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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.

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[–] [email protected] 229 points 9 months ago (15 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 54 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago

Oh good info. I am Pro Nuclear and Pro renewable. I think modern reactors have a real place in our future grid, but yeah old leaky reactors we should get rid of.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 9 months ago (62 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago (10 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (12 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 9 months ago (11 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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).

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[–] CancerMancer 11 points 9 months ago (10 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 9 months ago (29 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

As long as they are run by corporations, they will not be well maintained.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 9 months ago (21 children)

You can't claim to be an environmentalist and be anti-nuclear energy at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Hard to imagine how anyone who's concerned about climate change could see shutting down a carbon-free energy source as a "green win".

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (10 children)

There's a legitimate argument that we can't grow our way out of climate change, and the real solution to our emissions problem is degrowth and descaling of our obscene rates of consumption. In that sense, had they been closing the plant with the expectation of drastically reducing energy demand, it might have made sense.

Its not as though nuclear energy produces no waste, just extremely low levels of CO2 waste. But if you're just going to replace energy demand (and continue to grow energy supply) with new coal/gas consumption, who are you fooling except yourselves?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In that sense, had they been closing the plant with the expectation of drastically reducing energy demand, it might have made sense.

I really hate this kind of reasoning. Even if we do manage to reduce our energy consumption, closing the nuclear plant would still be more harmful to the environment because we could have closed fossil fuel plants instead. Unless, of course, we'd manage to reduce energy consumption so much that we wouldn't need any non-renewable energy sources - which I don't think is very realistic assumption. Certainly not realistic enough to make such a gamble on.

The only way closing the nuclear plant would have been beneficial to the environment would be if the act of closing it would have caused a reduction in our energy consumption that is greater than the energy the plant itself was producing (minus some extra energy from fossil fuel plants that take up its "emission budget" to increase their own energy production). Which is also quite unrealistic. I actually think it makes more sense that it achieved the opposite effect, since closing the plant took up activists' effort and environmental publicity, which could have been used to push for reducing consumption instead.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago

So unexpected !

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (13 children)

environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.

That doesn’t sound right, it’s fossil fuel simps that are anti-nuclear

More likely they wanted it to be updated

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Environmentalists have only come around to nuclear in the last half-decade or so. For a long time after 3MI and Chernobyl, nuclear was the devil.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

After Fukushima there was a pretty widespread movement to get rid of nuclear power.

They probably definitely wanted it closed. To bad they didn't guess the likely alternatives that would take its place, an push for that too...

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[–] the_crotch 13 points 9 months ago

One of the biggest environmental groups in the world is vehemently anti nuclear

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/issues/nuclear/

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Fucking anti nuclear dipshits.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

The term environmentalist has so much stupid baggage tied to it.

I’m tired of having to share labels with people who refuse to do anything other than small superficial personal choices. Folks who will baulk at the suggestion of a carbon tax, their energy bills going up, more nuclear plants being built near them or, subsidies and infrastructure for low income people who are seriously hurt by such changes.

This is a systemic problem that requires systemic changes that will fundamentally alter things we take for granted right now. It’s going to suck and it’s going to be hard, there is no easy simple way out.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I see this as a failure to build renewables. Wind and solar and batteries are and were able to solve this, but changing infrastructure costs time, money and skill. The closing of the NPP was foreseeable, so is the climate change.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Their 40 year license with the nuclear regulatory commission ran out and they felt that getting it relicensed was too expensive. Yeah a bunch of folks were hyperbolic about it, but holding a 40 year old reactor to modern standards isn't bad either. It's still economics that is holding nuclear back.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Nuclear power is among the most "green" power sources around. The simple fact that this debate exists shows a lack of education surrounding the whole thing.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The people who wanted it shut down talked about local safety issues like groundwater contamination. Green advocates generally understand that nuclear is better for CO2 and it's dumb to shut them down. Feel like the article is muddying the issue by using 'green' to mean multiple things.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Germany's electric energy emissions steadily went down despite exiting nuclear power because Germany actually invests in renewables.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (9 children)

why the fuck do people still think nulcear energy is bad for the environment? it scales easily enough to displace coal and gas and petrol.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

lets take bets. Was it scheduled decommissioning? i.e. EOL shutdown If so this entire article is kind of redundant. (it still serves a point in bringing awareness but it's still funny)

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Who would think that's a green victory?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Because it was leaking radioactive matter into the river upstream of one of the most densely populated areas in this hemisphere...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

Considering all releases to the environment from the plant, including the Hudson River, for 2010 Entergy calculated an annual dose of about 0.2 millirem whole body and 0.7 millirem to the critical organ. This compares to a normal average yearly dose per person of 620 millirem from background radiation and other sources such as medical tests.

As far as I can see that's not a big deal. Just sounds scary right?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

I'll buy "How can you do the right thing in the wrong way?" for $1000

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