AG Scores Victory In Bid To Shut Down Indian Point (lohud.com) 206
mdsolar quotes a report from The Journal News: Federal safety regulators used the wrong data to analyze the potential economic impacts of a severe accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, a panel of commissioners for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled Wednesday. The ruling, which reversed an earlier finding, will force the NRC to conduct a fresh analysis of the costs of a devastating accident and cleanup at the nuclear power plant in Buchanan, 24 miles north of New York City. The decision was hailed by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, whose office is spearheading the state's challenge to Indian Point's efforts to renew federal licenses for its two reactors. Schneiderman estimates that some 1.5 million workers would be needed in to take part in decontamination efforts in the event of a nuclear mishap, with cleanup costs surging as high as $1 trillion.
mdsolar (Score:5, Insightful)
n/t
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And, they could magically go away with proper Federal legislation.
This is true, and it has been done before in other countries. Chernobyl was built without any influence from activists, and the people pointing out potential flaws at Fukushima were sidelined and ignored. So there are precedents for streamlining construction.
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yeah fuck that guy. and fuck the editors for repeatedly spamming his articles.
You probably mean "fuck those posters" who keep commenting on his articles and making it so editors want to post them because they see the people commenting on them. As an AC, I bet you are mdsolar coming here to troll people to complain to drive up the post count.
So it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
This gov't has its sights set on closing down (and not building) as many nuclear plants as possible.
Ok, fine, then I ask you this gov't:
How are you planning on replacing the power loss? You're wiping out the coal industry as well.
What's left?
Champlain Hudson Power Express (Score:4, Interesting)
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Care to explain that one?
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Generally it's in the form of rotting biomass from when the area is flooded, and it goes on for decades.
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Clearly he doesn't. He was probably brainwashed by this drivel [newscientist.com]. He got it wrong, anyway. The claim is that the INITIAL CONSTRUCTION of a dammed hydropower site converts a large bunch of trees into methane, not CO2. Not that the continuing operation of them has the any greenhouse effect whatsoever.
The hatchet job does not appear to take into account the effect that plant life in the dammed water has in terms of CO2, compared to the trees and vegetation that once stood there. What do
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The hatchet job does not appear to take into account the effect that plant life in the dammed water has in terms of CO2, compared to the trees and vegetation that once stood there. What do they think happens to the carbon in trees and vegetation on dry land as they constantly die and rot?
This. Oh bolshy yarblockos, this.
It isn't like living plants will never die, so it is a null situation. The impact of hydropower dams is significant, but the concept that they somehow increase CO2 and or methane is in the same camp as Ronald Reagan telling us that trees emit CO2 ( not to mention oxygen, which he didn't) so AGW proponents should demand all trees be cut down.
Any short term release of gases will be followed by a period of less release. Then a new normal state is reached.
Re:Champlain Hudson Power Express (Score:4, Interesting)
You need a citation for that, because on its face that is an astoundingly stupid claim. And don't even think of dredging up this weak-ass story [newscientist.com], which is void of any evidence, and actually seems to be conjuring up a fairy tale of methane release, not CO2.
Also, the loaded terms "clean" and "dirty" referring to CO2 are manipulative and ignorant. CO2 is not "dirt". It is a colorless, odorless gas, food for plant life.
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Re:Champlain Hudson Power Express (Score:4, Funny)
AHAHHAHAHAHAHAH mdsolar called someone a shill. OMG. This is the quote of the week. I'm printing this out and nailing it to my cubical wall so I have something to look at whenever I get worn down by dealing with stupid people.
Thankyou!
Also show me a nuclear accident which did as much damage in terms of death and unusable land as the Banqiao Dam hydroelectric plant. Actually combine all the deaths and damage from all nuclear accidents and throw in a Hiroshima and Nagasaki too while you're at it and you're still not at the damage and chaos caused by this single hydro dam failure.
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Here's one. [nationalgeographic.com]
The lesson here is that different power sources are appropriate in different areas: hydro is good in areas where it doesn't destroy the fish habitat, but bad in areas where it does. Nuclear is good in the middle of nowhere, but bad in close proximity to NYC. Solar is good in the desert, but bad on north-facing slopes in cloudy areas. Wind is great on bare ridges and offshore, but not so great for forested valleys. Every form of electricity generation, except fossil fuels, has its place.
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http://www.clf.org/wp-content/... [clf.org]
"Overall, life cycle GHG emissions per unit of electric energy production are lower for hydropower than for fossil fuel sources (though in some cases net hydro emission ranges may be nearly 2/3 those for a natural gas power plant), and may be in the same range as other renewable sources and nuclear (though reservoir hydro emission ranges are likely higher than those for at least some other renewable options, depending on the specific site and the level of indirec
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How are you planning on replacing the power loss?
The same way they replaced the power loss when the either or both of the plant's reactors are unexpectedly taken offline due to equipment failure, fires, accidents etc. There have been dozens of incidents that have knocked the plant offline without little or no warning and I doubt anyone not paying close attention has ever noticed. The plant is plagued with incidents from control rod failures to transformer explosions to errant bird shit [cnn.com]. Somehow NYC has been spared from crippling brownouts.
As it turns out,
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As it turns out, the grid is remarkably resilient!
Aaaahhhh.....actually, not so much. This [wikipedia.org] is an example of what can happen. And it happened in the New York/NYC area as well.
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Yeah, and during that blackout, Indian Point was out for a full week.
The point is, "How are you planning on replacing the power loss?" is not a valid concern when they already replace the power lost when the plant goes offline on an alarmingly frequent basis.
=Smidge=
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This gov't has its sights set on closing down (and not building) as many nuclear plants as possible.
Ok, fine, then I ask you this gov't:
How are you planning on replacing the power loss? You're wiping out the coal industry as well.
What's left?
Well just let the Chinese make batteries for us charged with electricity which they say is from pony rainbow star power and then ship them to us in those giant ships they have. Plug them in, drain the power and then ship them back. So efficient and safe. Never mind those smoke stacks over the horizon... oh and the ships full of coal going back to China.
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The difference is that the environmental costs of solar are born before you start using it. Many of the environmental costs of nuclear are only apparent when you try to retire the plant, or deal with spent fuel.
FWIW, these aren't problems that can't be addressed, they are rather problems that it's always unprofitable to address, and which aren't being addressed. Costs of decommissioning plants are inevitably so low-balled as to be totally fictitious. And the people who made them are either dead or retire
It's the economy (Score:4, Interesting)
some 1.5 million workers would be needed in to take part in decontamination efforts in the event of a nuclear mishap, with cleanup costs surging as high as $1 trillion.
So what is the problem? This is called "economic stimulus".
New York Real Estate (Score:4, Informative)
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So the solution to our economic problems is to go around smashing windows to drum up business for glass manufacturing and glaziers. Maybe we could total a few random vehicles too, just to give the motor industry a boost.
What actually happens when there is a large scale disaster is that the government is on the hook for all the insurance liabilities that the plant operator now has. There will inevitably be lawsuits, because it's not just a case of decontaminating and rebuilding everything. By the time that's
Price Anderson Liability Act (Score:2)
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Running Indian Point to Failure (Score:3, Interesting)
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Reckless? Like those 3 near misses which were:
1. Local flooding increased the risk of potential blackout.
2. A power grid problem caused the reactor to safely shutdown.
3. Equipment malfunction + operator error caused the reactor to safely shutdown.
OMG We're all going to die ... from e.coli because our fridges ran out of power.
I actually like the very article from the UCS that talks about those near misses actually highlights in a big pop-out box that the definition used by UCS for a near miss is controversia
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That's excellent logic there. I suppose there is no problem with unmaintained rusty bridges either. It's been standing like that for many years, therefore it's not going to fall all of a sudden, right?
Look, I'm not completely unsympathetic to nuclear power, but fighting to keep a plant online that's had a long history of problems is not in your interest if you want to keep it around. Nature cannot be fooled. Either you do things right, or something will go wrong sooner or later, and another Fukushima isn't
Re:Running Indian Point to Failure (Score:5, Informative)
Much like Vermont Yankee, Entergy is running Indian Point into the ground. The AG also forced new safety inspections an those showed Entergy had let a known problem slide past any other reactor known to date. http://www.lohud.com/story/new... [lohud.com]
Who upvotes this FUD?
The very article linked above references the actual report [nrc-gateway.gov] from the NRC. Far from letting a known problem slide past any known to date, NRC article notes that the Indian Point reactor in question was shutdown for routine maintenance. A new check of bolts that had been known to wear from experience revealed that a great many of them needed replacement, so they were replaced before the reactor was brought back online.
The other way to spin the NRC report is that routine and standard maintenance procedures at Indian Point have allowed it to continue it's operating record of zero work place fatalities, zero emissions and zero radiation escaping the plant. How many coal plants can claim ANY of those points let alone all of them?
Seriously, the anti-nuclear crowd is leaping on standard maintenance as proof of 'problems' looks an awful lot like those declaring even more missing links in evolution every time a new link is posted.
Not routine for Entergy (Score:2)
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Nope, the AG forced them into it, and the reactor is still closed.
Maybe you should read my link to the NRC report, or any number of other newspaper articles leading up to then. It was a scheduled shutdown for refuelling and maintenance. I guess it was the AG that determined the refuelling schedule or something?
It was shutdown in March 2016 to dump in something like $60 million worth of inspections and maintenance. I don't quite think the plan was to have that all completed and spun back up already. I'd have thought the anti-nuke guys would be more angry if the company DID
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Nope. It was a special inspection forced by the AG. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry... [huffpost.com]
Read your own posts. The shut down for refuelling and regular maintenance was performed at the scheduled time. The Environmental unit AG of NY had been hounding on MANY different additional inspections they wanted. None of those cases had yet come into effect. As per your own article, both the shut down and the inspection of the bolts were voluntarily undertaken by Entergy. You might choose to believe, as the AG and the article claim that it was the legal hounding that encouraged this inspection. I would po
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And you'd be wrong. It is Entergy we are talking about here.
Right, because potentially losing a reactor to a known issue is only a legal concern for them, not the cost of repairs to the reactor. Even a purely selfish, greedy and evil minded corporation cares about keeping a multi-million dollar reactor from failing and costing them more money than the repairs they know it requires to stay functioning. Your argument only holds if Entergy would gladly LOSE money just to put their reactor and possibly people working on site at risk.
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Vermont Yankee....
Do you have turrets? Are we at the point of spouting random gibberish at each other now?
A nuclear plant that was cleanly operated for more than 3 decades before being shut down because fear monger regulation had made profitability impossible hardly shows a wilful malice on the part of the operating company. Go be crazy and incoherent some place else.
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Huge leaks of radiation.
False.
Score one for global warming (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a hard time believing that environmentalists really believe AGW is an existential threat to humanity while they applaud nuclear plan shutdown. They even applaud hydroelectric plant shutdowns.
Opportunity Cost (Score:2)
Re:Opportunity Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole problem with nuclear power in the West is simply that it's stuck in the 1960s with crushing regulatory burdens worsening the problems of maintaining 60+ year old reactors and preventing any improvement there.
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France is powering Europe with nukes (Score:2)
It's still more expensive, it is just that command economies can ignore market realities for a while until they topple.
Électricité de France runs a profit line of a couple billion dollars providing over 120GW of power to Europe, and 85% of that is through nuclear power.
Take your FUD and lies elsewhere. Nukes are very profitable anywhere the NIMBY hippies don't try and destroy it out of ignorance and fear.
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France is reducing reliance on nuclear power.
Hold on there buddy.
You claimed nuclear power was the most expensive form of generation.
You where informed the only reason for that was ridiculous regulatory expenses, and in other places it was very profitable.
You basically said only dictators can pull that off and only for a limited time.
I pointed out that Électricité de France is providing most of Europe with power primarily from nuclear plants and making a pretty penny while doing so.
France has been producing power with nukes since the 70s and
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France is closing reactors and cutting back because of cost and safety concerns. http://www.irishtimes.com/news... [irishtimes.com]
'safety concerns' is one word for completely unfounded and irrational fear mongering. If politicians play to those baseless fears that can translate into a real cost though. It'd be a shame to see France dragged down by the same luddites that have held the American power infrastructure back in the seventies.
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baseload myth busted (Score:2)
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It turns out that suprising little storage in the form of batteries is needed. Changing time of use makes RE work. Mostly AC and water heating demand response does the job.
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Too close to NYC (Score:2)
Re:Too close to NYC (Score:5, Interesting)
Define "close" after all here in Ontario we have Bruce Nuclear which is the 2nd largest generating plant in the world and is downwind from Toronto by ~150 miles. And Pickering Nuclear which is under 50mi away. Seems to me that the US has more of a anti-nuke fear mongering group of environmentalists then Canada does. I live downwind from Bruce nuclear as well, around 45mi give or take a little bit. I sure don't worry about it, I have a bigger worry that there will be a train derailment and massive problems then that. Especially since the main Ontario CN track runs around 300m away from my house and trains come running by every hour of the day. Luckily there has never been an accident in either case, and CN has become extremely vigilant in checking the lines over the last 5 years usually quarterly inspections.
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If Bruce nuclear goes south and right bad, everything from Buffalo through to Boston and as far south as Philly is probably toast, or has moderate radiation problems. That's via wind patterns and all that, not even counting on water contamination into the great lakes. Really though, the best solution at the end of the day is retrofitting or fully replacing existing reactor designs with safer designs. But anti-nuke people like to throw a hissyfit over even that, and in turn we're left with Gen 1 and Gen 2
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I hereby suggest we allow the plant to continue operation. After all, we need to create more jobs for Americans, or so I've heard.
CAPTCHA: proper
A completely fabricated number. Nowhere near that will be required. Of course, accuracy doesn't matter in the FUD laden world of anti-nuke activism.
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I have had nuclear in my back yard but lets make something clear.
if Indian point had a fukishima style issue Wall street is unlivable, un workable.
That is far higher than a 1 trillion dollars. Try $50 Trillion. With hundreds of trillions of lost money.
Nukes are better than coal until they have issues. newer designs can mitigate those issues, but they aren't cheap to setup and you really can't convert one design into another.
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Shh, we can't inject reason and actual engineering into these decisions, they must all be based upon gut instinct or we can't have a reasonable discussion of the risks of nuclear (which is as near to none as any other power plant in on the planet).
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A lot of the problem with Fukishima was spend reactor rods being stored on site in storage intended for temporary use. Are you willing to bet that equivalent problems don't exist for US plants? To me it appears that the odds are that safety concerns are frequently avoided in the interest of economic operation. Also because there's nowhere better to put them.
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A lot of the problem with Fukishima was spend reactor rods being stored on site in storage intended for temporary use. Are you willing to bet that equivalent problems don't exist for US plants? To me it appears that the odds are that safety concerns are frequently avoided in the interest of economic operation. Also because there's nowhere better to put them.
The pools were damaged from the effects of the tsunami and the damage it caused to the plant, so no, unless a tsunami hits one I don't have concerns. Even with the tsunami, and the damage from it and the hydrogen explosions, the fuel rods actually remained intact and safe. Every other plant and fuel pool in Japan was just fine even with the much greater than anticipated earthquake. Most of the Fukushima pools were OK, only the one pool suffered significant damage.
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>> And how is a tsunami going to hit Indian Pt.
There are some lakes upriver. A tsunami is definitely possible, if unlikely :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There is also the possibility of a normal flood, which nearly destroyed a few nukes already.
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>> And how is a tsunami going to hit Indian Pt. There are some lakes upriver. A tsunami is definitely possible, if unlikely : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] There is also the possibility of a normal flood, which nearly destroyed a few nukes already.
Did you read your link? Maybe only if there were a volcano in the vicinity.
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If there is some other way it could be deluged, I would agree it should be shut down.
Indian Point is a reactor that is pretty fragile and vulnerable to LOCA attacks in quite obvious ways. An tsunami is not the only way to trigger that scenario.
Essentially you are suggesting that it is unreasonable to get an assessment of it's true state and the likely cost of upgrades.
, but a 'mishap' will result in an event like Three Mile Island, where essentially nothing is released, and the surrounding area remains perfectly safe.
Well thats a fiction because strontium-90 was released at TMI. Also dosimeters that measured the reactors effluents were overloaded very early into the accident and could not be replaced, so the reality was we don't know h
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https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
WTH is a LOCA attack?
The facts speak louder than any of these envirowackos, even including the deaths from the nuclear bombs, nuclear is still safer than ANY other power source we have.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/... [nextbigfuture.com]
But let us all hide under the table in fear of the big bogeyman that is nuclear, we can't have cheap power because someone might cry in fear over the nuclear plants.
Re:Cheap nuclear (Score:5, Funny)
But I'm sure there would be a bad side, too.
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Fukushima was a complete lack of following best practices.
That is obvious in hindsight. But before the tsunami, pro-nukes were saying Chernobyl was a fluke event with unique circumstances, and that it couldn't happen again.
Every event is a "fluke" for the rabid pro-nukers. And let's make no mistake, Fukushima was not a failure of the reactors - at least not at first. It was a failure of a seawall that was built too low for expected and easily researched historical Tsunami levels. Then it was a failure of a emergency generator system that was emplaced in an area where the easily predictable seawall breached Tsunami waters would end up, then even though by this time sort of iffy as to whether it would have helped - a power conn
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The problem is that every incident actually *IS* a fluke. And flukes are a lot more common that most people are willing to accept.
So saying "this incident was a fluke" isn't a comment saying it wasn't to be expected, but only "most reasonable people wouldn't expect it". Which is true, but not very useful.
When you NEED something to be secure against failure for a prolonged period of time, you need to guard against very low probability events. Probably in this case not improbable on the scale of giant mete
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"Which is why I laugh when the rabid pro nucers go on about "safe, modern reactor" designs"
Ironically you have an attitude that shows exactly why we haven't built newer safe design.
nice circular logic, like most green idiots
Brilliant, simply brilliant. Despite your being magically able to determine everything about me from one post, I - dear coward - am pro nuclear, and you - dear coward - are exactly the sort of asshole that makes adopting nuclear less likely, as you trumpet the 100 percent failed drivel that has made people suspicious of any pro nuc people.
So let's pick apart your fscking stupid reply in context. I specifically wrote that in Fukushima the problems were not caused by the reactor, they were cause by stupid
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What I and my neighbors DO have a problem with are the Ponytails and other chuckleheads who are bused up here regularly from NYC to protest and make noise and pretend to the media that they are "outraged locals." I've taken the time to speak to a few of them, and invariably they have no understanding regarding the plant's operation or nuclear energy v. fossil fuel issues in general outside of a fe
Champlain Hudson Power Express (Score:2)
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Indian Point has 99.85% uptime since it was first commissioned
That is nonsense.
Refuling alone costs far more than 10% downtime.
RTFA (Score:2)
NY done with coal by 2020 (Score:2)
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