Shuttering of New York facility raises awkward climate crisis questions as gas – not renewables – fills gap in power generation
When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.
Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.
Environmentalists wanted it gone because it was old, ill maintained, harmed wildlife by raising river temperature, and had leaks…
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling. Pressure from Andrew Cuomo, New York’s then governor, and Bernie Sanders – the senator called Indian Point a “catastrophe waiting to happen” – led to a phased closure announced in 2017, with the two remaining reactors shutting in 2020 and 2021.
A leaky nuclear reactor upstream from a major metro area isn’t a good thing…
The reason it was closed wasn’t carbon emissions, that would be ridiculous.
It was closed because it was unsafe
While it was a net benefit to close this specific plant, fossil fuel power plants pump radioactive particles into the environment along with other pollutants.
Sounds less like it needed to be closed than that it needed to be repaired. It wasn’t a problem because it was a nuclear plant, that was actually good and we need more nuclear plants. It was a problem because it was poorly maintained.
It was also a problem because it was a nearly 70 year old power plant design that would likely cost less to replace with a modern design from scratch than to try and repair the existing facility.
But anti-nuclear sentiment is strong enough that people don’t understand how much they have improved since the 1950s so they assume a new plant will be as bad for the environment as this one.
I trust nuclear can be built safely, problem is I don’t trust the humans building, maintaining, and running it to not cut corners. I flat out didn’t trust nuclear that’s run for profit as shareholders will demand cost cutting to maximize profits, and I didn’t know if I’d trust publication funded nuclear to stay properly funded.
It doesn’t have to be capitalistic.
Having our energy grid be for profit is a ridiculous idea anyways.
And the Navy has been training nuclear engineers for decades, without any major accidents despite almost all of their reactors being shoved into ships and submarines and training takes 18-24 months and being offered to kids literally right out of highschool.
Nationalize the energy grid and require government certification/contracts fornuclear plant operators.
Hell, most Navy nuclear engineers would literally jump ship to that just to be off a ship. But loads more would sign if the pay/bonuses was in anyway comparable to what Navy gets.
Just because capitalism makes something impossible doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Just that it’s incompatible with capitalism.
But you have to compare its safety with what will replace it. Gas is known to produce fumes that poison the air we breathe and warm the climate. This will lead to people dying.
So which is worse? I suspect the answer is gas because we consistently underestimate the danger from fossil fuels and overestimate the danger from nuclear. But you’d have to do some kind of risk assessment to be certain.
But you have to compare its safety with what will replace it.
Specifically this plant?
I’m hoping by “gas” you mean natural gas and not gasoline, but yeah, natural gas is better than an untrustworthy reactor because of the risk involved. Not forever, but right now it’s better than if we kept running a plant that will eventually have catastrophic failure.
Once turbines are spun up, it all pretty much runs itself. If you automated the oil purifiers it could conceivably run for years even decades on its on it’s own and not have any issues.
But we don’t take that chance, because something might go wrong.
The quality of this plant was shit, so the potential risk outweighed the known benefits and it needed shut down.
That doesn’t mean nuclear power is bad.
It means this one specific plant is bad after 60 years of operation and being one of the first plants constructed. It doesn’t mean we can’t build a modern plant that’s built to last and maintain it.
Shutting it down even if that means a temp return to fossil fuels for this one relatively tiny area for a few years is worth avoiding a nuclear meltdown a couple miles upstream of NYC…
It’s basic risk assessment
According to you. I believe the opposite.
We need to measure the actual dangers (in terms of lives lost, illnesses, etc.) and risks (in terms of probability of various outcomes) involved in order to arrive at an informed conclusion regarding this issue.
Natural gas kills people every day. This plant might, hypothetically, kill people in the future. Barring strong evidence that the second outcome is dramatically larger or more likely, the default should be to avoid killing people now.
With that logic they should be ripping out every hydroelectric dam as well.
If ones cracked and keeps springing leaks, yeah, that shit needs fixed.
But you don’t exactly “rip out” a dam…
I think you’re just one of many people who think one bad nuke pant makes them all bad.
One flawed anything doesn’t make all of anything bad, especially when the bad one is one of the first made in the world and there have been ridiculous amounts of advancement in the field.
Hell, it was 20 years after we really figured out nuclear physics when this was built, and 3x that long till it was decommissioned. It just wasn’t good anymore.
You all treat energy policy like it was highschool sports rivals.
I’ve always been pro nuclear. But what I’ve come to understand is that nuclear accidents are traumatizing. Anybody alive in Europe at the time was psychologically damaged by Chernobyl. Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
So you’ve got rational arguments vs. visceral fear. Rationality isn’t up to it. At the end of the day, the pronuclear side is arguing to trust the authorities. Being skeptical of that is the most rational thing in the world. IDK how to fix this, I’m just trying to describe the challenge pronuclear is up against.
I’m pro nuclear based on the science, but I’m anti nuclear based on humanity. Nuclear absolutely can be run safely, but as soon as there’s a for profit motive, corporations will try to maximize profits by cutting corners. As long as there’s that conflict I don’t blame people for being afraid.
“Afraid” after seeing unfettered capitalism cut corners in every way it can, with zero regard for human life.
I am not sure it’s fear so much as it is a logical response to the current situation to not want more nuclear in this context when renewables are so much cheaper.
I am not “afraid” of nuclear power, I just think it’s a really bad option right now and that its risks, like all other forms of power generation, need to be considered carefully, not dismissed out of hand.
It’s risks are pretty minimal, in the grand scheme. I won’t say non-existent of course. The possibility of a release is always there, but the impact is going to be measured in negative public perception, not deaths. One of the reasons the plants cost so much to build is because they have to stick a real big concrete dome over the dangerous bit.
Except that modern nuclear technologies like LFTR are objectively way safer, and even with 60s technology and unsafe operation, nuclear has fewer deaths per MWh than just about every other form of energy generation. It’s just that nuclear’s failures are more concentrated and visible.
Oh absolutely the corporations are going to want to maximize profit. There are just a lot of things they can’t get out of, especially when it comes to safety.
The nuclear industry (in the US) since TMI has had a heavy amount of oversight from its regulatory body. That the plants pay for, too, which is good.
And let’s not forget that every reactor type was “very safe” at the time. It’s true, every power plant can have problems and fail, but if a nuclear one does, consequences could be WAY worse.
First off, RBMK (Chernobyl) wasn’t safe as designed. In the US, the style of reactor wouldn’t have made it through the required licensing.
Second of all, the consequences being way worse is an exaggeration. If a nuclear power plant has a small release, the (real, scientific) impact would be minimal. If it has a large release then something else happened and the reactor containment was destroyed and whatever massive natural disaster did that is causing waaaaayy more problems. We’re probably all dead anyway.
People are afraid of radiation because you can’t see or smell or hear it. Which is probably a good thing considering you are surrounded by it all the time.
Someone recently said to me that if people had been introduced to electricity by watching someone die in an electric chair, they’d refuse to have power in their homes. People were introduced to radiation by an atomic bomb.
You got it. I’ve had this discussion and the anti nuclear boils down to “somewhat, somehow, something, someone, maybe, possibly, perhaps may go wrong. Anything built by man could fail”. There’s no logic, just fear.
At this point, you can be economically anti-nuclear. The plants take decades to build with a power cost well above wind/solar. You can build solar/wind in high availability areas and connect them to the grid across the states with high power transmission lines, leading to less time that renewables aren’t providing a base line load. One such line is going in right now from the high winds great plains to Illinois, which will connect it to the eastern coastal grid illinois is part of.
We also have a hilarious amountof tech coming online for power storage, from the expected lithium to nasa inspire gas battery designs, to stranger tech like making and reducing rust on iron.
There is also innovation in “geothermal anywhere” technology that uses oil and gas precision drilling to dig deep into the earth anywhere to tap geothermal as a base load. Roof wind for industrial parks is also gaining steam, as new designs using the wind funneling current shape of the buildings are being piloted, rivaling local solar with a simplier implementation.
While speculative, many of these techs are online and working at a small scale. At least some of them will pay off much faster, much cheaper and much more consistently before any new nuclear plants can be opened.
Nuclear’s time was 50 years ago. Now? It’s a waste to do without a viable small scale design. Those have yet to happen, mainly facing setbacks, but i’m rooting for them.
As someone who works nuclear field adjacent (and has pretty frequent convos with people working for Plant Vogtle, the plant that’s nearly done adding 2 units in Ga) I completely agree about the expense. You can’t do full scale nuclear quickly or cheaply enough for it to realistically compete over the short term. Honestly, somewhat rightfully so. I wish every industry had the regulatory hurtles to cross before they got to impact the environment. And they have to pay for their regulators.
As for SMRs, I’m also hopeful there. Mostly because of you could get a small enough one you could literally take it anywhere in the world and power a small town with ease.
there is one cool thing about nuclear though, if you know what you’re doing they’re ripe for government subsidy investment. One and done, they’ll run for like 30-50 years. No questions asked. It’s really just the upfront build cost that’s the problem.
lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
That specter’s back though.
That’s putting it mildly. Most people alive at the time were as certain as they could be that a nuclear apocalypse was right around the corner. Kids were told as much in school. Right now it’s floated as a possibility, but most people don’t take it seriously or aren’t aware of it much at all.
I use to be very pro nuclear. I’d write letters to papers and such explaining how the waste, which is the main concern most people have, is not as big of a problem as people think - and that certain manufacturing processes produce other waste products that are very bad and people just don’t think about those…
Anyway, I changed my mind some time back. There are three main things that have turned me against nuclear.
- The first thing was that I read a detailed analysis of the ‘payback time’ of different forms of energy generation. i.e. the amount of time it takes for the machine to produce more energy (in dollar terms) than it cost to build and run it. Nuclear fairs very poorly. It takes a long time to pay itself back; but wind was outstandingly fast; and solar was surprisingly competitive too (this was back when solar technology wasn’t so advanced. That’s why it was surprising). So then, I got thinking that although nuclear’s main advantage over coal is its cleanliness, wind is even cleaner, and easier to build, and safer, and pays itself off much much faster. And Australia has a lot of space suitable for wind power… so I became less excited by nuclear energy.
- The second thing is that as I grew older, I saw more and more examples of the corrupting influence of money. Safely running a nuclear power-plant and managing waste is not so hard that it cannot be done, but is a long-term commitment… and there are a lot of opportunities for unwise cost-cutting. My trust in government is not as high as it use to be; and so I no longer have complete faith that the government would stay committed to the technical requirements of long-term safe waste management. And a bad change of government could turn a good nuclear power project into a disaster. It’s a risk that is far higher with nuclear than with any other kind of power.
- The third and most recent thing is that mining companies have started turning up the rhetoric in support of nuclear power. They were not in favour of it in the past, but they smell the winds of change, and they trying to manipulate the narrative and muddy the waters by putting nuclear into the mix. They say nuclear is a requirement for a clean future, and stuff like that. But that’s not true. It’s an option, but not a requirement. By framing it as a requirement, they trigger a fight between people for and against nuclear, and it’s just a massive distraction form what we are actually trying to achieve. If the fight just stalls, the mining companies win with the status-quo. And if nuclear gets up, they win again with a new thing to mine… It’s not nice
So yeah, I’m not so into nuclear now. It’s not a bad technology, but the idea of it is a bit radioactive, just like the waste product.
Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
This movie didn’t help.
(Good movie by the way; Jack Lemmon’s “I can feel it” line at the end of the movie really scares the crap out of you.)
Well there are plenty of rational arguments against nuclear. Its very expensive and time consuming to build, so its better to build renewables that can start generating power in a couple of months vs at least a decade for nuclear.
Then they are actually pretty significantly more polluting than renewables due to the amount of concrete they use. And decommissioning them is a costly and expensive process that also releases a lot of carbon. And theres only one permanent storage facility in the world for nuclear waste. And theres the fact that due to needing a constant and highly skilled workforce, they need to be near population centres but far enough away that people feel safe, which makes it hard to plan.
And also specifically for the reactors mentioned in the article, they were built in the 60s, they are not nearly as safe as modern reactors.
I am sympathetic to the don’t trust the powers that be viewpoint. For example I just assume everything an economist says is the exact opposite of what we should do.
What I look for is multiple independent groups able to present the same data showing the same results. For example I trusted the first Covid vaccine because Universities and multiple government agencies of different countries agreed. If it was just the Orange White House administration lawyers claiming this shit is the bomb yeah I am not getting it.
Guess we need to basically just keep saying “look you don’t trust the government, and that’s fine. Here is the science for all these other places”
There is a simple answer that nobody will implement. Thorium reactors, very veyy low chances of meltdowns
But the governments won’t do it because you can’t convert thorium to bombs
Disagree, sorry.
Thorium is unproven in a commercial setting, molten salt reactors in general are plagued with technological difficulties for long term operations and are limited currently to just a few research reactors dotted about the globe.
There’s no denying that originally a lot of the early nuclear reactors chose uranium because of its ability to breed plutonium for nuclear weapons proliferation but nowadays that’s not a factor in selection. What is a factor is proven, long-lasting designs that will reliably produce power without complex construction and expensive maintenance.
Also the nuclear waste is a big problem, it will be around for thousands of years. We have a nuclear plant near us and none of the waste has ever left the site, it just keeps getting added to big casks on a concrete slab outdoors and is a big potential vulnerability.
Most radioactive waste is just mildly contaminated and has a relatively short danger period in the realm of a century or less. The truly dangerous stuff represents the smallest amount of waste and that’s the crap people have been trying to put very deep underground for decades. For whatever reason the political will just hasn’t been there. For now it rests on-site in casks designed to keep it safely stored for a very long time, but it will eventually need a permanent home.
FWIW, I’m an Xer against nuclear power, but not for the reason you outlined: it’s because it’s an overall bad approach to energy generation.
It produces extremely long-lasting waste, on timescales humans are not equipped to deal with. It has a potential byproduct of enabling more nuclear weapons. The risks associated with disaster are orders of magnitude greater than any other power generation system we use, perhaps other than dams. It requires seriously damaging mining efforts to obtain the necessary fuel. It is more expensive.
We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now.
It’s not my trauma, it’s my logic that leads me to be generally against nuclear. (Don’t have to be very against it, no one wants to build these now anyway.)
It produces extremely long-lasting waste, on timescales humans are not equipped to deal with.
Very little waste compared to burning coal or oil which also produces waste we aren’t equipped to deal with. See oh idk global warming.
A lot compared to renewables. Did you read what he said? “We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now.”
Worth mentioning it’s actually quite small by mass (only 1% or so of what goes in), but only a few places actually separate out those isotopes.
I never argued for coal power. I don’t know if you’re an oil/gas lobby shill or what, but I said absolutely nothing about coal, oil, or gas, none of which are good options vs. renewables.
There have been more deaths and major environmental disasters with fossil fuels than with all nuclear accidents combined (including the less reported ones that happened in the 50s and 60s). Nuclear plants are generally safe and reliable. They do not produce excessive waste like wind (used turbine blades) and solar (toxic waste from old panels that cannot be economically recycled).
Nuclear is the superior non-carbon energy source right now. Climate change is an emergency, so we shouldn’t be waiting on other technologies to mature before we start phasing out emitting power plants in favor of emission-free nuclear plants.
If I were advocating for more use of non-renewables, your comment would make sense in this context.
I am arguing against non-renewables getting more funding.
But really my arguments don’t matter, the market has decided and I feel like these nuclear posts are becoming mostly sour grapes and not any kind of legitimate discussion about what things nuclear would need to do to be price competitive.
thermal reactor skill issue, just use a fast reactor design.
Btw the mining is vastly less significant to something like coal, oil, and probably even natural gas production. It’s just a fraction of the volume being mined, to produce the same amount of energy.
I did not compare it to oil., coil or natural gas. I am not sure why you are using those as some kind of comparison or justification.
You make a really good point with the comparison to dams. It’s not that it’s not a great way to generate power, but it is a fact that the worst case scenarios for failure are really really bad. It’s perfectly rational to worry about that. Consider, for example, how both dams and nuclear plants have been targeted by Russia in Ukraine. No one is worried if they smash a few solar panels
Thank you for considering what I am saying. I really appreciate at least one person being open to thinking about their position.
I beg you Lemmy, dont be like a redditor that just reads the purposefully inflammatory headlines and gets mad over it. Always assume a headline is supposed to get a specific emotional response from you and read the article.
For this one the environmental concerns people had were not about carbon emissions, they were about groundwater contamination
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling.
The plant as well as NYs other plants that face a lot of criticism were built in the 60s long before much of the modern saftey measures and building techniques that make Modern reactors so safe. And thats why they were decommissioned, they were almost 60 years old and way past their initial life span. Not because of “Dumb environmental activists think taking nuclear power offline will decrease carbon emissions” like whoever wrote this headline is trying to get you to assume.
You are not immune to propaganda.
Modern is a misnomer. Most of our plants are 30+ years old. After 3 Mile Island, nuclear development ground to a halt in the US. No new nuclear power began development after 1979 except 2 new reactors at the existing Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia that were approved in 2009.
And only one reactor at Indian Point came online in the 60s. Units 2 and 3 came online 12 and 14 years after unit one. And unit 1 was decommissioned in 1974 as it is, shortly after unit 2 came online.
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate. People just assume that nuclear will be magically replaced by renewables. But you can’t just do that. You can draw a direct line from the closure of Indian Point to the construction of 3 natural gas turbine plants.
Three natural gas-fired power plants have been introduced over the past three years to help support the electric supply needed by New York City that Indian Point had been providing: Bayonne Energy Center II (120 MW), CPV Valley Energy Center (678 MW), and Cricket Valley Energy Center (1,020 MW).
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Because just patching up an old faulty nuclear power plant thats past its expected service life is a recipe for disaster. Hence why we have service lifetimes for these things in the first place?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
thats past its expected service life
Citation needed. It received a 40-year permit to start because that was the max permit issued.
Lots of things last well past their “expected service life.” That is why there is the word EXPECTED. The problem was in the spent fuel pools. They could build brand new ones.
Tell me, what was the expected service life of the Brooklyn Bridge? Should people avoid it because continuing to use it is “a recipe for disaster?”
The fact is, intensive inspections would have been required for another permit to continue operating.
Listen, if you think we should build newer and better nuclear power plants, I am right with you. But until that happens, we cannot just flush what we have down the toilet.
Should we build wind and solar? Absolutely. But we also need green power that works when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, and that is what Indian Point gave the state of NY for decades.
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
It cites a “green win.” The groundwater issue is absolutely a green issue.
But even then, those pushing to close it down claimed it would be replaced by green energy. The National Resourced Defence Council claimed that “Indian Point Is Closing, but Clean Energy Is Here to Stay.” The claimed that “because of New York’s landmark 2019 climate legislation and years of clean energy planning and investments by the state, New York is better positioned today than ever to achieve its ambitious climate and clean energy goals without this risky plant.”
So, yes, it was absolutely advertised as a climate win that the NY would easily replace it with renewable energy, even when those 3 gas turbine plants were being bought online.
Besides the text of the article, there is the issue that environmentalist fear-mongering about nuclear energy caused extreme hesitance to build a new plant and that has lead directly to greenhouse gas emissions increases.
Indeed, we are not immune to propaganda.
Environmentalists can’t stop oil and gas companies from drilling and fracking and spilling and polluting. If nuclear was profitable environmentalists wouldn’t be able to stop it either.
The only reason we have so many nuclear plants is because the government subsidized them because they produce material that can be used in weapons. Just the reactor on its own isn’t profitable for decades, which is too long for a company to wait for a return even in the good old days before profits needed to grow every quarter.
Well, nuclear can be profitable. It’s just that fossil fuels are more profitable.
But this is also where the government needs to step in. There should be a carbon tax to account for the climate change externality. Also, clean sources of power including nuclear should be subsidized.
Keep in mind that while environmentalists maybe can’t stop it, some of them happily join a coalition with NIMBYs and indeed, fossil fuel companies to stop nuclear.
Well when you consider that reactors at the time werent as safe as they are now, and that we had several high profile nuclear reactor failures at around the same time, that were all pretty narrowly stopped from becoming even worse disasters and all those reactors were “Perfectly safe” until they werent and also just how deeply awful the effects of radiation is. Do you think its actually “fear mongering” or reasonable concern? I suppose the difference depends mostly on which side of the argument you are on.
The plant should have been closed for updating and modernization, not just closed permanently.
Nuclear is the only way we will get to carbon neutral emissions anytime soon.
You cant really just keep “modernising” ancient reactor designs forever. Eventually you’ll need to close them down and build something else.
And realistically it makes way way more sense to build Wind power than nuclear to get us to carbon neutral. We can build a 50mw wind farm in 6 months.
For comparison Hinkley Point C in the UK was announces in 2010 and is currently expected to be commissioned by 2029.
That means if we built wind instead we would have built 1900MW of capacity in the time it would have taken to build the NPP and by the time the reactors would generate power for the first time the wind farms would already have generated 17 GW/years of power. If we stopped building more wind farms when the NPP completed it would take the reactor 14 more years just to catch up to the wind farms. And if we continue to build wind farms nuclear literally never catches up as total wind capacity would overtake the capacity of the NPP by year 13.
Yes you can make arguments about the uptime of wind, but I think ive made my point. And thats not even factoring in the cost/MW of capacity.
This is a great point about renewables: A partially finished solar or wind power installation can produce some power and start recouping costs. A nuclear plant doesn’t start bringing in income until it’s completely finished, so all those billions tied up in design and construction are a liability for a lot longer.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it. If we properly pursued new nuclear plants in the US on a federal and state level it would absolutely be the best option.
I know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both.
Canada’s CANDU reactors were built in the 60’s and are providing Ontario 60-80% of its power.
Shitty design and build are the main problem. Not the age
I don’t know if heavy water plants leaking tritium in their wastewater should be used as a good standard for the longevity of old reactor designs.
You’re worried about a bit of tritium being pumped into Lake Ontario?
The actual leak never got out, the only time there was a leak was some dumbass filled the wrong silo and had to dump it.
Modern nuclear technology is much safer than older stuff, additionally when the older plants are well maintained they are much safer than they’re made out to be.
This is one of those cases where pop culture doesn’t match reality and as a result people who are half informed do more damage to their cause by rejecting the good in pursuit of the great.
I’m 112% for replacing old outdated and unsafe infrastructure.
However, a new, updated, far safer plant will not get built to replace this one. Or any that close in the US until some people die off or shit really hits the fan energy-wise and people get more desperate. This is the least favorable time to build “safe” things.
This plant needed to be closed, but something has to replace it. And unless people start forcing renewables, shit like this is just the norm. Plant closes, nothing replaces it except fossil fuels, emissions go up.
additionally when the older plants are well maintained they are much safer than they’re made out to be.
This one was leaking radioactive matter into the river upstream of NYC…
Even just primary fluid leaking into secondary is a giant issue.
Radioactive matter in the river means containment leaked to primary, then leaked to secondary…
If you don’t know why that is so bad, you really shouldn’t be talking about how safe nuclear power is. Because even tho you’re right, you don’t know why.
If you don’t know why that is so bad, you really shouldn’t be talking about how safe nuclear power is. Because even tho you’re right, you don’t know why.
You’re kind of gaslighting people by equating “this instance of a 70 year old badly maintained plant” to “how safe nuclear power is”.
Besides, I am pretty certain some oil and gas lobbying prevented better maintenance here.
You’re kind of gaslighting people by equating “this instance of a 70 year old badly maintained plant” to “how safe nuclear power is”.
Where have I ever said nuclear power is unsafe?
You’re inventing me saying something and accusing me of gaslighting because it disagrees with an opinion you happen to have.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is and how unlikely it is now for me to ever attempt to try and help you understand anything?
The plant was from 1956, nearing a century of age by now. Old plants like this one explode in their running costs and typically accumulate more and more maintenance incidences each year, ultimately becoming a security risk.
The main problem though is that countries betting on nuclear power do fuck all with renewables, which makes it unsurprising that you have to resort to other means to fill potential gaps to replace them. In this case they could’ve built renewables, or even other nuclear plants, for several decades already in order to replace this ancient one.
Articles & comments like this are basically just paid propaganda pieces by the nuclear lobby.
Calling 68 years ‘nearing a century’ as a comparison is a bit of a stretch.
It is really old in nuclear power plant tech terms and needed to be replaced. A combination of renewable amd nuclear is the way forward, but people treat nuclear safety concerns like they do airplane crashes, acting like the sky is falling even when there are no deaths for years and safety keeps increasing.
A combination of renewable amd nuclear is the way forward
But why? There isn’t anything nuclear fills in to cover the cons of renewables. The old model of baseload power being cheap is no longer applicable, and that’s what nuclear is for.
Yeah, article just offhand mentions that radioactive material was leaking into the river…
That means there was multiple ongoing leaks between multiple systems that need to be completely separate for safe operation.
If the stacks were still good, they should have replaced the reactor. But if those leaks were ongoing and either weren’t addressed or couldn’t be fixed, then it’s incredibly doubtful any maintenance was being done.
Any nuclear plant that’s leaking radioactive material needs shut down till it’s repaired.
And this one was just in such bad shape it couldn’t be repaired.
Everything can be repaired. It just stops being cost effective at a certain point to do so.
Yeah, article just offhand mentions that radioactive material was leaking into the river…
Aww man, you were so close to having it figured out. It mentioned that in an off handed way because it left you, the reader, with an impression of what was happening without having to get into the details. Why would they do that? Because said details don’t line up with what you’ve been talking about.
If we look at the NY RiverKeepers website, a source biased towards getting rid of this plant, we find this article: https://www.riverkeeper.org/campaigns/stop-polluters/indian-point/radioactive-waste/radiological-leaks-at-indian-point/
In there is a leak to the radiological events since the plant opened: https://www.riverkeeper.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Indian-Point-Radioactive-Leaks-Sheet.pdf
Oh. No leaking reactors, no leaking primary or secondary cooling systems…most of the problem was with their holding ponds and there were some valve failures.
Now none of that is good but it’s a FAR cry from the “leaking reactor” narrative that you seem to have.
Building new nuclear plants isn’t particularly easy when there are environmentalists clamoring to shut them all down and a general public that’s scared of atoms.
Also, don’t accuse articles of being “propaganda” and then call 68 years “nearing a century” to fearmonger for your own view instead.
The industry also thinks the problem is regulations. It isn’t. If you have your shit in order, federal regulators have been willing to issue new nuclear plant permits and extend old ones. The actual probably is that the tech is fundamentally unaffordable; nobody wants to buy what they’re selling. SMRs are not likely to fix this, and there doesn’t seem to be any other fission tech on the horizon that would, either.
Two things I think we should do is subsidize reactors for reprocessing old nuclear waste, and put SMRs on ships. There are reasons for both that don’t directly show up on balance sheets.
FYI: The Simpsons wasn’t real.
Nuclear engineers and techs are highly trained. Even the ones at Chernobyl were exceptionally good at their jobs; they were just fucked over by a broken system and hidden effects.
You can’t claim to be an environmentalist and be anti-nuclear energy at the same time.
Depends on where you’re talking about. In Australia the right wing are using nuclear as a diversion to slow down the transition to renewables, so they can stay on gas and coal longer.
There’s no nuclear power in Australia, and the time needed to create the industry, train or poach workers, create a plant and get it up and running makes no environmental or economical sense compared to what they are already set to achieve with wind, solar and storage.
If you’ve already got nuclear up and running, use it, but each new plant needs to be compared to the alternatives for that specific location, and the track record of the nuclear industry and government in that location.
Amazing how the argument works both ways, almost as if it’s all bullshit and a post-hoc rationalization instead of an evidence based approach to policy.
There is no pre-existing system = great! No golden handcuffs and no entrenched powers. Start with a clean slate with tech developed by other nations
There is a pre-existing system = great! So everything is built up, all we have to do is run things a bit harder. When you have a hundred plants it isn’t that much more difficult to build one more.
I get it. Jane Fonda was cute back in the day and she made a movie about nuclear being scary. Arguments are crafted to fit the scary instead of the emotion instead questioned. And I do get it because I was raised to believe in god.
Nuclear is is the most stable and carbon neutral form of energy production to date. Not to mention the safest. And that’s not even considering EOL disposal and recycling figures that always get brought up with Nuclear but no one ever seems to talk about for Solar and Wind when their components reach end of their service life and have basically no plan for how to recycle or dispose of them in any way that isn’t a landfill.
https://www.greentechrenewables.com/article/can-solar-panels-be-recycled https://orsted.com/en/insights/the-fact-file/can-wind-turbines-be-recycled As volumes increase, the economics of recyling will increase as well, as will the developed techniques for recycling.
Of course. The problem with waste is still there and you can also replace Nuclear with renewables, like Germany did. Nuclear shut down, coal also 20 % down, renewables on record heights.
Nuclear waste is no where near the problem propagandist make it out to be. And Germany shutting down nuclear plants is not the benefit you think it is. They might be using less coal (all the 2023 stats I’ve seen do not reflect that) but they are still using oil and gas and their energy imports of fossil fuels went up in '23. Shutting down nuclear plants has caused them to become less energy green, not more.
Like I’ve said, most of the people who support nuclear energy are ANTI-environmentlists. They don’t support it for the world. They just support it to rub their dicks in environmentalism’s face.
I don’t understand where you think the most environmentally friendly power production option is anti environmental. It produces the least amounts of greenhouse and uses the least amount of land per kW produced. A properly run plant has no contamination of its environment, high level waste can be run through reactors again and again until fully expended and becomes low level waste that can be stored at the facility indefinitely. Where in the world are you getting the idea that nuclear power is bad for the environment?
