Cuomo Takes Tough Stance on Nuclear Reactors

Source: The New York Times

ALBANY — One of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s top advisers met with the operators of the Indian Point nuclear plant last week and told them that the governor was determined to close the plant.

Mr. Cuomo is not the first politician or the first governor to take that position, but newly passed state legislation will make it easier for him to do so.

The meeting was the first high-level meeting between Entergy, the company that runs Indian Point, and the Cuomo administration, and it was convened at Entergy’s request.

Mr. Cuomo has repeatedly taken the position in speeches that he wants to close the plant. But his administration had not delivered the message so directly to the company, or in such strong words, and company officials left the meeting alarmed.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/nyregion/cuomo-emphasizes-aim-to-close-indian-point-plant.html

the consequences of failure are so obviously disproportionate to any possible benefit that it boggles the mind that the plant was allowed to open.

Over emphasis on the low probability of event numbers fails to capture the reality altering nature of hitting a level seven lottery. I hope he sets a strong precedent with a concurrent commitment to rapid renewable deployment.

You're not under the impression that New York City would be in any danger even in the ridiculously unlikely scenario of a disaster, right?

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What do you imagine would happen in the highly unlikely event of a disaster there? Even if you imagined a Chernobyl-style catastrophe (which is quite a work of imagination) New York City is literally twice the rated safe distance from the plant.

answer is "bus-i-ness" -- no matter how insane!

First he muscles a republican state senate into approving rights for everyone to be able to marry, now he's determined to close a dangerous nuke plant. Is there some backstory I'm missing or is he what Progressives want out of a politician?

requires patience, determination, and most importantly not losing sight of what it means to be a progressive.

has anything to do with the Koch brothers (big Cuomo donors). They've been pushing privatization.

because no new electrical generation has been built in NY state in decades. Indian Point provides approximately 1/3 of all power generation to the state...They can't close it without a replacement source. The Northeast power grid is very fragile and we have seen the consequences of its fragility more than once. Everyone want power but no one wants it built in their neighborhood. We have all heard the talk but lets see what that talk produces. Closing IP could take more than a decade, a replacement must be built to equal what it puts on the grid.

Rooftop NYC solar isn't the total answer, but in conjunction with offshore wind and the rest of the renewable resources of the region, it ABSOLUTELY is feasible.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x300299#300299

NY Times: Mapping (the) Sun’s Potential to Power New York (City)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/science/earth/16solar.html?_r=1&ref=earth
June 16, 2011

Two-thirds of New York City’s rooftops are suitable for solar panels and could jointly generate enough energy to meet half the city’s demand for electricity at peak periods, according to a new, highly detailed interactive map to be made public on Thursday.

The map, which shows the solar potential of each of the city’s one-million-plus buildings, is a result of a series of flights over the city by an airplane equipped with a laser system known as Lidar, for light detection and ranging.

Swooping over the five boroughs last year, the plane collected precise information about the shape, angle and size of the city’s rooftops and the shading provided from trees and structures around them.

The map is at the Web site of the City University of New York. City officials said the information should advance efforts to increase the city’s reliance on solar power as part of its energy mix, reducing the metropolis’s greenhouse gas emissions

the city does nothing without upstate......its water, energy and just about everything else comes from upstate in one form or another.

Nothing is more expensive than nuclear reactors to boil water to make steam --

and nothing is more dangerous --

as we've seen over and again -- on and on --


As Global Warming continues to worsen, it is beyond dangerous to have 106 nuclear

reactors -- aged and leaking -- in the US!

Nuclear power is the only thing between us and global warming trashing the entire planet. But, hey, Andrew, go ahead and pander to the know-nothings.

nuclear power, oil drilling, both are extremely risky and wasteful

I want the plant gone.

Along with more alternative energy systems, and yes, maybe a few more coal plants for the short term if that's what's necessary. Or we could look at cutting down on energy usage on a broad scale.

since NY City will have all the power it needs on sunny days.

The cheapest rooftop solar is $5 a watt. Assuming 6 productive hours per day, you need four times as much solar panels as the energy you're replacing. You're replacing 2,000,000,000 watts. 8 billion * 5 is $40 billion dollars to replace all that power with solar. Which is NOT counting the cost of energy storage. Or how many years upon years it would take to install all that, meanwhile NYC is burning coal, making global warming worse, and killing people with pollution. New York State won't--the state government currently can't even afford to keep all it's employees.

Or, how about actually getting that done BEFORE pulling the plug on the source of CO2-free energy, rather than just blithely saying "Hey, if it means more coal, that's okay, we'll get it done someday."

It's a bad idea to throw up coal plants now expecting it to be fixed later. That's not the way government projects tend to work.

The money can be found if we can cobble together the political will to raise taxes on the rich.

Haha.


The most likely scenario seems to be that we're all fucked; cross our fingers and hope NYC doesn't have to be evacuated.

The multiple core meltdowns at Fukushima have cost the people of Japan a price equal to the profits of the entire nuclear industry in Japan for the past 40 years. Those profits, of course, are going to remain private, while the costs of dealing with generations of contamination are going to be socialized.

Shut it down immediately! New Yorkers could provide some of their own energy with rooftop solar panels + local wind generation. There are a lot of rooftops there, right?

and the surrounding metropolitan area. And where would everybody evacuate TO?
North is towards it, east would still get the plume, just a bit later with the prevailing winds,
south is water, so I guess everybody would be making for the tunnels to New Jersey.

Rapid transit in that direction is almost non-existent, and likely to remain so,
thanks to the cancellation of the rail tunnel by New Jersey's governor Christie.

:nuke: :hide:

NYC is more than twice the safe distance from the plant.

private industry will not ensure them --

and the costs of using nuke for electricity are huge --

when you also add in the waste and other immense poblems -- the costs are scandalous!

And the "immense" cost is vastly less than solar power.

You might want to check your facts.

Or how to quench a star.

Say what???