Indian Point Energy Center
Indian Point Energy Center is a now defunct three-unit nuclear power station located in Buchanan, just south of Peekskill, in Westchester County, New York. It sits on the east bank of the Hudson River, about north of Midtown Manhattan. The facility permanently ceased power operations on April 30, 2021. Before its closure, the station's two operating reactors generated about 2,000 megawatts of electrical power, about 25% of New York City's usage. The station is owned by Holtec International, and consists of three permanently deactivated reactors, Indian Point Units 1, 2, and 3. Units 2 and 3 were Westinghouse pressurized water reactors. Entergy purchased Unit 3 from the New York Power Authority in 2000 and Units 1 and 2 from Consolidated Edison in 2001.
The original 40-year operating licenses for Units 2 and 3 expired in September 2013 and December 2015, respectively. Entergy had applied for license extensions and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was moving toward granting a twenty-year extension for each reactor. However, due to a number of factors including sustained low wholesale energy prices that reduced revenues, as well as pressure from local anti-nuclear groups and then-Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, it was announced that the plant would shut down by 2021. The plant permanently stopped generating energy on April 30, 2021. About 1,000 employees lost their jobs as a result of the shutdown.
As a result of the permanent shutdown of the plant, three new natural-gas fired power plants were built: Bayonne Energy Center, CPV Valley Energy Center, and Cricket Valley Energy Center, with a total capacity of 1.8 GW, replacing 90% of the 2.0 GW of low-carbon electricity previously generated by the plant. As a consequence, New York is expected to struggle to meet its climate goals. New York City's greenhouse gas emissions from electricity have increased from approximately 500 to 900 tons of CO2 per MWh from 2019 to 2022 as a result of the closure.
Unit 3 currently holds the world record for the longest uninterrupted operating period for a light water commercial power reactor. This record is 753 days of continuous operation, and was set on April 30, 2021 for the operating cycle beginning on April 9, 2019. Unit 3 operated at or near full output capacity for the entire length of the cycle. This record was previously held by Exelon's LaSalle Unit 1 with a record of 739 continuous days, set in 2006.
Operation
Reactors
Indian Point 1, built by Consolidated Edison, was a 275-megawatt Babcock & Wilcox supplied pressurized water reactor that was issued an operating license on March 26, 1962 and began operations on September 16, 1962. The first core used a thorium-based fuel with stainless steel cladding, but this fuel did not live up to expectations for core life. The thorium-based core shut down in October 1965. The plant was operated with uranium dioxide fuel for the remainder of its life. The reactor was shut down on October 31, 1974, because the emergency core cooling system did not meet regulatory requirements. All spent fuel was removed from the reactor vessel by January 1976, but the reactor still stands. The licensee, Entergy, plans to decommission Unit 1 when Unit 2 is decommissioned.Indian Point 2 and 3 are four-loop Westinghouse pressurized water reactors both of similar design. Units 2 and 3 were completed in 1974 and 1976, respectively. Unit 2 had a gross generating capacity of 1,032 MWe, and Unit 3 had a gross generating capacity of 1,051 MWe. Both reactors used uranium dioxide fuel of no more than 4.8% U-235 enrichment. The reactors at Indian Point are protected by containment domes made of steel-reinforced concrete that is thick, with a carbon steel liner.
Nuclear capacity in New York state
Prior to their respective shutdowns, Units 2 and 3 were among six operating nuclear energy sources at four nuclear power stations in New York state. New York was one of the five largest states in terms of nuclear capacity and generation, accounting for approximately 5% of the national totals and Indian Point provided 39% of the state's nuclear capacity. In 2017, Indian Point generated approximately 10% of the state's electricity needs, and 25% of the electricity used in New York City and Westchester County. The New York Power Authority, which supplies the subway, airports, public schools, and housing in New York City and Westchester County, built Unit 3 but they stopped buying electricity from Indian Point in 2012. As a result, Entergy sold all of Indian Point's output into the NYISO-administered electric wholesale markets and into New England. New York state has among the highest average electricity prices in the United States. Fully half of the state's power demand is in the New York City area and about two-fifths of the state's generation originates there.Refueling
Units 2 and 3 were each refueled on a two-year cycle. At the end of each fuel cycle, one unit was brought offline for refueling and maintenance activities. On March 2, 2015, Indian Point 3 was taken offline for 23 days to perform its refueling operations. Entergy invested $50,000,000 in the refueling and other related projects for Unit 3, of which $30,000,000 went to employee salaries. The unit was brought back online on March 25, 2015.Economic impact
A June 2015 report by a lobby group called Nuclear Energy Institute found that the operation of Indian Point generates $1.3 billion of annual economic output in local counties, $1.6 billion statewide, and $2.5 billion across the United States. In 2014, Entergy paid $30,000,000 in state and local property taxes. The total tax revenue was nearly $340,000,000 to local, state, and federal governments. According to the Village of Buchanan budget for 2016-2017, a payment in lieu of taxes in the amount of 2.62 million dollars was received in 2015–2016, and was projected to be 2.62 million dollars in 2016-2017 - the majority of which can be assumed to come from the Indian Point Energy Center.Over the last decade of its operation, the station maintained a capacity factor of greater than 93%. This was consistently higher than the nuclear industry average and than other forms of generation. The reliability helped offset the severe price volatility of other energy sources and the indeterminacy of renewable electricity sources.
Indian Point directly employed about 1,000 full-time workers. This employment created another 2,800 jobs in the five-county region, and 1,600 in other industries in New York, for a total of 5,400 in-state jobs. Additionally, another 5,300 indirect jobs were created out of state, creating a sum total of 10,700 jobs throughout the United States.
Closure of the plant was expected to create a $15,000,000 fund which will be split between "community and environmental" projects, with the Riverkeeper environmental group expecting to receive half, which is subject of a debate with the local community.
History
The reactors were built on land that originally housed the Indian Point Amusement Park, which was acquired by Consolidated Edison on October 14, 1954.Environmental concerns
In 2015, it was alleged that the plant's cooling system killed over a billion fish eggs and larvae annually, despite the use of fish screens. According to one NRC report from 2010, as few as 38% of alewives survive the screens. On September 14, 2015, a state hearing began in regards to the deaths of fish in the river, and possibly implementing a deactivation period from May to August. An Indian Point spokesman stated that such a period would be unnecessary, as Indian Point "is fully protective of life in the Hudson River and $75 million has been spent over the last 30 years on scientific studies demonstrating that the plant has no harmful impact to adult fish." The hearings lasted three weeks. Concerns were also raised over the alternate proposal to building new cooling towers, which would cut down forest land that is suspected to be used as breeding ground by muskrat and mink. At the time of the report, no minks or muskrats were spotted there.In February 2016, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo called for a full investigation of the plant's operations by state environment and public health officials. However, Cuomo's political motivation for closing the plant was called into question after it was revealed that two top former aides, under federal prosecution for influence-peddling, had lobbied on behalf of natural gas company Competitive Power Ventures to kill Indian Point. In his indictment, US attorney Preet Bharara wrote "the importance of the plant to the State depended at least in part, on whether was going to be shut down."
Amid growing calls to close the plant, environmentalists expressed concern about increased carbon emissions if the plant were to close, as nuclear power plants do not directly generate carbon dioxide. A study undertaken by Environmental Progress found that closure of the plant would cause power emissions to jump 29% in New York, equivalent to the emissions from 1.4 million additional cars on New York roads. In April 2016, climate scientist James Hansen took issue with calls to shut the plant down, including those from Senator Bernie Sanders, calling the efforts "an orchestrated campaign to mislead the people of New York about the essential safety and importance of Indian Point nuclear plant to address climate change."
Recertification and calls for closure
Units 2 and 3 were both originally licensed by the NRC for 40 years of operation. The original federal license for Unit 2 was due to expire on September 28, 2013, and the license for Unit 3 was due to expire in December 2015. On April 30, 2007, Entergy submitted an application for a 20-year renewal of the licenses for both units. On May 2, 2007, the NRC announced that this application is available for public review. Because the owner submitted license renewal applications at least five years prior to the original expiration date, the units were allowed to continue operation past this date while the NRC considered the renewal application.Efforts to shut down Indian Point were led by the non-profit environmental group Riverkeeper. Riverkeeper argued that the power plant killed fish by taking in river water for cooling and that the power plant could cause "apocalyptic damage" if attacked by terrorists. In 2004, Indian Point was the subject of a documentary, Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable, directed by filmmaker Rory Kennedy and starring Riverkeeper lawyer and brother-in-law of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. On September 23, 2007, the anti-nuclear group Friends United for Sustainable Energy filed legal papers with the NRC opposing the relicensing of Unit 2. The group contended that the NRC improperly held Indian Point to less stringent design requirements. The NRC responded that the newer requirements were put in place after the plant was complete.
On December 1, 2007, Westchester County Executive Andrew J. Spano, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer called a press conference with the participation of environmental advocacy groups Clearwater and Riverkeeper to announce their united opposition to the re-licensing of Indian Point.
On April 3, 2010, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ruled that Indian Point violated the federal Clean Water Act, because "the power plant's water-intake system kills nearly a billion aquatic organisms a year, including the shortnose sturgeon, an endangered species." The state had demanded that Entergy construct new closed-cycle cooling towers at a cost of over $1 billion, a decision that would have effectively closed the plant for nearly a year during construction of the towers. Regulators denied Entergy's request to install fish screens that they said would improve fish mortality more than new cooling towers.
Advocates in favor of recertifying Indian Point included former New York City mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudolph W. Giuliani. Bloomberg said that "Indian Point is critical to the city's economic viability". The New York Independent System Operator maintains that in the absence of Indian Point, grid voltages would degrade, which would limit the ability to transfer power from upstate New York resources through the Hudson Valley to New York City.
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo continued to call for closure of Indian Point. In late June 2011, a Cuomo advisor met with Entergy executives and directly informed them for the first time of the Governor's intention to close the plant, while the legislature approved a bill to streamline the process of siting replacement plants.
Nuclear energy industry figures and analysts responded to Cuomo's initiative by questioning whether replacement electrical plants could be certified and built rapidly enough to replace Indian Point, given New York state's "cumbersome regulation process", and also noted that replacement power from out of state sources will be hard to obtain because New York has weak ties to generation capacity in other states. They said that possible consequences of closure will be a sharp increase in the cost of electricity for downstate users and even "rotating black-outs".
Several members of the House of Representatives representing districts near the plant have also opposed recertification, including Democrats Nita Lowey, Maurice Hinchey, and Eliot Engel and then-Republican member Sue Kelly.
In November 2016 the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the application to renew the NRC operating licenses must be reviewed against the state's coastal management program, which the New York State Department of State had already decided was inconsistent with coastal management requirements. Entergy had filed a lawsuit regarding the validity of Department of State's decision.