Indian Point 2 closes Thursday. It should not be buried without autopsy

The Indian Point Unit 2 nuclear reactor in New York closes down permanently on April 30. Unit 3 will close a year from now. The closure this week is a moment replete with good news and golden opportunities that should not be wasted.

While other reactors continue to operate, the Indian Point shutdown — along with its predecessors — delivers an essential opportunity; and that is for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to deny any and all license extension requests for existing nuclear power plants without first materially examining the condition of those closing.

The Indian Point reactors have had numerous problems and near-misses. A close look at Unit 2 would inform the safety status of reactors still running — and ought to prompt their shutdown as well, rather than extending operating licenses to 80 years.

In other words, Indian Point 2 should be "autopsied." That would mean a close and detailed technical analysis of actual aged components extracted from Indian Point 2 and the other shuttered reactors as they begin the decommissioning process. This would provide scientific information — as opposed to computer modeled conclusions as is the current practice — about the reactor safety margins at the still operating reactors. In other words, “dead” reactors should be autopsied to shed light on the safety status of the “living”.

Needless to say, such a suggestion has thus far fallen on deaf ears. Neither the NRC nor the economically foundering nuclear industry want to see their flimsy safety margins exposed. They do not want the public to know that so far, and from hereon out, catastrophic accidents are averted by luck rather than precaution. They will continue to bury the bodies whole while the diseased operating fleet keeps right on fissioning, potentially to a fatal outcome. Read the full article on Beyond Nuclear International.