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Mike Groll / AP
"We are going to check into it ... immediately," said Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered a safety review of the Indian Point nuclear plant just up the Hudson River from New York City, after one of its reactors ranked first for risk of damage from an earthquake in a study published Wednesday.
Update: The state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, on Friday made a similar request, insisting that relicensing of the plant take into account its seismic risk. His statement is here.
The report by msnbc.com was based on damage estimates for 104 commercial nuclear power plants from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that supervises the industry. The highest risk of damage from an earthquake, according to the NRC's data, was at Indian Point's reactor No. 3, which the NRC said had a 1 in 10,000 chance each year of damage to its radioactive core from an earthquake. The plant lies near the Ramapo Fault zone.
"We are going to check into it ... immediately," Cuomo, the state's new Democratic governor and former attorney general, told WNBC TV in New York. "This plant in this proximity to New York City was never a good risk. But this is new information we are going to pursue."
Cuomo told WNBC that he discussed the issue with leaders of the state Senate and General Assembly in a closed-door session on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear what sort of review Cuomo plans, or who would conduct it.
Mike Segar / Reuters
Indian Point Energy Center sits on the east bank of the Hudson River, 24 miles from New York City. It provides up to one-third of the electricity for the city and suburban Westchester County.
The NRC data had been published in August showing an increased risk of earthquakes at power plants in the central and eastern United States, and this week the NRC provided additional data to msnbc.com for the few plants in the western states, allowing msnbc.com to rank the plants by risk. The NRC public affairs staff stressed to all callers on Wednesday that it had not done the rankings, but it did not question the accuracy of the data.
The NRC emphasized that it believes the risk is low of damage to a nuclear power plant from an earthquake.
"Operating nuclear power plants are safe," the NRC said when it reported the new risk estimates. Every plant is designed with a margin of safety beyond the strongest earthquake anticipated in that area, the NRC says, but the new data on earthquakes show that the margin of safety has been reduced.
The full ranking of 104 nuclear power plants is here.
The Indian Point plant, which has two active reactors, provides up to one-third of the electric power for New York City and suburban Westchester County, N.Y. The plant's second reactor had a lower risk of major damage from a quake, according to the NRC, estimated at 1 in 30,303 each year, still about twice the risk of the typical nuclear power plant. The plant is 24 miles from New York City. Statewide, New York has six commercial nuclear reactors at four plants.
The plant's license is up for renewal. Cuomo, when he was attorney general, said the plant should be closed. In 2007 he called the plant "a catastrophe waiting to happen."
A spokesman for EntergyCorp., the New Orleans company that operates Indian Point, dismissed the possibility of it having troubles like the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan.
"I say only if a tsunami could make its way … up New York Harbor and the Hudson River, somehow avoid New York City, and drench our plant,” Jim Streets, director of communications at Entergy Nuclear Northeast, told CBS New York on Wednesday. “It just doesn’t seem very realistic to me.”
The NRC study based its damage estimates on U.S. Geological Survey data for earthquakes, as well as each plant's type of design and construction.
The study was also mentioned at Wednesday's U.S. Senate hearing on nuclear power. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) asked the NRC chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, about the report. He said he wasn't aware of it, but assured senators that there is no reason for concern.
Related: Alex Johnson of msnbc.com has an article about the licensing battle at another Entergy plant, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass.
Drop dry ice into and around the reactors with layers of sand in japan, this will minimize the radiation in the sea water from running back in to the sea, once the dry ice layers and sand layers are in place down in to the reactors concrete should be dumped on top to seal the reactors in Japan this method of cooling is simple and will cool fast to stop all melting, please pass this on thanks Joseph C Stamm yo ohio.
Better, I suppose, unbelievably late than never.
If the pools are in fact gone, has anyone thought about the repercussions of dumping cold ANYTHING on top of a super hot metallic substance? Come on now....this is science 101 here. What happens when you put something that is relatively VERY cool on top of a metallic substance that is relatively VERY hot. Now amplify that based on the temperatures we're talking about.
If these guys are cycling cold water on a hot core, where the core is repeatedly boiling off the water, aren't they causing cyclic damage through fundamental thermodynamics?
Also, by my math, if the spent fuel rod pool needs 1,200 TONS of water to be completely filled, though only 25% of it to cover the fuel rods, then (assuming we're talking metric tons):
1,200 * 25% = 300 tons required to cover rods
each helicopter is reported to be able to carry 7,500 liters of water per load
1 liter = 1kg, 1000 kg = 1 ton
Therefore, every helicopter load represents 7.5 tons of water per load.
That means that 300 tons required to ONLY cover the spent fuel / 7.5 tons per helicopter load would require 40 helicopter drops just to get to the minimum requirement of covering the fuel rods.
This leaves out the following inefficiencies:
Every helicopter drop is not getting all the water in the pool (I'm guessing SIGNIFICANTLY less), the calculation does not account for the amount of water that will be instantly and consistently boiled off (requiring replacement), and does not include what (if any) of the water cannon water is getting in there.
How many helicopter runs have they completed so far? I'm guessing they'll need to double the 40 required and more than likely triple it just to achieve spent fuel covering. Why haven't these calculations been looked at in the context of current activities, when all of these numbers have been floating around on the news?
Lastly…how is getting electric to the reactors going to help when it looks like the entire infrastructure has been destroyed. I.E. what good is power going to do if the pumps themselves have been demolished, or the system that circulates the water has been damaged? Has there been a confirmation that the backup pumps and cooling systems are still intact? The pictures certainly do not support this…
Ditto
The following might better explain why water is better:
Enthalpy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy
Latent Heat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_heat
Then see these charts - compare water & CO2:
Latent heat of melting: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/latent-heat-melting-solids-d_96.html
Latent heat of evaporation: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fluids-evaporation-latent-heat-d_147.html
It was already stated by experts that dry ice or water make no difference, the temperatures the cores are at make the difference between these 2 pointless.
Also there is a bit of ignorance of how to get dry ice to the site since u can not get close to these without sure death.
That reminds me, dry ice can explode a toilet if flushed down. Wouldn't it be great to explode a nuclear pile and zap everything that lives for 10,000 miles downwind? Another great idea from a home skooled creation science graduate.
One expert with a brain pointed out something more important, the spent cores are place in slots so they do NOT TOUCH each other. Dropping 7tons of water onto them makes it a very HIGH RISK to knock the cores out of their holders and into each other.
Also NOTE, #4 these cores in the pools are NOT spent cores they are active cores that were placed their temp for maintenance.
what about the people, the workers, who will be exposed to radiation while this is being put in place? Its all over for them....such a shame...
As I said yesterday in another post, I guess he does not like the odds either. Better safe then sorry ???
This is an old reactor and it is good policy to review the safety.
I like how they only listed commercial plants. There are far more nuke sites in NY than 4.
It is still amazing how people arent GETTING it, the coolant systems on these reactors was knocked out by the TSUNAMI not the earthquake......
What needs to be reviewed is how to make 100% sure the coolant systems can not be knocked out... NOT if the cores will survive an Earth Quake. The cores were already built to withstand that. What needs to be reviewed is Why spent rods are sitting in unprotected pools subject to these cooling failures and instant chernobyl. NEVER mind in pools way up at the top instead of in 10ft thick containment chambers.
OK, agreed. Large sizemic events and tsunamis are very rare in this area. What about a "50" or"100" year flood traveling down the Hudson river and flooding the plant and knocking out power to/damaging the auxilliary generators? These generators may be located in the basements/low lying areasof the plants- as they were in the Japanese reactors . This could be just as debilitating as a 6.2 earthquake and seems much more likely. Or what about an attack on the plant which hits the power supply and backup generators? Lots to consider imo. There should be much less bravado wafting through the air, don't you think?
You really think they don't take into account flooding? Earthquakes, and not flooding? Come on people. If they are worried about a 1:10,000 (a 1 in 10,000 year earthquake), they have a 100 year flood covered. Read up on their safety before you call them unsafe. The MSNBC article is raising unwarranted panic by publishing the results without any context. The NRC assumed highest risk based on estimated structure stability and ground stability. ... That 1:10,000 assumes the structure is on the weakest side of their estimate and that the ground is on the high end of unstable/ideal for maximum shaking...
Sorry if that came off as an attack, but I just feel that media cannot go spouting off numbers like that without context... it spreads fear and unwarranted panic.
Ever hear of Murphy's Law?
Agreed, Jimee. The Titanic "could never sink". The Hindenburg was "totally safe". If I had a hobby or part time job in my home that involved the use of explosives, you can bet that I wouldn't get a permit, even if I had degrees coming out of my ears that qualified me as an explosives expert. Instead, I would be deemed a threat to the community. But it's perfectly ok to build a nuclear power plant or two in the middle of heavily populated communities because experts say it's safe. People screw up all the time, including experts, and all the safeguards in the world will not protect us from our fallible selves or nature in some instances.
We secure our nuclear plants based on what we expect, but nature has a funny way of hitting us with the unexpected, (I never DREAMED that that could happen here!) and sincere regret for lives lost after the fact won't balance the sheer arrogance and stupidity of building nuclear plants in the first place. The Seabrook N.H. plant for example is built on an active earthquake fault, and given the fact that nearby vacationers and residents can't leave beaches quickly at the end of an average summer weekend without creating endless bumber to bumper traffic, I can imagine how 12 surrounding communities in N.H. and Massachusetts would experience an emergency evacuation.
The damage to the Japanese plant (and partial nuclear meltdown) was not due to the earthquake but the flood that followed. Wake up call! This plant is located on the coast and the backup generators located in the basement of the plant. Take nothing for granted.
Murphy's law can be applied to anything ... don't drive, eat, drink, move ... 'anything' can happen with that logic applied.
What I suppose this all really comes down to is how safe is safe enough/allowable? And how well do you understand the risks and context of it all?
In this case, what does the governor propose to do? Review the plant. Then what? Close it? Then where do you get the 2,000 MW of power you just lost? He is playing to the media and public scare in my opinion.
Knee jerk politics
I disagree. It's nice to see a politician actually taking a lead in reviewing the status of current plants in the US to ensure their safety. Well done, Governor Cuomo! I wish our so-called President was a leader like you!
I can't wait until I get a chance to fix the error I made in 2008 by voting against Obama in 2012.
yeah because the fact that SPENT CORES are sitting in OPEN AIR pools is not an alarming discovery.
palin stupid comment of ingorance
It seems the nuclear waste i.e. spent fuel rods are shaping up to be the most serious problem in Japan. Where are they storing the spent fuel for this site?
EXACTLY!!! wow someone is finally catching on to what has been overlooked since 1974
Someone actually being proactive to avoid a possible threat. Better to be prudent than sorry.
It seems to me that the real damage to the nuclear power plants safety features were directly related to the tsunami rendering the backup generators useless rather than the earthquake itself. This is a lapse of common-sense. The generators should have been built 3 or 4 stories above sea level in anticipation of a major tsunami. This is how hotels are built in Hawaii. The living spaces are several stories high with the lower levels designed with breakaway wall panels. The lower levels are engineered for structural integrity in anticipation of a tsunami. HELLO! Tsunami is a Japanese word. They should have anticipated and engineered for this event! Nuclear power itself can be very safe. Our lack of common sense is the blunder to evolve beyond.
the tsunami was 30ft high, so still a failure. it is called thicker concrete... and WHY are rods sitting in UNPROTECTED pools?!
If New York had a repub governor, I guarantee there'd be no action taken on nuke plants. With almost the same fervor of hatred they have for unions and collective bargaining, they love their oil and nuclear plants. They hate those dirty, dangerous commies, but love that dirty, dangerous energy.
Please pass this on: by my calculations an ice cube approximately 100 feet square could be lowered via skyhook onto each of the reactors. Surely there must be plant within a few mile of the site that manufactures giant ice cubes.....seriously though. Although the design and placement of the backup generators was shortsighted, i am sure the engineers in Japan have considered all of your suggestions. How arrogant to sit halfway around the world and post your "calculations". If they could incresase water drops and helicopter flights, they would. If they could pour heated water on the core instead of cold seawater...they would. If they didn't think that restoring power to the cooling system was beneficial...they wouldn't waste their time. The staff trying to end the crisis are on a suicide mission. There are no roads, power, supplies, food, gasoline, equipment, a massive search-and-rescue operation is underway, and the site is horribly radioactive.Let's not insult them with our armchair engineering.
Review is great, but all plans look good on paper. I'm sure the Japanese plant's safety plans were reviewed many times. They had a back-up and a back-up of that. And things still went bad.
What does this Governor propose to do if he shuts down the plant (2 reactors)? If it provides 1/3 of the cities power (recall NYC consumes a large amount of power...), what makes up for that loss?? The capacities of the 2 reactors is a combined 2,045 MegaWatts. ...to replace that you would have to build on of the largest coal fire plants in the US... currently one in Georgia has a capacity of about 3500 MegaWatts (from 4 turbines, not 1).
If you really want to shut it down based on safety, have a comprehensive plan in place or at least in mind... cutting off 1/3 of your cities power without a replacement is not quite comprehensive or well thought out. Enough of this politicking and going for popularity. Do you really think the Governor of a state is going to do a better assessment than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?
Governor Cuomo, and Att'y. General Schneiderman, have been itching to close Indian Point for quite a while. They ignore almost 50 years of safe operation and don't seem to have any idea of how to replace the 2,000+MW of power generated by these plants. Typical political grandstanding and pandering.
Before we shut down the nuke plants and stop drilling for oil someone needs to figure out who will go without power when there isn't enough for everything. Or is that something that hasn't occured to anyone yet? Maybe when you are cold (or hot as the case may be) in the dark and can't drive to the store to get supper people will figure it out?
Can anyone say "Knee-Jerk Reaction"? Oy, can't politicians just think for themselves without others having to hold their hands....? I suppose not!
Yo Joe from YoTown.....You should hire yourself out to first energy for their Davis-Besse Plant. I hear it's about to flip it's Lid........
Events such as this causes a lot of looking back and searching for a better way.That is the reason for all the comments,people are worried,and have a just cause to be so.I hope everyone keeps on giving their opinion because that is the way a solution will be found.Opinions are food for thought and we all should be hungry.I know nothing about how this type of system works,but I do know that I will do my part to find a solution,down on my knees in prayer.
Has New York had an earthquake of 9.0? When did the sunami hit? Do we really think that without these preceeding events Japan would have had the nuclear problem they are experiencing?
Quit with the panic button already.
100 years ago there was a volcano blew in Sumatra that made global tsunamis. That can happen any time, not just once in 100 years. Terrorist thankfully flew into the trade towers and only killed 3,000 -- they could have flown into Indian Point and killed a hundred thousand and moved 30,000,000 people permanently out of the hot zone.
The nuclear core is housed mostly underground (only the top of the shell is above ground) in a concrete shell made to withstand attacks on it (even plane scenarios are considered)... so that plane wouldn't kill 100,000 or displace 30,000,000. Even though generally only small planes are considered, large planes would have to hit a containment dome that is on the order of tens of meters wide, small considering the speed the plane is traveling.
Then assuming the plane damages the core, it is not an explosion like a nuclear bomb. The way the two work (bomb vs power plant) are not the same nor are the components (radioactive material are different). The contaminated area (the worst) would most likely be in a 15mile radius or so, and that isn't even to say that the radiation would be at immediately lethal levels.
Just the truth Liann. Look up how much must go into the design of a nuclear plant on the safety end and you will realize how asinine your post was (assuming you aren't a fear monger). Understand how the plants work before you make the assumption that it would have blown up and killed thousands upon thousands of people.
Understand how real things work, such as nuclear power plants, and then just maybe you can make an educated post.
Also, in case you think of using Chernobyl as a bullet point, look up the inherent differences between the Chernobyl reactor set up and the set up used in all 104 US reactors. Chernobyl had a positive feed back system (bad ... as it failed, it kept getting worse on itself) as opposed to a negative feed back system here that prevents the Chernobyl type of disaster. Yet another advancement in safety for nuclear power plants that make it impossible to blow up like you seem to think a reactor will.
Also, let's not get started in the differences between weapons grade nuclear material (which is required for a nuclear explosion) and that it cannot be produced with the light-water reactors we use to produce electricity ...
If i am not mistaken these plants go through rigorous safety inspections on a regular basis and it is not based on a catastrophic occurence in Japan.
Well looks like the rich people's dream is coming true. The rich greed people want all the money while destorying the earth. But guess what they get to come with us and all that money they stole can't help them.
Yes. A review is in order. Can the plant survive when the next ice age comes and buries New York under a mile of ice?
Close It!
How do you replace 2 GW of energy so quickly? Have a plan before you freak out (the governor that is)!
Indian Point Nuclear Plant, Entergy, Entergy-Koch, Koch Industries killed Danielle Dawn Smalley because the brothers were too busy in politics to do maintenance on their infrastructure. It cost Dawn Smalley her life and it cost $273,000,000 court judgment against Koch. If there's a failure at Indian Point David Koch wll board his private jet and go home to Wichita, Kansas, but where will 30,000,000 New York area people go? Koch's can't be trusted after polluting six states air, soil and waters with $55,000,000 CRIMINAL fines. Even David's twin brother Bill calls Koch Industries "Organized Crime" on CBS TV.
When nukes can be 100% covered by private insurance for the free market, AND there is no law capping liability, and the US taxpayer is not required to pay even one cent in liability for the industry, THEN you will know nukes are actually safe.
So long as the people who build, operate, maintain and profit from nukes don't trust themselves enough to accept liability, and private insurance doesn't trust them, nobody should trust them.
Isn't it just typical that we as a race of people wait until there's a horrible disaster before we take or demand action, and even then there's no guarantee that anything positive will happen. It's big news now and, "oh, we must take a look at our own reactors cause this could happen here", all the experts come out from under their rocks just to remind us how volitile everything is, then they disappear until the next disaster. However, we all know that in a few weeks when things calm down, it will be business as usual, cause nobody really wants to spend the money to upgrade our 40/50 year old reactors or anything that has to do with infrastructure in this country for that matter. Wall Street and the big investors see it as too risky and cost prohibitive to get involved. Our country will crumble to bits while the rich and powerful build their underground silos in Nevada and will survive while the rest of us perish.