leaks, a recent spate of unplanned shutdowns and fishkills on the Hudson River.

"Spent nuclear fuel storage is one of the greatest environmental dilemmas this country has ever faced," Rabin said.

"Nobody would deny those are terrible things," Parker said, "but they're outside the scope of our study."

"You can only cram so many factors into the bouillabaisse of decision-making," Kaplowitz said. "That's what makes this an art as much as a science."

In the Shadow of Indian Point
The "Not in My Backyard," philosophy doesn't apply to Buchanan Mayor Dan O'Neill. Now that the leaves have fallen, he can see the double domes of Indian Point from his bedroom window.

"I'm not losing any sleep worrying about it," said O'Neill, who has two children, ages 9 and 11.

When Rory Kennedy, sister of Riverkeeper's Senior Prosecuting Attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., produced a short film for HBO, "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," O'Neill said he was interviewed for nearly five hours.

When O'Neill saw a newspaper article in which Kennedy had been quoted with what he perceived to be an "obvious bias," he sent her, and the media, a letter demanding to be removed from her film prior to the release date.

It didn't matter at all, because Kennedy had already opted against including O'Neill in the film.

He said the film was based on "fear-mongering" and "incredible self-promotion.""The biggest challenge I face as mayor of Buchanan is correcting misinformation in the media," he said, adding the most substantial and consistent misperception is that "Indian Point is dangerous and not good for the environment."

"The idea that hundreds or thousands can die is pure nonsense," he asserted.

O'Neill doesn't want to see the local economy get crippled by the loss of the plants. The Village of Buchanan's operating budget and the Hendrick Hudson School District are largely funded by the facility.

On top of "tax rates tripling," O'Neill fears seniors would be driven from their homes, hundreds of local jobs would be lost and electric rates would skyrocket by 40 percent, in his estimation. The LAI report will likely prove these statistics fact, fiction, or in between.

"When Indian Point 2 shut down for six months in 2000, electric rates went up nearly 20 percent," O'Neill said.

Because Indian Point 3 provides the power for "all government buildings in New York City and Westchester, as well as Metro-North," O'Neill said taxes and train fares would also increase to cover the additional costs of energy on both counts.

When asked if he favored the industry simply because of the local perks or whether he sees it as an inherently positive asset, O'Neill didn't hesitate to support the construction of more plants, a project already in the works with the blessing of President George W. Bush. Indian Point's parent company, Entergy, is currently one of three groups looking to construct the new wave of American nuclear plants.

O'Neill said the burning of fossil fuels is already known for devastating environmental consequences, and cites the millions of pounds of coal ash that he envisions being pumped into the air as a result of losing Indian Point's power.

While many legislators have called for the closure of Indian Point, some, like Spano, have vocalized a desire to replace the lost energy with a natural gas pipeline, which would keep the facility viable and preserve many of the jobs O'Neill imagines locals losing.

The LAI report will address whether a natural gas pipeline facility could compensate on the tax rolls for the loss of Indian Point, provide the lost power and keep jobs in Buchanan.

O'Neill suggested shutting down fossil fuel plants along the Hudson River and studying the possibility of pairing nuclear power with wind and solar to meet the needs.

"Nuclear plants are, in my opinion, alternative energy sources. They help us become less dependent on foreign oil," O'Neill said.

He said the anti-nuclear critics rely on "scare tactics and misinformation" to whip up a public frenzy, and used the example of dry cask storage, which is now taking place at Indian Point as the spent fuel rod pools meet their capacity.

"The anti-Indian Point crowd used to call for it," he said, "but now that it's become a reality, they're backing away from it."

Nuclear expert Gordon Thompson wrote a report, "Robust Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel," for the Westchester County chapter of Citizens Awareness Network (CAN), in which he recommends dry cask storage.

Thompson, director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studied science and mechanical engineering and holds a doctorate in applied mathematics from Oxford University. He has spent decades assessing hazards associated with nuclear facilities and identifying alternative designs and modes of operation that can reduce risks.

He recommended hardening the storage casks with additional layers of concrete and other materials, and dispersing them so a single incident or accident wouldn't simultaneously affect an entire cache of stored fuel.

But Indian Point's casks, stored at the Indian Point site, will be kept in one place, stacked on top of one another, visible from the sky. Additionally, groups like the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) and Riverkeeper, have argued the casks chosen by Indian Point's parent company, Entergy, are of questionable quality.

"Entergy must use a more robust cask that will be less vulnerable to acts of terrorism," Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) contended in a July 14, 2004 statement. "The Holtec Hi-Storm 100 cask that Entergy proposes to use is one of the cheaper and least robust models. In addition, critics within the NRC and the industry have warned that the Holtec's quality assurance program is shoddy and their casks fraught with manufacturing and design flaws that can be particularly problematic at the time of transport."

O'Neill said he's "happy with the casks," and that his views on Indian Point are based on "scientific and empirical evidence."

When asked how Buchanan is preparing for the possibility of a shutdown now or in the future, O'Neill replied optimistically.

"We just don't see it happening. We've thought long and hard about safety because we live here. I just don't see Indian Point being shut down in my lifetime," he said, " or during the lifetimes of my children, or grandchildren."

He's far more concerned about a terrorist attack on the New York City subway, or even on one of the Hudson River's fossil fuel plants. He's not worried about Indian Point, he said, because the federal government seemingly isn't anxious.

"If there was serious concern," he said, "the Federal Aviation Administration and the NRC would have imposed a no-fly zone over the plant by now."

Deregulation of Low-Level Radioactive Waste
When nuclear plants are decommissioned, the radioactive waste doesn't just disappear. Experts might take decades handling and storing high-level radioactive waste, such as spent fuel and certain internal components of the reactors, Sheehan said. Everything else is considered low-level radioactive waste, meaning that every part of the plants exposed to radiation will either be contained at the facility or eventually moved to a waste site.

The sheer volume of the material commands a staggering fee when being processed.

In 2002, NRC entertained the idea of eliminating various restrictions on the handling of some low-level radioactive waste.

The Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS) of Washington, D.C. urged the public to send comments in July 2002 when the organization became aware the NRC had paired with the United States Department of Transportation in an effort to "weaken radioactive transport regulations…at a time of terrorist threats and potential massive increases in nuclear waste shipment."

NIRS' radioactive waste project director, Diane D'Arrigo, said the agencies were planning to "exempt various amounts of hundreds of radioactive isotopes from regulatory controls, when we are already threatened with dirty bombs; weaken or fail to improve high level radioactive waste cask design criteria…and reduce the existing requirement to ship plutonium in double containers to allow single containers."

"If the regulations are changed, radioactive wastes and materials under various levels would be considered no longer radioactive and free to be shipped as if uncontaminated," D'Arrigo said.

Such a change in regulations could have meant that material contaminated with low-level radiation, such as tons of scrap material from a decommissioned plant, could have been recycled back into public use, D'Arrigo said, because landfills not previously authorized to handle the material would unwittingly have mixed it in with non-radioactive counterparts.

Judith Johnsrud, Ph.D is on the board of directors of NIRS and is the former chair of the Sierra Club National Energy Committee and Nuclear Waste Task Force. Johnsrud is also a member of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) Advisory Committee for the Low-Level Radiation Research Program, and serves as an advocate on several NRC and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) panels.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States had six facilities authorized to handle low-level radioactive waste, according to a report, "Comments on U.S. Control and Management of Radioactive Wastes," written by Johnsrud. Three closed down due to leakage concerns, and governors in the states where the other three facilities remained protested the presence of radioactive dumps on their turf.

All of the nation's low-level radioactive waste, which has a cumulative impact on the bodies of those exposed to it, is still handled at three facilities, in the respective states of Washington, Utah and South Carolina. In the 1980s, according to Johnsrud, the cost of disposing of a cubic foot of waste was $5. Since then, the price has skyrocketed to more than $1,000 for the same amount of material, according to some estimates.

Johnsrud said the joint agencies' efforts to deregulate are "driven by disposal costs." The Steel Workers' Union vigorously protested an attempt to deregulate some radioactive materials in 1980 and 1981. Steelworkers would be left to unwittingly handle the material, which would be unmonitored and unlabeled, so they fight every time deregulation is proposed.

"There has been some talk about allowing landfills to handle low-level radioactive waste," Sheehan said this week, "but nothing has come of it."

According to Sheehan, there are three types of closure for nuclear plants, and once a utility chooses to embark on decommissioning, a deadline of 60 years is imposed on the process.

Utilities can choose to immediately remove all spent nuclear fuel from storage pools, put it in dry cask storage, decommission the pools and have all radioactive materials removed to one of the three sites specializing in the handling of radioactive waste, Sheehan said.

A second closure option is more common, Sheehan said, at multi-reactor sites."A utility might choose to 'mothball' the site and take it apart later," Sheehan said. Mothballing entails closing off a reactor while other reactors at the same site continue to operate.

"When reactors are closed off, radioactivity begins to decay fairly rapidly, as soon as the reactors are no longer splitting atoms," Sheehan said.

The third option, which has never yet been chosen by a utility in the United States, is "entombing," which requires the construction of a "concrete sarcophagus, such as that at the Chernobyl plant," Sheehan explained.

In the absence of a national repository for spent fuel, such as the proposed and hotly contested Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada, the toxic material must remain on-site, Sheehan said.

"It's hard to say if Yucca Mountain is going to happen," Sheehan admitted. "There are a lot of issues."

Getting Closure
As part of the protest against Long Island's Shoreham, a plant that never officially went online, emergency planning couldn't be accomplished due to refusal to participate at the local and state levels. The lack of data then made it possible for then-Governor Mario Cuomo to negotiate a solution. That hasn't been the case with Indian Point.

"My understanding," said Sheehan, "is that the state and counties never refused to take part in emergency exercises or in revising emergency planning procedures for Indian Point. All of the parties certainly took place in the emergency exercise for Indian Point conducted earlier this year. What they did do was refuse to certify an annual checklist of emergency response capabilities."

Sheehan drummed the point that NRC is responsible for on-site emergency planning, while the FEMA carries the burden of off-site planning.

"FEMA will tell you the certification is not a requirement and that through reviews and other means, the agency has been able to determine that there is still 'reasonable assurance' that the emergency plans could be successfully carried out," Sheehan explained.

Regardless of the split between the two agencies' responsibilities, NRC is still the ultimate authority on the matter, and once FEMA chose to rubber-stamp the plans despite opposition, NRC could have rejected the preliminary approval.

"Ultimately, we have to say yes or no," Sheehan conceded, "but they are the experts. We trust their judgment."

On July 25, 2003, FEMA's Director of the Preparedness Division, R. David Paulison wrote a letter to Governor George Pataki to assure him Westchester could fulfill the emergency plans despite a refusal to submit detailed information to FEMA.

"I am writing," Paulison began, "to transmit FEMA's determination of reasonable assurance that the off-site preparedness for...Indian Point is adequate."

Paulison went on to "outline the additional actions FEMA is prepared to take to help make the region a model of preparedness for the nation."

"Emergency planning for Indian Point is an on-going, cyclical process," Paulison said. Putnam, Orange and Rockland had updated their plans at this time, but the lone holdout, Westchester, sought the assistance of "outside contractors…and refused to provide FEMA with a copy of those detailed plan updates."

By actively exercising their plans and continuing to participate in drills and other planning and training events, Paulison said Westchester had proven capable of handling an evacuation. The county, he wrote, has "successfully demonstrated their ability to respond to the scenarios presented."

The "scenarios presented," however, don't include a fast-breaking release of radiation, or a situation in which key infrastructure is completely disabled during a slow release.

In 1988, after the state refused to participate in emergency planning for Shoreham, Cuomo negotiated on behalf of the state with the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) to reach an agreement to decommission the Shoreham nuclear power plant at a cost of $5.3 billion. The cost was absorbed by federal taxpayers, the utility's investors and electricity customers on Long Island.

"There were concerns that because of the location of the Shoreham plant, it would be difficult to evacuate the population, that it couldn't be effectively pulled off," Sheehan said.

Populations around many of the nation's 103 nuclear plants have boomed into urban sprawl, Sheehan said, but that doesn't mean populations can't be safely evacuated despite drastically different circumstances than when plants were first slated for construction.

The fight to close Shoreham was forceful not only at the local level, but at the state level. Governor George Pataki, formerly mayor of Peekskill from 1981 to 1984, has never taken a stance like Cuomo's.

The circumstances surrounding the two plants are radically different. In August 2002, Pataki did commission a study of the evacuation plans from Witt, considered to be the top expert on emergency planning in the nation.

Even Witt's litany of concerns regarding the emergency evacuation plans hasn't resulted in anything close to the successful actions taken by the state of New York when looking to decommission Shoreham.

Shoreham, stigmatized from the start, ended up being the most expensive plant that never operated commercially, as the 1989 buyout took place before the plant ever fully went online. Indian Point, on the other hand, is a firmly entrenched power player in the New York metropolitan energy scene.

"In the case of Indian Point, the emergency plans have been subjected to more scrutiny than any others in the country," Sheehan said. "FEMA and NRC have seen no reason to believe the plans wouldn't be adequate."

NRC, as Sheehan said, doesn't consider it "within their jurisdiction" to tell a plant to close down permanently. When asked why the emergency evacuation plans don't take major sabotage, such as the intentional destruction of transportation corridors, bridges or other equipment into account, Sheehan said security concerns preclude agencies from sharing that kind of information.

"A lot of things are going on behind the scenes," he said, explaining the NRC collaborates with the Department of Homeland Security and other intelligence agencies for such private discussions.

"In a catastrophic scene like 9/11, all tools at the government's disposal would come to pass," he said. "You can say 'What if the Bear Mountain Bridge and the Tappan Zee Bridge are blown out and there's a plane crash into the domes at the same time?' You can do that do a limitless degree but really, what are the odds of that happening?"

The Chicken Little Complex
After the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, President Jimmy Carter mandated emergency evacuation plans and booklets explaining them to residents living within 10 miles of nuclear power plants. Carl Patrick of Putnam Valley was responsible for organizing Indian Point's booklet, the nation's first of its kind.

With no model on which to base the intrepid project, Patrick said the plans and booklet were "approached with caution."

The real problem with the evacuation plans isn't the population boom in Westchester and New York City, he said, and it isn't the possibility of terrorism. It's the "misperception created by the media," resulting in criticism and the possibility of panic that could created during an actual evacuation.

"The publicity that surrounds Indian Point means a whole bunch of people might pour out onto the roads, but if you're upwind, you don't have to worry," he said, adding the evacuation plan is based on moving those closest to the plant out first. "It's not a plan to move hundreds of thousands of people."

The evacuation plans don't involve the threat of terrorism, he said, because it's "unrealistic that terrorists will bomb or disable roads." Additionally, alternate traffic routes are considered in the plans.

Far more frightening to Patrick than the idea of terrorists are those people with a "Chicken Little Complex," those who believe everyone between New York and Albany would need to hit the road if a radioactive plume hits the sky.

"Those people," he said, "could jeopardize the lives of those who need to get out." He cited a train derailment in the 1970s in Toronto involving "nasty chemicals.""They moved a quarter of a million people out in 24 hours with no evacuation plan," he noted.

Patrick said he "backed into the nuclear industry" during a career as a teacher 30 years ago. With no communications experience, his demeanor and other skills scored him the job of communications manager for the New York Power Authority (NYPA), then owner of Indian Point 3 and the Fitzpatrick plant near Oswego, New York.

"From a technological perspective, nuclear plants are a safe, efficient and environmentally acceptable way to make electricity," said Patrick, who is now semi-retired and continues to write reports as a strategic communications consultant.

The industry's public approval rating is similar now to when he first started out, but he noted the accident at Three Mile Island, followed in 1986 by the Chernobyl disaster, caused a crisis of public faith for a time. He called this reaction "reasonable," and said it led to an exponential increase in safety at all nuclear plants. This attention to safety was generated by the industry, not by the NRC, he said.

"If the industry hadn't taken such steps, the NRC surely would have," Patrick explained.

Three major changes included hardware upgrades, personnel changes and a new look at procedures, since all three factors played a role in the Three Mile Island accident. "The plants operate so much more reliably than before Three Mile Island," he said.

When asked about obvious failures, such as the decay of a reactor head at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio, Patrick said that was "the result of a bunch of guys who failed to recognize obvious signs."

On December 4, 2001, the NRC didn't force the Davis-Besse plant to shut down, even temporarily, despite concerns about possible cracks of nozzles passing through the reactor lid. In February, the plant was shut down for routine refueling, and plant operators announced five cracks in the nozzles. A month later, NRC announced that acid had leaked from the nozzles to decay six inches of steel.

On January 3, 2003, the New York Times reported NRC's Office of Inspector General found top agency safety officials delayed shutdown because it didn't want to hurt the plant owner financially. Small cracks had been detected at other plants around the same time.

The NRC had drafted a letter on November 16, 2001, requiring the 25-year-old Davis-Besse plant to shut down, but the Inspector General's report said the "agency backed off when plant owner FirstEnergy Corporation said such a shutdown would be costly and could cause wintertime power shortages in northwest Ohio."

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was quoted in the article: "The report shows that FirstEnergy and the NRC worked together to put profits above public safety. It's unacceptable."

NRC Chairman Richard Meserve defended the agency's actions with regard to Davis-Besse.

Patrick said the answer to such challenges lies in understanding that profit is derived from operating a safe plant. "Continual vigilance is required," he said, "the same way you keep airline pilots from falling asleep in the cockpit, the same way you deal with any situation that's potentially hazardous."

The fight to close down Indian Point has been evolving for decades, he said, and the battle isn't likely to come to and end anytime soon.

"Indian Point has always been controversial," he said, crediting the proximity to New York City, the media capital of the world, for most of the attention.

The Hudson River Valley has long been the focus of "an environmental movement of the leisure class," he said, "with enough time, money," and intelligence to mount an attack.

Despite the fear of terrorism and the vocal perseverance of passionate critics and environmentalists, not to mention hundreds of legislators and countless residents and organizations, Patrick envisions Indian Point humming along on the Hudson River for years to come, maybe even 25 or 30, he said.

Indian Point 2's license to operate will expire in 2013, and Indian Point 3 will be close behind in 2015. Entergy will need to apply to NRC soon if the utility intends to continue operating because the process of re-licensing takes years.

Entergy hasn't stated its intentions either way, nor have they yet applied for a new permit, but the clock is ticking. With so much to do on both sides, and so many questions still to answer, killing time is no longer an option.

###

Secrecy on security at nuclear plants continues to be scrutinized

North County News, November 10, 2004

by Rita J. King

The same way the food chain creates an impetus for evolution, terrorism and security each force the other entity to get stronger and smarter in order to succeed. In this interplay of offense and defense, the nuclear industry has found itself at the center of a debate about how much security is really enough.

After 9/11, security upgrades and mandates from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have manifested in enhanced barrier fortifications, better training for guards, razor wire and cement blocks protecting the nation's 103 nuclear power plants.

But the most notable change is the regulatory agency's announcement on August 4 that security issues at nuclear plants will now be veiled in secrecy, effectively eliminating public scrutiny and the ability of watchdog groups to raise awareness about issues affecting the industry as a whole or even at specific facilities, such as the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan.

NRC chairman Nils Diaz said the regulatory agency "deliberated for months on finding the balance between the NRC's commitment to openness and the concern that sensitive information might be misused by those who wish us harm."

When asked if the NRC's policy change might be an indication that terrorism will similarly be taken into account to revise the emergency evacuation plans, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said a fast-breaking plume of radiation was "impossible."

Riverkeeper, an environmental watchdog group with eyes and ears on the Hudson River, has been spearheading the fight to shut down Indian Point.

"The new policy is nothing more than a way to shield plant owners from embarrassing security blunders becoming public," said Riverkeeper Executive Director Alex Matthiessen. "The new and ill-advised policy will have a negative impact on security at Indian Point. Absent an explanation of what substantial security improvements have been made, one can only assume that little has been done…The NRC is fooling no one, certainly not the people of New York, and certainly not the terrorists determined to strike again."

Indian Point spokesman Jim Steets said he understands the necessity for having secret "safeguards" information to avoid "helping terrorists," but he's also frustrated because he's convinced if people had more information "nobody would see Indian Point as a potential terrorist target."

"It's often difficult for folks who don't have a background in engineering to understand how the forces of nature work," Steets remarked.

For example, Steets explained the "containment structures around the reactors are so strong that nothing reasonable could penetrate them."

What is "reasonable" these days?

"Okay, nothing imaginable could penetrate," he said. "People say a nuclear bomb could blow them up, but a nuclear bomb would do just fine on its own, so why put it at Indian Point?"

With President George W. Bush having announced blueprints for nuclear plants had been found in the caves of Afghanistan, and the 9/11 Commission's executive report explicitly stating terrorists had been planning to strike a nuclear plant on 9/11 but planes were grounded before the day's full roster of events could be completed, terrorism is the most substantial security concern facing the nuclear industry.

The NRC has never required nuclear plants, as private industries, to protect themselves against "acts of war" or "enemies of the United States." On 9/11, suicide bombers used the Hudson River as a navigational tool and flew above Indian Point on their way into Manhattan.

In the wake of that devastation, scrutiny on security intensified. Are measures to bolster security strong enough to keep those living around nuclear plants safe from an attack?

The Lonesome Whistleblower

When Ralph Nader made a Halloween appearance days before the presidential election in Peekskill, a scant crowd was present. The candidate stood with his back to Indian Point, visible in the distance behind him, with rolling hills along the Hudson River glowing golden in the molten autumn sun. Neither President Bush, nor his Democratic rival, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, showed up in that spot, Nader noted, to criticize the operation of Indian Point, considered by some, Nader included, to be one of the most "attractive terrorist targets in America."

"Protecting the health and safety of the public should come before protecting the profits of major nuclear power donors to the Bush Administration," Nader said. "The administration should require all nuclear plants to take authentic, measurable steps to protect themselves from terrorists…as to reduce the risk of a radioactive release."

Such criticisms are often dismissed as "scare tactics" by Steets, who has become a popular mouthpiece for the industry. He was even the subject of a feature in the New York Times in September, 2004, "The Public, and Cheerful, face of Nuclear Energy."

A couple of months ago, the possibility of a strike among security guards over contract negotiations didn't ruffle Steets.

"If they strike, we can replace them with trained security officers from anywhere," he said at the time, adding new workers are given a thorough and intensive training period prior to taking on posts within the plant. The training includes background checks and psychological tests, he said.

"People think security guards just kind of stand around and shoot back if somebody starts shooting at them," he said. "That's not the case."

Each guard, he said, covers a specific area and has a specific duty. He doesn't believe it would make any difference at all if the federal government took over security at the plant, because the "requirements for security would still be the same."

NRC's Sheehan said interim guards can be trusted with important information about plant security because "if they want to remain employed in this field, they need to remain trustworthy."

One guard who stepped beyond the hush of business as usual is Foster Zeh, a former Indian Point security officer. On December 9, 2002, Zeh was interviewed on "Good Morning America!" by Diane Sawyer of ABC News. He appeared with the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Danielle Brian.

Zeh said during security drills, one of the most vulnerable and arguably the most dangerous area of the plants, the spent nuclear storage building, was infiltrated easily, within seconds.

"These drills are, are basically designed for…the security officers to, to enhance the security, obviously," Zeh told Diane Sawyer. "But when we went to our supervisors with it, we were basically told to shut up."

He went on to describe guards fearful of an attack due to understaffing, poor training, and fitness levels so inadequate that repelling an attack might be physically impossible.

POGO's Brian said her agency interviewed 140 guards across the country and found overwhelmingly similar feelings from three quarters of those interviewed.

"It's a bottom line issue," Brian said. "It's money. The minimum requirement is that you have a pistol permit. That doesn't, necessitate that you're going to do well against an armed attack. And it's ridiculous that these companies actually believe, and our elected officials believe, that this is enough to protect a nuclear power plant. It really isn't."

Zeh went on to say guards are "physically and morally defeated" because no matter how many times security was breached during drills, the facility garnered high marks.

Officials from Indian Point's parent company, Entergy, declined to appear in the segment but sent a statement acknowledging they were in compliance with NRC regulations.

"One of the points in their statement is that the NRC said…they've passed their standards, and what's frightening is, it's true," Brian said. "The government standards, frankly, are so pathetic that the companies are able to say, 'look, we've passed everything we have to pass.' And so, from our perspective, until the government raises the bar and really demands serious security, that's what we're going to get."

In addition to his media appearance, Zeh wrote a letter to the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations in December 2002, in which he detailed an avalanche of security concerns, such as drills being deliberately rigged to ensure success, skittish guards unsure of the capability to repel an attack, overtime, high fatigue and a lack of faith in management.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission

NRC is the ultimate authority when it comes to creating the security standards that guide the nuclear power industry. Two months after 9/11, NRC Chairman Dr. Richard Meserve admitted the NRC had been caught off guard by the scope and force of that day.

"President Bush described the September 11 attacks as an act of war," Meserve said before the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations during a November 8, 2001 speech. "Plainly, those vicious attacks far exceeded anything that the NRC had contemplated as a threat to our licensees. Nor had we seriously considered the possibility that a terrorist threat might affect all U.S. nuclear facilities simultaneously."

"In principle, of course, it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to protect the nation against threats from abroad," Meserve said, "but the reality of the present crisis is that all of us, organizations and individuals, public and private, have a responsibility as citizens to do our part to protect the American people."

But if NRC hadn't even considered the possibility of such an attack, or worse, what has been done since to prepare?

Sheehan said nuclear plants were already "robustly" protected before 9/11, and the government was responsible for protecting the American people against acts of war and enemies of the United States while licensees are not.

"Nuclear plants have always had a high level of security," Sheehan said, adding the industry has spent millions on heightened mandates after September 11. The deadline for enforcing those new rules just passed, on October 29.

Better guard training is one of the new measures, along with physical improvements at facilities such as greater standoff distances for vehicles, additional checkpoints and more security guards, Sheehan said.

To test security, NRC holds "force-on-force drills," during which mock marauders armed with fake weapons engage in imaginary battle with guards, some of whom have been hired and trained expressly to meet the demands of the drill, announced months in advance to give facilities a chance beef up on muscle and know-how.

After 9/11, NRC took a hiatus to assess a new Design Basis Threat (DBT) in the face of previously unimagined possibilities. The DBT is designed, according to NRC, based on the type, composition and abilities of an adversary.

In April 2003, the new DBT was approved for use in a June drill that took place at Indian Point. Previously, some facts and figures surrounding force-on-force drills had been made public, but the new DBT is being kept secret. In fact, NRC announced in August all security information about the nuclear industry, even information previously announced routinely such as guards asleep at their posts, will henceforth be shielded from the public, ostensibly to avoid helping terrorists.

Riverkeeper pounced on the announcement, believing the purpose was to shield nuclear plants from "embarrassing gaffes and public relations nightmares."

"Given the increased terrorist threat level, Indian Point's poor record on security, and the NRC's weak oversight, now is the time for greater scrutiny, not less," said Riverkeeper's former Senior Policy Analyst Kyle Rabin. "The NRC should consider an alternative policy that will allow nuclear watchdogs and public interest groups to participate in the development of security regulations and provide oversight in a manner that enhances plant security."

Riverkeeper doesn't trust that the new DBT will meet the standard set by guerrilla warfare or terrorist tactics, especially those involving the possibility of suicide bombers.

"For about 25 years, NRC has required reactor operators to design their security plans to protect only against a land-based terrorist event by no more than three external attackers operating as a single team and using weapons no more sophisticated than hand-carried automatic rifles," Rabin noted. "However, on September 11, 2001, more than six times that number of attackers, operating as four separate teams, using airplanes as weapons, launched a terrorist attack in the United States that took thousands of lives. A successful terrorist attack on a reactor or spent fuel pool could result in tens of thousands of casualties from prompt deaths and delayed cancers."

On September 14, 2004, Director of Natural Resources and the Environment for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Jim Wells testified before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives. His testimony was entitled, "Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Preliminary Observations on Efforts to Improve Security at Nuclear Power Plants."

"Today, three years after the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks, we are discussing what NRC has done, where they are, and what's left to do," Wells began.

To NRC's credit, he said, the agency "responded immediately" after 9/11 with heightened security measures and a new DBT. The GAO had recommended a "more realistic," and frequent drill, held every three years instead of eight, and Wells noted those suggestions had been implemented.

"While we applaud these efforts, it will take several more years for NRC to make an independent determination that each plant has taken reasonable and appropriate steps to provide protection," Wells said, adding the GAO has concerns about the process.

The first problem, according to Wells, is the NRC isn't visiting the plants much, but rather relying on a "paper review" to move security along.

"As a result, NRC will not have detailed knowledge about security at individual facilities prior to approval," Wells explained.

Wells also questioned the manner in which the NRC was looking to measure security.

"NRC is considering action that could potentially compromise the integrity of the exercises. The agency is planning to require the use of an adversary force trained in terrorist tactics," Wells said. "However, NRC is considering the use of a force provided by a company that the nuclear power industry selected; a company that has had problems in the past, and a company that provides guards for about half the facilities to be tested. This relationship with the industry raises questions about the force's independence."

He was referring, in all likelihood, to Wackenhut, the United States-based division of the leading global provider of security-related services. Wackenhut was once in charge of security at Indian Point. In March 2003, Entergy assumed that responsibility internally.

Eye on Wackenhut, a website hosted by the Service Employees International Union, has made a mission out of watching the security company. Eye on Wackenhut has identified a variety of security related complaints, such as long hours for guards, inadequate training and the apparent contradiction of security at some plants being managed by the same company that, in some cases, later tests the adequacy of the security.

Eye on Wackenhut and nearly 500 others voiced such concerns to NRC chairman Diaz, who responded in a statement posted online in early 2004. After reviewing the issues, mostly about Indian Point nuclear plants, Diaz began his report by noting security was adequate.

Steets said security efforts were coordinated between various intelligence agencies, NRC, officials from the Department of Defense, law enforcement agencies, engineers and military intelligence.

"We had a secure facility before 9/11," Steets said. "We had barrier fences, cameras, metal detectors, x-ray machines and other layers of protection, and they have all doubled since 9/11. Indian Point meets all the requirements of the NRC. NRC employees get up every morning knowing what their jobs and responsibilities are."

Entergy has spent $30 million implementing more security since 9/11, he said, and has met the new DBT established by the NRC.

"The drill was more intensive this time," Steets said, although he refused to verify if the exercise addressed the possibility of more sophisticated sabotage or more attackers than before. He also wouldn't say if mock truck bombs were included in the drill.

Entry for some might be effectively barred by barbed wire and cement blocks, but did the drill begin with violent, possibly suicidal, bombers paving the way for more saboteurs?

"NRC did say Indian Point security repelled the attacks and performed well," he noted.

"It's important to recognize that after 9/11, we all realize we have a lot of borders and facilities that require protection. Security means a lot of different things," Steets said.

He said increased measures at airports, for example, benefit the nuclear industry because the additional security provides another level of protection against sabotage from the sky. He drew a clear line between the plant's responsibility to protect itself by meeting NRC mandates, and the government's responsibility to protect Americans from acts of war or enemies of the United States.

"We can't prevent a plane from crashing into a dome," Steets said. "That's the government's responsibility."

Despite no-fly zones over the Super Bowl and Disney parks, flights aren't banned from crossing the sky above Indian Point. For a brief period after 9/11, airspace was restricted and additional security measures were taken and quickly dropped.

"They don't think it's necessary to place restrictions on commercial flights," Steets said.

In October 2001, the intelligence community caught wind of a "credible threat" against Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, already the site of the worst nuclear accident in American history in 1979, after which President Jimmy Carter mandated emergency evacuation plans for communities living near all the nation's power plants.

Sheehan wouldn't specify the nature of the threat against Three Mile Island, but he said the response to it was an example of how the facility and government worked together to protect the plant and residents. The airspace above the plant was restricted and guarded by the military while security within the facility was on high alert.

A helicopter was once spotted hovering too long in the air above the Seabrook Plant in New Hampshire, Sheehan said, and was escorted out by fighter jets.

While filming Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable for HBO, Rory Kennedy and her brother, attorney and environmental activist Robert "Bobby" F. Kennedy, Jr., hovered in the airspace near Indian Point while discussing a perceived lack of security.

"Can you imagine a world without New York City?" said Bobby Kennedy. "The terrorists already have."

The Great Escape

Last year, Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano staged a revolution against the emergency evacuation plans when he refused to verify the county was prepared for a radiological emergency, despite having completed all the necessary drills and preparatory mandates. In a show of solidarity, his colleagues from Putnam, Rockland and Orange Counties also refused to ink their signatures.

Year after year, after the county executives verify preparedness, as they have in the past, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reviews the results of the preparedness drill, also called a "mock evacuation," before recommending the NRC ultimately approve the plans. FEMA is responsible for organizing the off-site response to a radiological emergency, while NRC coordinates on-site.

The protest of the county executives created a fierce finger-pointing battle, during which the state asked the counties for more information and the federal government asked the state for more information before FEMA approved the plans despite the din and passed them up to the NRC for ultimate approval.

In the meantime, local school districts such as Lakeland, protested the hassle of trying to decipher complicated consequences of proximity to Indian Point, such as planning their own evacuation strategy, assuring parents children will have transportation, food, shelter, safety and access to potassium iodide pills to protect their thyroids in case of exposure to radiation.

Westchester County has repeatedly voiced similar complaints about unprepared first responders and the funding of emergency measures to the tune of nearly five million annually while Entergy, Indian Point's parent company, is required to shore up around half a million.

Congresswoman Sue Kelly was instrumental in calling for Congressional hearings on Indian Point, held in February 2003, before FEMA approved the plans.

"This isn't a game," Kelly said at the hearings. "This is about the safety of 20 million residents in the New York metropolitan area."

She went on to slam FEMA's response to the public and legislative outcry.

"I say with no uncertainty that I am appalled by the conduct of FEMA as it relates to Indian Point," Kelly said. "The agency's inaction and bureaucratic finger-pointing has been a disservice to our community. Instead of providing expert guidance to local officials, FEMA has engaged in a senseless agenda of intimidation and dangerous bullying."

Many lost faith in the regulatory agencies after the fray, and public and legislative scrutiny intensified. Currently, more than 400 elected officials, legislators, senators, trustees and councilperson from the tri-state area have signed a petition demanding closure of Indian Point.

"Currently the biggest risk to Indian Point and the rest of the U.S. commercial nuclear power plant fleet is the refusal of the NRC, DHS, FEMA, the federal government, and the nuclear industry to acknowledge that in this post-9/11 world, we need to secure and limit any and all of the country's greatest potential terrorist targets," said Riverkeeper outreach coordinator Lisa Rainwater van Suntum, PhD. "Nuclear power plants, as even President Bush discussed in his 2002 State of the Union Address, have been and continue to be high on the list of possible terrorist targets. Until these entities take direct action to secure nuclear power plants, and in particular shut down Indian Point, which poses the greatest threat to the greatest number of people, the region and country are at risk."

Rainwater van Suntum feels the government has "refused to accept science, act on intelligence reports, and provide ample funding to local, regional, and statewide agencies."

Many have voiced concern about spent nuclear fuel being stored in pools of water.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is one of many experts who have fired warning flares about the vulnerability of the fuel and the catastrophe that could result should a nuclear fire begin.

The testimony of experts on Indian Point's payroll often contradicts the findings of Lochbaum and others, like Gordon Thompson, a world-renowned expert who advises plants to "harden and disperse" spent nuclear fuel in fortified casks to prevent a cataclysmic attack or accident.

"For every PhD, there's an equal and opposite PhD," Westchester County Executive Spano likes to say.

Even Entergy's own research, including a report from January 25, 2002, questions the success guards might have when faced with real danger. According to Entergy's own report, only 19 percent of guards interviewed at the planet felt they could successfully repel an attack.

To make matters even more ambiguous with regard to the necessity for a strong security force, NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan said in Kennedy's documentary terrorists don't have the capability to train near the plants and succeed with an attack.

Other experts have given equally passionate testimony to the contrary, insisting the eastern seaboard could be rendered

uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years and the world's economy could be crushed if a successful attack on one of Indian Point's spent fuel rod pools resulted in a nuclear fire.

It seemed like only one person, James Lee Witt, might have the knowledge and skills to set the record straight on the adequacy of the emergency evacuation plans, so his counsel was sought.

New Perspectives on Security

In 2002, New York Governor George Pataki hired James Lee Witt & Associates to conduct an independent study of the emergency evacuation plans, a requirement mandated by President Jimmy Carter after the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island. As Director of FEMA, Witt approved emergency evacuation plans for Indian Point, around which eight percent of the nation's population lives in a 50-mile radius.

This time around, Witt, the nation's top expert in emergency planning, found the plans to be "inadequate" in January 2003. Just as FEMA had disregarded the protest of the county executives, they now chose to downplay Witt's expertise, and his warning that in light of 9/11, the emergency plans should take a fast-breaking release into account. This was merely one of a litany of flaws Witt found in the plans.

The report, nearly 500 pages long, seemed like it would provide a new path for emergency planners responsible for ensuring the safety of those living around nuclear plants, and especially Indian Point.

"Simply stated," Witt wrote in the executive summary of his report, "the world has recently changed. What was once considered sufficient may now be in need of further revision."

Among Witt's observations was a perceived contradiction in the reality of human nature and the expectation that people will obey instructions from authority figures.

"The plans appear based on the premise that people will comply with official government directions rather than acting in accordance with what they perceive to be their own best interests," Witt wrote.

The plans haven't been updated, he said, to reflect the possibility of terrorism.

Steets reacted by saying the evacuation plans are "Adequate even in light of possible terrorism. The basic time frame for a release getting bad enough to cause serious harm is the same. The rapid-release scenario doesn't exist."

Witt said he hoped the report would accelerate both "regulatory and cultural changes."

Two months later, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) became official.

Matthew Brzezinski wrote an article for Mother Jones describing his experience of researching and visiting the DHS.

"It was billed as America's frontline against terrorism," he wrote. "But badly underfunded, crippled by special interests and ignored by the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has been relegated to bureaucratic obscurity."

Brzezinski was one of the first journalists to "get an inside look at what was billed as the most ambitious government overhaul since the creation of the Pentagon in 1947."

March 1, 2003 was the official start date for the DHS, composed of 22 government agencies. According to Brzezinski, the $27 million DHS budget is used to screen 1.5 million airline passengers, inspecting 57,000 trucks and shipping containers, as well as making arrests and seizures, reviewing intelligence reports, training federal officers and issuing information.

Brzezinski expected a "colossus," he said, but instead found "wholly inadequate quarters." He was there to meet with assistant secretary from the Infrastructure Protection Directorate Bob Liscouski, whose mission it is to "make sure Al Qaeda doesn't blow up a power plant, bridge, nuclear or chemical facility somewhere in the United States."

After Liscouski drew a matrix to "explain the role of vulnerability assessments being conducted to establish…terrorist attacks to America's economic backbone," Brzezinski asked him what he was doing about it.

"We don't do the doing," Liscouski said. "We do the coordinating. Our role is to look at the big picture of what is really threatened and determine how to protect it."

FEMA, responsible for the off-site response to a radiological emergency at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants, was brought under the DHS's umbrella of protection. NRC remains an independent agency.

"NRC has a very good relationship with DHS," Sheehan said. "We have a lot of interagency committees and councils."

When asked how the umbrella of protection offered by DHS has changed life at Indian Point, Steets said the NRC "has an important relationship with DHS and we're part of the mix."

DHS Director Tom Ridge may or may not have visited Indian Point, Steets said, but "other staffers have."

Local legislators such as Congressman Eliot Engel have written letters to Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, urging him to take a closer look at Indian Point.

In March of 2003, Engel wrote: Security at and around nuclear power plants is no longer just a concern of the NRC. With real terrorist threats looming over nuclear power plants, the Department of Homeland Security should be actively engaged in securing our nuclear power plants and the spent fuel rods located there. The threats are real, and we need to ensure that those people living near the plants receive the best protection our country can provide."

Engel concluded with a wish to work with Ridge on the Indian Point issue, and he was not alone in his request. But Ridge has reportedly remained unresponsive. When attempts to contact the DHS were made for this article, the first call was patched through to a live conversation and both parties hung up when they realized a third party had been privy to a fragment of the conversation. Two subsequent calls were not returned in time.

On the DHS website, under the "contact us," subhead, the only information provided is for the agency's postal address.

"Ridge has refused repeated requests by state political leaders, including Westchester County Executive Andy Spano and the New York City Council, to meet to discuss safety concerns. Ridge hasn't even responded to their letters," wrote Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in an editorial published in Newsday on October 28, 2004.

When GAO's Wells testified before the House of Representatives, he made it clear that while changes have been made in security, the industry and the agency responsible for guiding it still have a journey ahead of them.

"In conclusion," Wells said, "can the public be assured that NRC's efforts will protect the plants against attacks? Our answer is not yet. It will be some time before NRC can provide the public with full assurances that what has been done is enough. Some of these enhancements are still being put in place, and they remain to be tested…We believe based on what we have seen to date, that it is important for NRC to act quickly and take a strong leadership role in establishing a worthy adversary team for these exercises, establish priorities for the facilities to be tested, carefully analyze the test results for shortcomings in facility security, and be willing to require additional security improvements as warranted."

The Design Basis Threat, in other words, needs to be cautiously engineered to keep the industry's security equal to any threat they may face, especially considering utilities aren't required to protect themselves against acts of war or enemies of the United States.

###

‘Chernobyl-on-the-Hudson’: New reports detail terrorist targets

By Tony Attrino, John Adamski,
Michael McDonnell and Walter Elliott

The Observer, November 10, 2004

http://theobserver.com/archives/11-10-04/index.html

There are 15,000 such facilities in the United States, including an estimated 111 that, if attacked, could each put a million or more people at risk of death or injury,” writes environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his new book, “Crimes Against Nature.”

The Kuehne plant has long been considered a top target for terrorists in terms of the numbers of people injured or killed in the event that hazardous chemicals are released from its tanks.

Kennedy also raised concerns over Indian Point, a nuclear power plant on the other side of the Hudson River . An attack on the plant could cause a catastrophic cloud of radioactive gas that could pervade a 50-mile radius and put millions at risk of death or injury.

“Since Sept. 11, the White House has done nothing to require better security at those 15,000 chemical manufacturing facilities, oil tank farms, pesticide plants, and other repositories of deadly chemicals,” Kennedy writes. “Nor has it forced the nuclear industry to beef up security adequately at its 103 nuclear power plants.”

Many including Kennedy want the plant closed or formidable security features to be set in place in order to ensure the safety of 20 million people in the New York City area. In the worst-case scenario, people residing in the most outer-lying areas including Lyndhurst , Belleville , Nutley , Bloomfield , Harrison, East Newark, North Arlington and Kearny are also at risk.

Kennedy says the targets are ambitious ones for terrorists because of their proximity to New York City . But the catastrophe would also devastate New Jersey , and activists like Kennedy say emergency management officials on the local, state and federal levels appear unprepared.

“What unprecedented measures has Bush enacted to prevent this horror from occurring?” Kennedy writes. “Next to none.”

LOCAL RESPONSE

The charge that government has done little or nothing to protect citizens from an attack on the Kuehne Chemical Company raises the ire of veteran policeman John Manley, a sergeant with the Kearny Police Department, who says that law officers on local, state and federal levels have studied plant security.

“There have been many, many meetings and federal money placed into the security of that plant,” Manley said. “There have been tremendous measures taken. And there are things that I won’t discuss with you that I don’t want people to know about because it will hinder those efforts.”

Kennedy’s allegations “are not entirely true,” agreed Joe Konopka, a deputy coordinator for the Hudson County Office of Emergency Management. “There have been some improvements there – safety improvements and target hardening.”

From the outside, cement barricades prevent a truck loaded with explosives from ramming into the plant. There is always the presence of at least one police officer in a patrol car positioned outside the plant’s gates.

Kearny Mayor Al Santos said local officials have worked with the federal government to improve security.

“The location is under the jurisdiction of the state and federal homeland security offices, and all security matters are reviewed by them,” Santos said. “The police chief and OEM (Office of Emergency Management) are the ones who communicate with the federal authorities about all security issues.”

But Rick Hind, legislative director for the Greenpeace Organization in Washington , D.C. , says current measures were not enough to stop him from twice visiting the plant, including once in May 2003 when Hind says he drove up in a van with tinted windows that contained six of his colleagues.

“We drove right up and took pictures and nobody stopped us,” Hind said.

Manley, the Kearny police sergeant, disputes this. “He’s a liar,” Manley charged. “I guarantee you that never happened.”

But a grainy videotape available on the Internet seems to bolster Hind’s claim. Taken from the vantage point of a dashboard, it shows a motorist driving unimpeded through the plant’s front gates and approaching several rail car tanks, presumably filled with chlorine. The videotape is dated May 10, 2003.

GREENPEACE

Two years before the attacks on the World Trade Center , the Kuehne Chemical Plant filed a risk-management plan with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Under the Clean Air Act, every company that uses extremely hazardous chemicals is required to file such a plan.

The report offered a frightening worst-case scenario of what might happen in an attack on the plant: “Fully loaded railroad tank car releases all its chlorine within 10 minutes. The resulting cloud of chlorine vapor would be immediately dangerous to both life and health for a distance exceeding 14 miles. The total population in this radius is approximately 12 million.”

Hind took a special interest in Kuehne after Sept. 11, 2001.

“The lessons of 9/11 are two-fold,” Hind said. “One, the terrorists used our own infrastructure against us. Two, we can prevent that from happening in places (like Kuehne) where we are extremely vulnerable from being attacked.”

Hind calls Kuehne the “number one” terrorist target in the nation in terms of the number of people who can be put at risk. After twice visiting the plant and assessing the security there, Hind said he developed several theories on how a terrorist might attack the chlorine tanks.

“A high-powered rifle might be enough to create a disaster without going through security,” Hind said. “A 50-cal. rifle bullet penetrates one-inch of armor-plated steel.”

Hind’s statements anger Manley, who charged that activists who work with the media to publicize such theories create public fear and might actually give terrorists ideas they didn’t have before. “Before the publicity, few people had heard of Kuehne,” Manley said.

CHERNOBYL-ON-THE-HUDSON

To most local people, terrorist targets seem most frightening when they are close to home. But consider the Indian Point power plant, a nuclear reactor many miles away. If attacked, West Hudson and surrounding areas fall easily within the zone for devastation.

Authorities on Indian Point nuclear plant, which is located on the east bank of the Hudson River outside Buchanan, N.Y. – just 22 miles from Manhattan and owned by the Arkansas power conglomerate Entergy recently stated that the frail nuclear power plant is at the end of its energy production lifespan – not to mention – a “vulnerable” target for terrorists jeopardizing the lives of 20 million people including those in the surrounding areas.

“No one is taking responsibility for safety at Indian Point,” Kennedy told The Observer. “Either Entergy or the Federal government needs to step-up and improve security on many levels.”

And like Kuehne, security at Indian Point seems questionable at best. On Oct. 19, two staff members with The Observer newspaper drove through the front gates of the plant, parked their vehicle and roamed about the plant grounds for about five minutes before being approached by security.

Captain Bill Sheehan, a member of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, which is located in Lyndhurst , is also in favor of closing the plant down for environmental reasons. “Not a single nuclear power plant has been built in the United States since Three Mile Island occurred,” said Sheehan, a member of the Coast Guard who operates riverboat cruises along the Hackensack River . “ Chernobyl was the final wake-up call to rid ourselves of this type of energy.” According to Sheehan, nuclear power plants have a life expectancy between 20 and 30 years.

“Indian Point was built in the early seventies and it is indeed at the end of its life expectancy,” Sheehan added.

A study conducted by Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded that the chances of a reactor meltdown increase by nearly a factor of 100 at Indian Point because the plant’s drainage pits (also known as containment sumps) are “almost certain” to be blocked with debris during an accident.

“The NRC has known about the containment sump problem at Indian Point since September 1996, but currently plans to fix it only by March 2007,” said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists.” The NRC cannot take more than a decade to fix a safety problem that places millions of Americans at undue risk.”

Entergy spokesperson James Steets said that there’s no rush to fix the problems with the emergency system because a breakdown isn’t likely in the first place.

“There has been $30 million in upgrades that includes bomb detection devises, new weapons, hand print recognition machines, security cameras installed along the barbed wire perimeter of the compound, and extra vehicular barricades,” said Steets. “In regards to air-restrictions, the FCC determines that not the NRC.”

According to authorities at the NRC, Indian Point#2 reactor would exhaust all of its cooling water in less than 23 minutes, while the #3 reactor would consume all of its water in only 14 minutes.

Some believe any evacuation plan is futile. “It’s a joke. There’s no way that many people could flee this area,” said Sheehan. “Where would people go and how would they get there in the event of a nuclear meltdown or other radioactive release at Indian Point is unclear.”

In September 2002, New York Governor George Pataki commissioned a report on Indian Point’s evaluation plan. He picked James Lee Witt, the former Rose Law Firm attorney who served as head of FEMA during the Clinton administration, to oversee the investigation. At the time, Pataki said that he would support any closure of the plant if Witt’s report revealed the communities near the plant could not be safely evacuated.

Witt submitted his report on January 10, 2003, which concluded that Entergy’s off-site evacuation plans for Indian Point were “woefully inadequate.” Witt wrote: “It is our conclusion that the current radiological response system and capabilities are not adequate to overcome their combined weight and protect people from an unacceptable dose of radiation in the event of a release from Indian Point, especially if the release is faster or larger than the design basis release.” In the end, Witt concluded that it was not possible to fix the evacuation plan, given the problems at the plant, the density of the nearby communities and looming security threats. New York Governor Pataki’s campaigning vows to close the plant have never come to fruition nor has New York Senator Hillary Clinton taken substantial legislative steps to close the plant. Some suggest it may be due to her former Presidential husband receiving over $100,000 from Entergy, as he climbed his way out of Little Rock and into the Oval Office.

The prospect of a terrorist attack at the Indian Point nuclear power plant has been a source of great concern for residents and elected officials of the New York metropolitan area since the al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – particularly since one of the hijacked planes flew over Indian Point on its way to New York . The recently released 9/11 Commission Report revealed that Mohammed Atta, the plot’s ringleader who piloted one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center, “considered targeting a nuclear facility he had seen during familiarization flights near New York.” Given that the reconnaissance flight paths used by the terrorists included the Hudson River corridor and that the next closest nuclear facility to New York City is over 70 miles away, the plant in question was almost certainly Indian Point. Although the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recently required marginal security enhancements at Indian Point and other U.S. nuclear power plants, the plants remain highly vulnerable to air and water-based attacks as well as to ground assaults by large and sophisticated terrorist teams with paramilitary training and advanced weaponry. Of special concern is the vulnerability of facilities that contain equipment vital for safe plant operation, yet are insufficiently hardened against attack.

In September, a study was released that showed an attack on Indian Point could cause up to 518,000 long-term deaths from cancer and up to 44,000 near-term deaths from acute radiation poisoning, depending on weather conditions. The study was commissioned by Riverkeeper, a Hudson River-based environmental group. Dr. Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, authored the report entitled “Chernobyl-on-the-Hudson?: The Health and Economic Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant.” Dr. Lyman calculated with the same computer models and methodology used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy to analyze the health and economic impacts of radiological accidents. The study updates a 1982 congressional report based on Sandia National Laboratories’ CRAC-2 (Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences) study. CRAC-2 found that a core meltdown and consequent radiological release at one of the two operating Indian Point reactors could cause 50,000 early fatalities from acute radiation syndrome and 14,000 latent fatalities from cancer. Dr. Lyman’s report found that the potential for early deaths – 44,000 cases – is comparable to the 1982CRAC-2 estimate and the peak number of latent cancer fatalities – 518,000 cases – is over 35 times greaterthan the CRAC-2 estimate, corresponding to a scenario where weather conditions maximize the rain-relatedfallout of radioactivity over New York City . “The study’s findings confirm what Riverkeeper and hundreds of the region’s elected officials have saidall along: Indian Point poses an unacceptable risk to the 20 million people – including all New York Cityresidents – who live and work in the New York metropolitan area,” said Alex Matthiessen, Riverkeeper’s executive director. “The time for our elected officials to take their heads out of the sandhas passed. Federal and state officials are effectively shielding the nuclear industry from whathas become an obvious new reality since 9/11: nuclear plants are sitting ducks and need substantially moresecurity than is currently required – none more than Indian Point which lies just 24 miles up the Hudsonfrom New York City. The time has come for the government to move immediately to impose stringent security measures for Indian Point and begin planning for the plant’s early retirement.” “The data clearly show that a terrorist attack at Indian Point could have a catastrophic impact on thehealth of New York City residents, yet the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not require the development of emergency plans to protect this vulnerable population,” said Dr. Lyman. “A thorough and honest evaluation of the feasibility and effectiveness of protective actions such as sheltering, evacuation and administration of potassium iodide is badly needed for individuals living far beyond the 10-mile emergency planning zone around Indian Point.”

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine believes President George W. Bush’s victory in last Tuesday’s election is not going to boost efforts for government regulation of private chemical plants.

“With the outcome of this election it is going to be harder to get anything done,” Corzine told The Observer on Monday. “I took the whole issue of chemical plant security very seriously following 9/11. The government had the opportunity to support my bills, but they believe the private companies are doing enough voluntarily to secure their plants.”

Corzine believes Keuhne takes the security of its plant very seriously, but wants more to be done to protect the company and country. Corzine does not know the specific makeup of the chlorine plant, but does want Keuhne to enhance its technology of producing the chemical. Corzine has proposed that the government pay the chemical companies to move their businesses out of high-risk areas such as metropolitan New York . He has asked the federal government, which is against offering money to the plants, to pay the chemical companies as much as $80 million to move out of town.