Letter: Indian Point is safe and needed
At the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, some 2,300 spent nuclear fuel rods are kept on site. They await transfer to permanent storage. (Photo, April 20, 2007) Credit: AP
The nuclear waste storage issue is nothing new ["The nuke-waste hot potato," Editorial, June 24]. As a matter of fact, the federal government has spent the last three decades trying to decide where to put the more than 60,000 tons of spent fuel from our nation's power plants.
This game of political hot potato likely won't be over for quite some time, nor will it prevent the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from re-licensing Indian Point, which has received the NRC's highest safety rating for eight straight years and has passed a separate license renewal evaluation with flying colors.
The NRC conducts detailed, rigorous annual safety inspections at each of the country's 104 nuclear power plants. Due to political pressure, Indian Point is among the most scrutinized. Inspections include detailed study of storing used fuel on site, and a significant portion of the used material at Indian Point is now stored in dry cask storage canisters, the state-of-the art solution.
The bottom line is Indian Point is unequivocally safe and provides essential power to the metropolitan region, as you note in the editorial. New York does not have the generation or transmission infrastructure to replace the 2,000 megawatts of power that Indian Point supplies each day, nor is there any feasible way to have that power online in the next several years.
New York already made one mistake with Shoreham, and the people of Long Island are still paying for it. The last thing we need is to make that mistake again with Indian Point, especially in these perilous economic times.
Arthur "Jerry" Kremer, Manhattan
Editor's note: The writer is the chairman of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, an advocacy organization whose membership includes Entergy, the owner of Indian Point.
