Rising Anxiety
By BOB HERBERT
he nuclear reactor known as Indian Point 2
sits beside the Hudson River about 30 miles
north of New York City. It has the worst safety
rating of all 103 nuclear reactors in the United
States. And of all the U.S. reactors, it's located in
the most densely populated region.
That is not a good combination of circumstances.
Concern over the plant's continuing safety
problems has heightened since Sept. 11. Increasing
numbers of residents and elected officials are
coming to the conclusion that the possibility of a
terrorist attack or a catastrophic accident at Indian
Point is a risk that is not worth taking. They believe it is time for the Indian Point complex with its two reactors
— Indian Point 2 and the less troublesome Indian Point 3 — to close.
In February 2000 an accident at Indian Point 2 resulted in the discharge of 20,000 gallons of radioactive
water. Officials said the radiation released was not a threat to public health, but the reactor was closed for
nearly a year. Last December, four of seven control room crews failed to pass their annual qualification
exams. That same month the reactor shut down automatically after an electrical connection to the plant's
turbine switched off unexpectedly. Leaks, malfunctions, human errors — it's always something at Indian Point.
Casualties from a worst-case scenario at the complex would dwarf those of
the attack on the World Trade Center. A 1982 study commissioned by the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that a meltdown at Indian Point
2 could cause 46,000 fatalities and 141,000 injuries in the short term. The
potential casualties from a meltdown at Indian Point 3 were even worse.
Long-term, the deaths from cancer resulting from an Indian Point catastrophe
would likely be horrendous.
The casualty estimates are conservative. The population in the region is
greater now, and evacuation plans are pathetically inadequate.
I called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week to ask about the
safety ratings at Indian Point 2. A spokeswoman, Diane Screnci, said the
commission did not rank plants. But it does conduct inspections and issue
findings that are graded using the colors green, white, yellow and red. Green
is the safest category and red the least safe.
Indian Point 2 is "currently the only plant with a red finding," Ms. Screnci
said. She characterized the red finding as highly significant and said Indian
Point 2 continued to receive "increased N.R.C. attention."
A serious accident or even a terrorist attack is no guarantee that the worst
will happen. But we all learned as the World Trade Center vanished on Sept.
11 that the worst can happen.
The vulnerability of nuclear power plants is made frighteningly clear when we
consider that American Airlines Flight 11, as it flew south from Boston
toward Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, passed almost directly over the
Indian Point complex. Then consider that President Bush reported in his
State of the Union Message that Americans in Afghanistan had found
diagrams of U.S. nuclear power plants, and that the nation's 103 nuclear
reactors were never designed to withstand the impact of a commercial
airliner.
Everyone within at least a 50-mile radius would be in danger if something terrible happened at Indian Point.
That 50-mile radius contains more than 7 percent of the entire population of the United States — 20 million
people. It includes all of New York City; the suburban New York counties of Westchester, Orange,
Rockland and Putnam; Bergen County in New Jersey; and most of Fairfield County in Connecticut. There is
no other nuclear plant in the country with anything close to Indian Point's potential for disaster.
Its chronic safety issues made Indian Point problematic before Sept. 11. Accidents happen. But since the
attack on the World Trade Center, and with the awful proliferation of suicide bombers in the Middle East, the
unthinkable is no longer unthinkable. Residents in the vast potential danger zone surrounding Indian Point have
little trouble imagining an airliner diving toward the complex, or terrorists on the ground attempting to sabotage
it.
Anxiety is very high, and opposition to the plant by residents and elected officials is intensifying. It may not be
long before a consensus is reached that Indian Point is a problem the region can do without.
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