Riverkeeper, NYS DEC pressure Entergy to install cooling towers

As reported by Riverkeeper, State of New York hearings regarding Entergy's Indian Point nuclear power plant's impacts on the Hudson River are not going well for the troubled company. Entergy proposes installing wedgewire screens to mitigate its impacts on animal life in the Hudson River, but does not own the five acres of river bottom it would need for the proposal. Building the wedgewire screens would destroy river bottom habitat in its own right, and could re-suspend radioactivity from river bottom sediment which Indian Point put there in the first place.

Both Riverkeeper and the State of New York's Department of Environmental Conservation are urging that Entergy should have to install cooling towers, if it carries through with its plans to run the two reactors for 60, rather than 40, years. Hearings on that demand are coming up this fall.

Indian Point withdraws massive amounts of water from the Hudson to cool its reactor operations, then discharges destructive quantities of waste heat into the river. Such operations have significant impacts on the Hudson River's natural ecosystem and its fisheries.