Gary Shaw July 26 at 6:39pm · The NYS DEC held public hearings on July 22. The issue is what policy Here is my attempt at a re-post of Gary Shaws address to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation re Use of Hudson River water by Entergys Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants. Most of you may have already seen this and (I hope) have read it. This posting is for anyone who could NOT see it due to FB Privacy settings which seem to only kick in when you wish something could go viral. Yes this meeting was video recorded. When I find out how to access it widely I will share that, too. [Rules] will be implemented to force Entergy to mitigate the massive fish kill produced by the withdrawal of 2.5. BILLION gals of Hudson River water per day through huge intake pipes. That water goes over superheated pipes and then back into the Hudson abut 20 degrees hotter than when it came out> DEC said mandated that they put in a closed cycle cooling system (like a car radiator). Now they are considering shutting down the plant for between 42 and 92 days a year during peak breeding and spawning season. Below is the address I made to the Administrative Judges. New York State DEC Hearing on Closed Cycle Cooling/Permanent Outages at Indian Point July 22, 2014. Statement by Stakeholder Gary Shaw Croton on Hudson, NY 10520 My name is Gary Shaw. I live in, Croton on Hudson, NY. My home is 5½ miles from the Indian Point Nuclear Plant. I want to thank the New York State DEC for holding this hearing and letting citizen stakeholders speak their minds about closed cycle cooling and/or forced closures of Indian Point in order to enforce the requirements of the US Clean Water Act. I am a member of the Leadership Council of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition and in the interest of full disclosure; I have been trying to close this plant since February 2000, when a steam pipe rupture released radioactive steam into the air and radioactive water directly into the Hudson. But my personal preferences are not germane to what DEC is doing today. I am here to talk about the hypocrisy, the shenanigans and the enormous waste of New York State resources that Entergy is engaged in. I am sure that Entergy’s vast legal staff was well aware when Entergy purchased the plant that the original license, issued by the Atomic Energy Commission, called for closed cycle cooling to be installed because, even then they knew the damage that would be done to the river and its aquatic life by sucking in 2.5 billion gallons of Hudson River water daily and going through a once through cooling system to return to the river substantially hotter than when it was drawn. I am also sure that Entergy’s vast legal staff was well aware that in the 1990’s the plant had periodic shutdowns to protect the breeding and spawning patterns of the Hudson River fish since Entergy pays into a fund to monitor the River under the Hudson River Settlement Agreement that was signed in the mid 90’s. So Entergy should not be surprised that the state is still saying to live up to the demands of the original license and install closed cycle cooling. And Entergy should not be surprised that after 40 years of operation with a once through system, many of the signature species of fish in the Hudson River, a Heritage Waterway that belongs to all Americans, are depleted or endangered, while other species are artificially thriving because of changes in the river ecology. I find it especially reprehensible and hypocritical for Entergy to be spending enormous amounts of money on advertising and PR campaigns claiming that Wedge Wire is a better solution than closed cycle cooling since Entergy joined with Riverkeeper and Scenic Hudson in a federal lawsuit against the EPA. The suit was about alternatives to closed cycle cooling that included Wedge Wire as an option. In that suit, Entergy specifically claimed that Wedge Wire was not designed for systems larger than 100 million gallons per day and consequently not suitable for nuclear plants. To now claim that Wedge Wire can accommodate 25 times that amount of draw successfully is either delusional or simply lies to minimize cost at the expense of the environment. I am guessing that the latter is the correct answer . Their scare tactics about the visual assault because of the height of the cooling system at 170 feet is also ludicrous given that the reactor domes already stand at 275 feet; more than 100 feet higher than the proposed new cooling system. For these many reasons I fully support the DEC in pursuing the closed cycle cooling as the Best Technology Available, which is the mandate of the US Clean Water Act. If closed cycle is simply technically impossible, then so-called Permanent Seasonal outages would be an acceptable alternative to me, if they are put in place on a perpetual basis and would not be abrogated over time. I know you will hear much about how our region of the New York electrical grid cannot withstand the outage of Indian Point during the hot summer season. That is also a falsehood. According to the ConEdison 2013 Annual Report, ConEd only contracts 500 MW of electricity from Indian Point and the New York Power Authority has let their contracts with Indian Point expire with no renewal. If Indian Point supplies all the power to the lower grid that they claim they do, they should document their sales to prove their claims. That should be easy to do, but it has yet to be done by Entergy. I would also point out that there were no blackouts during the yearlong outage of IP2 between the accident in February 2000 and the restart in early 2001. I will also point, out that in the huge blackout of August 2003, both reactors stayed offline for at least days after the grid came back up and no one noticed because the subways ran, the air conditioners ran, the beer was cold in the refrigerators and the TVs were on. And when Entergy says the blackout was because of a deficit in supply, that is a fabrication. It was because of antiquated infrastructure and New York was exporting electricity at the time. A contingent of Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition members and other environmental activists visited the NY Independent System Operators headquarters a couple of years ago, on a hot summer day. We were told in no uncertain terms that Indian Point 2 could go offline permanently when its license expired in September 2013 and there would be no decrease in system reliability nor reason for electricity rate spikes. With no additional generation and no increased energy efficiency policies, also losing Indian Point 3 in 2015 could cause a shortfall of about 750 MW, but only if demand increased a lot faster than it seems to be happening. The bottom line is, New York State should not lower their demands of the operator and Entergy should stop wasting New York taxpayer dollars and everyone’s time. Closed Cycle or definitive outages are required and should be implemented as soon as possible.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:44:08 +0000
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