That is the Indian Point nuclear plant. It’s just 30 miles north of New York City
which is one reason people have been fighting
over this plant for decades. “More than 2,000 anti-nuclear protesters
gathered at the Indian Point power plant.” “We’re in the danger zone and
we better demonstrate today.” "New York's Indian Point nuclear power plant
threatened with shut down for lack of an approved
evacuation plan." “If we ever had a major problem at Indian Point,
that might be a problem that we couldn't solve." In early 2021, after years of protest,
Indian Point finally shut down. “We’re celebrating the long-fought closure
of the Indian Point nuclear power plant." "Indian Point will close in 4 years,
14 years ahead of schedule." "This is the power of the bully pulpit,
the power of organizing." Here’s the problem. Up until then, the vast majority of the electricity
used in New York City that didn’t come from fossil fuels
came from Indian Point. What happened here is an example of the
complicated role nuclear energy is playing in the fight against climate change. Nuclear plants generate about 10% of the electricity
that we use around the world. But 20% in the US. And 52% of the electricity in the US
that’s not from fossil fuels. Experts widely agree that in order to slow
climate change, we need to use fewer carbon-emitting
fossil fuels but the number of working nuclear
reactors in the US has been declining. ROBERTS: Each one that shuts down, it's like
a half a gig to a gigawatt of of mostly carbon free energy gone
from the grid. That’s longtime energy reporter David Roberts. ROBERTS: If you shut the nuclear plant down,
today, most likely, you're going to get a bunch of natural gas to replace it. Take these three nuclear plants, shut down
in three different states. Here’s where these states got electricity
before the shutdowns. And after. More fossil fuels, in every case. So far, that’s what happened
at Indian Point too. In this case, nuclear was replaced
with natural gas. ROBERTS: So then you have natural gas' local
pollution problems which are substantial. And then there's climate change. But, of course, when it comes to nuclear energy,
people have some concerns. This is Batu. Is Batu coming with us? He's my crew. I’ve come to see Indian Point for myself
with John Lipscomb and Richard Webster who are part of an environmental group that was
instrumental in the agreement to close the plant. LIPSCOMB: Twenty million people live within
50 miles of this plant. You can't afford an accident here. ROBERTS: People think about Chernobyl. ROBERTS: People think about Three Mile Island. ROBERTS: People think about the sort of famous
nuclear meltdowns. With Indian Point, people are worried about
a meltdown with a specific cause. “Al-Qaeda actually considered targeting
a nuclear power plant.” “It became clear to many of us that this
was a safety hazard.” “You put a little C4, you blow it up." "See, you’re doing it Bob, you’re scaring
the hell outta me.” People still argue about what would’ve actually
happened win the event of an attack but the fear of an attack was an important factor
turning public opinion against Indian Point. The thing is, the tragedies of nuclear disasters
create a skewed picture of how dangerous nuclear energy actually is. All energy sources come with
some degree of danger. One common way to measure that danger is to
compare the number of deaths a type of energy has caused, like through accidents, or premature
deaths from pollution, with how much energy it provides. What we’d call “renewables” - solar,
wind, water power - these are extremely safe by this measure. Natural gas is less safe. Oil and coal are much, much more dangerous. Here’s nuclear. This takes into account all nuclear accidents,
including thousands of deaths from radiation. ROBERTS: So if you're choosing between nuclear
and fossil fuels purely on a safety basis, there's no comparison. What’s so interesting is everyone I spoke
to agrees on these facts. They just interpret them differently. To David, the numbers show how rare
a nuclear disaster is. To John and Richard, the numbers
are beside the point. LIPSCOMB: That measure of normally occurring
deaths from various industries is a very valid study. But you can't have a nuclear meltdown
in a solar farm. So there's the normal nominal casualties that
the industry develops. And then there's this nasty possibility
that hangs out there. But human safety wasn’t the only concern
that led to the plant’s closing. When operating, Indian Point needed to take
in three Olympic swimming pools’ worth of Hudson River water to cool its reactors. The water went in through these grates. And then it was filtered through a grill,
then flowed on into the plant. It was supposed to keep fish and other organisms
from getting in and being killed but often, it didn’t. WEBSTER: And there are organisms that are either
pushed onto on the grill or they're entrained in the water, go through the plant
and get killed. And, you know, we estimate that about
a billion organisms a year were being killed in that way. LIPSCOMB: The ecosystem can't bear
that kind of assault. LIPSCOMB: We think the river has its own rights. In addition to the harm that the cooling system
did to wildlife, in 2015 a fire at the facility leaked thousands of gallons of oil
into the Hudson river. And in 2017 a deal was struck
to shut down the plant. But many argue shutting down
plants like these is short-sighted. ROBERTS: The people who have those concerns
are sincere and those concerns are real. But in all human affairs, you have to ask,
"compared to what"? Climate change, if unrestrained, that is going
to be far more devastating for far more ecosystems, and far more rivers and bodies of water than
any conceivable effect of, you know a nuclear power plant. But Richard would say that’s a false choice. WEBSTER: I don't think it's a choice of
emit carbon or kill fish. It's like those are not the choices we have. We have a third choice and we should use it. Long term, he might be right. But not in the short term. We just don’t have enough renewables yet. ROBERTS: Even if you replace that gigawatt
of lost power with renewables, that's a gigawatt of renewables that isn't going to replace
fossil fuel plants, right? ROBERTS: It just moves your baseline back. ROBERTS: Right now, we just have lots and lots and
lots of fossil fuel power plants on the grid. So we don't have the time or luxury to sort
of optimize here. Like, let's keep what we've got, is my take. And then there’s the third big factor at
play here, which is the reason these nuclear plants are so vulnerable to public opinion
in the first place. In the last 10 years, the price of electricity
from renewables and natural gas has plummeted as their production has gotten
cheaper and easier. The price of electricity from nuclear has
gone up - in part because of regulation to address safety concerns. Existing nuclear plants are struggling
to compete. And building new plants has become
prohibitively expensive. So when you combine cost plus the fear of
a disaster plus the environmental threats, it's not hard to understand why
nuclear plants are closing. But David says there's one final distinction
here that should be getting more attention. Something that nuclear energy has
that renewables don't yet. ROBERTS: Wind and solar energy come and go
with the weather. So, you need power that's "firm." And "firm" just means you can turn it on when
you want to and run it as long as you want to. ROBERTS: We have tons of firm power now. I mean most of the power on the grid
right now is firm. ROBERTS: Every fossil fuel power plant counts
as "firm power." ROBERTS: But what you need if you're going
to decarbonize is clean firm power i.e. firm power that doesn't emit
greenhouse gases. ROBERTS: That's much trickier. ROBERTS:There are not there are not as many
candidates for that. Nuclear is not the only option
for clean firm power. But it is one we have right now. One that’s currently putting huge amounts
of power onto the electricity grid. What happened here at Indian Point shows that
fighting climate change is going to involve a lot of choices. On either side there are people that value
those choices differently. On the one hand, environmentalists
and, on the other, as David likes to call them, “climate hawks”. ROBERTS: A “climate hawk” is someone who
places a high priority on the threat of climate change and supports aggressive means
of tackling it, trying to solve it. In the long term, though, they want the same
thing: An energy future that harms the planet less.
People want clean energy but will happily shut down the actual solution to problem because of fear.
Solar, Wind, and Hydro Electric are all great ideas for renewable energy but don’t produce the same output as nuclear or the fossil fuel alternatives. Keeping those solutions in place while leaning on Nuclear instead of coal would do wonders for our planet.
Well, RIP Earth I guess. Nuclear was our last chance to truly stave off climate change (I know it's not an overnight fix, the fact that this turn has been decades in the making was probably our doom already).
Fuck sheep shutting down safe, clean, cheap energy.
Fuck fearmongering.
You need to educate people, especially those living near power plants. There are so many safety measures in nuclear power plants these days, real incidents can't happen.
I think this video does a good job of explaining the arguments for and against closing existing nuclear power plants. It discusses the competing views of prioritizing local environment vs global climate, replacing nuclear generation vs fossil fuel plants, and public risk perception vs historic risk.
I have always seen myself as pro-nuclear, but realize that prohibitive costs and public perception preclude the use of nuclear generation in the United States for the long term. I do not think it is feasible to build new nuclear plants in the US, though for other places (like Europe and China) I see it as a great opportunity to eliminate fossil fuel plants while developing more complex renewable energy infrastructure.
As for existing nuclear plants, I don't see a reason to close them ahead of schedule. They provide stable, safe, carbon-free baseline power to the grid that is not affected by the weather or (for the most part) supply chain issues. Replacing operational nuclear plants early diverts valuable renewable resources that could have been used to replace coal, oil, or natural gas plants instead; on top of that, many nuclear stations are replaced by natural gas plants, which is a step backward in carbon emissions.