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.