Letter to the Editor: Doing Decommissioning Right for Indian Point

To the Editor:

The decommissioning of Indian Point nuclear power plant done correctly is one of the centerpieces of my campaign platform. On January 9th of this year, Governor Cuomo announced that an agreement had been reached between New York State and Entergy Nuclear regarding the closure of the Indian Point. Both units of the plant had been operating without licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and in addition, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation had declined to grant required Hudson River water permits. When given the opportunity to make the cooling system improvements necessary for relicensing, Entergy decided that the costs were too high and a shutdown was their preferred course of action. In addition to closing Indian Point, Entergy has announced the closure or sell-off of all their nuclear plants in the Northeast.

The Unit 2 Reactor is scheduled to close by April of 2020 and the Unit 3 Reactor will close by April of 2021.

Rather than address the many local issues that the shutdowns will cause, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, with the support of John Testa and other Republicans, chose to launch a personal lawsuit against the State and Entergy. Acting State Supreme Court Justice Helen M. Blackwood has ruled that the lawsuit will be tried by a state judge in Westchester County.

The question isn’t whether or not the Indian Point power plant is going to close, the question is how we ensure a safe closure, protect the employees from job loss, and replace the funds Entergy pays to the local governments and school district. Those are issues I've given a lot of thought to - and if elected I would look forward to working with both the state and the local Task Forces.

In addition to seeking the safest possible process for decommissioning the plant my position is that:

• All of the current workers should be retained by the company. They are the ones who are familiar with the plant and it's processes and should be the ones in charge of the anticipated 14 year or so of work that will be required for a safe and orderly closure. Any workers that have not reached retirement age by the end of that process should be assure of other jobs in our communities.
• The local and county governments and school district should receive Federal 'host community' payments for storing the onsite nuclear waste material. There is currently no functional repository for that waste and no allowable method for shipping it offsite.
• Entergy, the plant's owner, should not be allowed to sell it to a company whose only business is decommissioning nuclear plants. To do so would give the purchasing company the incentive to carry out the process as cheaply as possible - not as safely as possible.

At the very least Mr. Astorino’s frivolous lawsuit will be tried in Westchester County. It is the people of Westchester that will be most directly impacted by the shutdown and have been most gravely threatened by the numerous safety and environmental violations that have occurred at the facility.

The good news is we have four years to mitigate all of these issues with the plant. The bad news is that our current county executive Rob Astorino and my opponent John Testa are wasting time and money with this senseless lawsuit. That's something I hope voters will consider when they go to the polls on November 7th.
Approaching decommissioning securely, safely, and smartly, this is what I'm planning to do.

Sincerely,

Nancy Vann