Beyond Nuclear press release on Indian Point closure

Beyond Nuclear issued a press release on April 28, 2020 commenting on what now should happen to the Indian Point Unit 2 reactor after it closes on April 30. Some excerpts:

Beyond Nuclear argues that, with the Indian Point Unit 2 nuclear reactor in New York set to close down permanently, the opportunity again arises to analyze real time aged materials strategically harvested from systems, structures and components during decommissioning.

Effectively, closed reactors should be autopsied as a requirement of the NRC license extension review process.

“An autopsy must become an essential and required feature of the decommissioning of closed reactors,” said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear. 

“It is increasingly risky to run aging atomic reactors, originally licensed to operate at most for 40 years, for as long as 80 years, without knowing how the reactors’ harsh operational environment is affecting reliable operations and safety margins in components that, should they fail, could jeopardize the health and safety of millions of Americans,” Gunter said.

“There is already a scientifically acknowledged but critically missing link between the decommissioning of aging, uneconomical nuclear power plants and the nuclear industry’s aggressive extension of operating licenses of the country’s dwindling nuclear power fleet,” Gunter added.

A laboratory analysis of aged materials would scientifically inform projected reactor safety margins for the current reactor operations and reactor license extensions. These materials can be strategically sampled from hundreds of miles of electrical cable, concrete containments and reactor pressure vessel walls. Read the full press release. (Headline photo,©David M. Grossman, shows a visit with Shut Down Indian Point Now!, Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, and Westchester County Citizens Awareness Network activists, from Japanese activists, including Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Kyodo, Hokkaido anti-nuclear activists, and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe survivors (Sachiko Sato, and her children), in the fall of 2011. The visit was co-organized by Beyond Nuclear, whose staffers are also in the photo. The Fukushima disaster had begun just six months earlier. The Indian Point nuclear power plant is visible in the background on the Hudson River.)