Report eyes impact of closing Indian Point

The New York City area would have access to enough electricity until 2020 should the federal government reject Entergy Corp.'s bid to renew a license for the Indian Point nuclear plant on the Hudson River, environmental groups said.

"There are likely to be ample existing and new resources to replace Indian Point if it were to retire" by 2015, according to the study released yesterday and commissioned by the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council and Riverkeeper Inc. in Ossining, an advocate for clean water in the river. Both groups have opposed relicensing the power plant.

Wind and solar projects, new transmission lines to deliver electricity from Canada and upstate New York, and upgrades at natural-gas plants may make up for the power lost by closing Indian Point, according to the report by Synapse Energy Economics Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., consulting company.

Regulators, power companies and environmental groups are evaluating U.S. reactor safety after an earthquake and tsunami in March triggered radiation leaks and meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan, the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. A similar event isn't likely at Indian Point, and the plant is safe, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff told New York State officials during a March 22 meeting.

A Fukushima-scale accident at Indian Point may require 5.6 million people to be sheltered or evacuated, and would increase the risk of cancer because of radiation blowing toward New York City, according to a separate report released yesterday by the defense council.

A radiation release as severe as Chernobyl's "would make Manhattan too radioactively contaminated to live in if the city fell within the plume," the group said.

The cost of a severe nuclear accident at Indian Point may be from 10 times to 100 times the estimated $60 billion cleanup and compensation at Fukushima, according to the report.