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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is no longer just one state’s top cop crying nearly alone in the wilderness about safety issues with regard to nuclear power plants and potential terrorism and/or natural disaster. The AG recently announced that he and the attorneys general of five other states have submitted a joint communiqué to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) expressing serious concerns about what they say is that agency’s continued disregard of safety issues – including susceptibility to earthquakes or terrorist attacks – when deciding whether to renew the operating license of a nuclear power plant beyond its initial 40-year term. The joint letter to the NRC was also signed by AGs Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut (who in July got together with Cuomo to file an amicus brief calling for the NRC to broaden the criteria considered in the re-licensing of nuclear power plants); Beau Biden III of Delaware; Lisa Madigan of Illinois; Gregory B. Stumbo of Kentucky and William H. Sorrell of Vermont. All of the attorneys general are Democrats.
“The NRC’s failure to address safety issues including updating its review of seismic activity in the re-licensing of nuclear power plants is irresponsible,” said Cuomo. “The NRC should have learned a lesson from this summer’s earthquake in Japan, which forced the emergency shutdown of the world’s largest nuclear plant and resulted in the release of radioactive material into the air and water. Our letter illustrates the concern states across the nation have about nuclear power plant safety.”
Cuomo didn’t bother repeating what every schoolboy already knows: that a Boeing 767 piloted by a speed-praying jihadist screamed down the Hudson Valley on Sept. 11 – directly overhead of Indian Point – on the last leg of its infamous errand. In a Jan. 21, 2002 op ed, The New York Times attempted to quiet fluttering hearts by intoning that nuclear plants such as Indian Point “are built so robustly that they would seem to present a difficult target for terrorists. Their containment domes have walls three to six feet thick made of concrete reinforced with embedded steel bars and a half-inch steel liner. The reactor itself, tucked way down inside the dome, is protected by another thick slab of reinforced concrete. In one dramatic test years ago, a fighter jet was catapulted into a mock containing wall at nearly 500 miles per hour. The plane disintegrated into a pile of dust; the wall suffered a two-inch scratch.”
The plane wasn’t a jumbo jet and the presence of spent fuel rod pools sitting unprotected like ducks outside the containment fortress didn’t seem to bother the piece’s authors, but these things remain a concern for Cuomo and many others, including U.S. Reps. Nita Lowey (D-Harrison); Eliot Engel (D-Bronx); John Hall (D-Dover Plains); and Maurice Hinchey (D-Hurley), who are calling for a no-fly zone with a 10-mile circumference around Indian Point. Detractors of the proposal, however, say it would seriously disrupt the already crowded and delay-prone airspace around New York. And according to one area pilot, the time needed for a Boeing 747 cruising at about 580 m.p.h. to make a turn from the edge of the 10-mile protective ring, dive inside and arrive on the ground at its epicenter would be approximately one minute, which probably wouldn’t be enough time for Homeland Security jets to respond.
Security is currently limited to a national restriction against “loitering” above nuclear power stations; however they are not identified as such on aviation charts and, as can be gleaned from the clarity and angle of the accompanying photo taken from reasonably close range without so much as a peep from ground control, no one seems unduly concerned. After Sept. 11, the FAA put out the following NOTAM (meaning “notice to airmen,” pilots both male and female): “In the interest of national security and to the extent practicable, pilots are strongly advised to avoid the airspace above, or in proximity to such sites as power plants (nuclear, hydro-electric, or coal), dams, refineries, industrial complexes, military facilities and other similar facilities. Pilots should not circle as to loiter in the vicinity over these types of facilities.”
Shifting priorities
Terrorism is not the only threat to nuke plants, say the AGs, citing U.S. Geological Survey that has indicated a “significant” hazard for earthquakes in the New York metropolitan region, due primarily to its sitting atop a nexus of ancient fault lines, including one that goes up the Hudson Valley beneath Indian Point. “Geologists warn that a substantial earthquake in the region could be more disastrous than those in the Western U.S. due to the rocky nature of the earth’s crust on the East Coast being capable of transmitting more powerful shockwaves,” warns the Cuomo press release.
Indeed, the New York region has experienced a number of earthquakes in the recorded past, two of which, in 1737 and 1884, were of magnitude 5.2 on the Richter scale and threw down chimneys from Virginia to Maine, according to data published by Columbia University. On Oct. 19, 1985, a 4.0 quake with its epicenter in Ardsley was felt throughout the metropolitan region, and two other quakes of 2.4 and 2.6 respectively occurred in 2001. The World Trade Center was built on the very edge of a major fault line beneath the Hudson River – one apocryphal tale has it that when drilling for footings during the original construction, one of the drill bits chewed through into the abyss, with the result that the footing was moved back from the edge a few feet.
Regardless of whether a nuke plant is sitting atop an earthquake fault line, under current regulations, NRC license renewal procedures address age-related structural degradation of fixed, non-moving components, like reactor cores, containment systems, pipes and electrical cables, but do not specifically include factors that are also relevant to the avoidance of catastrophe, such as:
• Location of the plant and population density;
• Security and susceptibility to a terrorist attack;
• Adequacy of emergency warning and evacuation plans;
• Geographic and seismic issues.
Anyway, Westchester County Executive Andy Spano, as always, got in his two cents on the issue as well. “The Indian Point re-licensing process must consider all the possible threats to this plant, whether it’s an earthquake, a terrorist attack or the fact that it is located in one of the most populated areas in the nation,” said Spano. “We welcome the support of Attorney General Cuomo and the other attorney generals in our continued fight to protect the health and safety of the residents of the Hudson Valley.’’
Hudson Riverkeeper president Alex Matthiessen echoed pretty much the same sentiment. “Riverkeeper commends Attorney General Cuomo and his colleagues for challenging the NRC’s failure to adequately address seismic risks during the re-licensing review, when every aspect of a nuclear plant’s operations, particularly safety and security risks, must be evaluated,” he said. “Indian Point is an aging, badly maintained facility operating in the midst of 20 million people, all of whom deserve the most rigorous, in-depth review possible. Anything less is an abdication of NRC’s responsibility to protect public health and safety.”
Early this month the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) both also joined the chorus of calls for a closer, more focused look at safety issues in a more dangerous world. The DEC has gone so far as to ask that the NRC require its 20-year re-licensing processes for Indian Point 2 and 3 to be conducted as they would for a brand-new facility.
Fault lines
NRC officials have so far balked at the requests for tighter restrictions, repeatedly stating that most of the safety issues being raised are either reviewed on an ongoing basis or were dealt with before the plants opened more than 20 years ago. Meanwhile, according to an article in the Saturday, Nov. 24 Journal News, the NRC actually showed signs of a new get-tough policy with Indian Point owner Entergy last week, firing off a Nov. 20 letter urging the company to step up the pace of repairs to a longstanding problem with its sump pumps – which if not corrected, could result in exacerbating a meltdown process. “The sump pumps work like industrial-sized versions of what many people have in their basements,” wrote the paper’s environmentally inclined staff writer, Greg Clary. “They would collect water in the event of a major pipe break in the pressurized-water reactors at Indian Point, and cycle it back through the system to keep the reactor from melting down and possibly releasing radiation. … In 2003, the NRC ordered Indian Point and the 68 other reactors to inspect these systems because agency studies found that the steam released at high temperatures could cause the pipe insulation to disintegrate and keep the pumps from recirculating water.”
Clary quoted sections of the NRC letter critical of Entergy’s foot-dragging plans to put off sump pump repairs at Indian Point 3 for another 14 months until the spring of 2009, when the plant will shut down anyway for refueling – an event that will probably occur after the current two-yearlong re-licensing process is over. “After reviewing Entergy’s submittal, the NRC staff concludes that Entergy has a plan to complete the remaining corrective actions and has compensatory measures in place,” the NRC letter is quoted as having stated. “However, NRC finds that Entergy has not made a convincing case why the proposed modifications and other changes cannot be accomplished before the next refueling outage.”
The NRC letter suggests that Entergy submit a request for a significantly shorter extension.
