Equity In Every Drop: Series One

Series one includes six episodes focused on the issues and advocacy priorities of our Climate and Safe Energy campaign.

Stay tuned! New monthly episodes will be posted here and anywhere you get your podcasts. Click “Subscribe” in the episode widget above to access links to popular podcast apps.

Thank you for listening, sharing, and supporting our mission to ensure everyone’s right to clean water. Together, we demand equity in every drop.

---

Transcript

Waterkeeper Ep. 5

[00:00:00] Thomas Hynes: Welcome back to equity in every drop. Today we are discussing nuclear power, specifically the former Indian Point plant in upstate New York, the threats it posed, and the advocates who fought for years to close this ticking time bomb.

Joining us today are Victoria Leung, staff attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper, and Richard Webster, former legal director and current outside counsel for Hudson Riverkeeper. Thank you both so much for being with us today. 

Richard Webster: Great. Thanks for having us. 

Victoria Leung: Thank you

Thomas Hynes: Absolutely. 

This is so great to meet both of you.

So this is going to color a lot of this conversation. I grew up in the area only became aware of Indian point and the threat it posed to me as someone who lived within a hundred miles of it. And have lived in the area for the last 15 years. So this is an episode that’s a little bit closer to home for me broadcasting here in lower Manhattan.

So let’s start with the beginning, how and when did Indian point nuclear power plant operate? 

Richard Webster: So I don’t remember the exact day that it opened, but it was around. I remember at the time of relicensing. That was, went [00:01:00] beyond the 40 years, so it must be around maybe 55 years ago that it opened certainly it was designed, there was a plant actually there was a plant on the site, so Indian Point opened before that it was determined to be unsafe, and so it rapidly closed, and then Indian Points 2 and 3 were built.

And they operated, one was operated by Con Ed and the other was operated, I think, by NIPA and then eventually they were acquired by Entergy. 

Thomas Hynes: That’s pretty scary. So there was a first one that was built that was quickly determined to be unsafe 50 years ago 

Richard Webster: yeah I think around them maybe 45 years ago. Yeah And there’s some interesting questions about why did they build it so close to New York City? Obviously because they knew that it was close to New York City, even when they built it and one of the thoughts it was a backwards logic that it was If they build it close to New York City, then it must be safe. 

Thomas Hynes: Sorry. That’s I, that doesn’t really work for me. as someone who lives in new york city that doesn’t really Assuage any of my fears, but [00:02:00] um, okay How quickly did the opposition to this plant begin? Because it seems like when I picked up the story, And clearly I wasn’t as involved in this, but it seems like it was on its way out.

Did the opposition begin right away? 

Richard Webster: As far as I know, Riverkeeper’s opposition started, I think, around 20 years into operation. I’m not sure exactly. But I know that, we became concerned about the open cycle cooling system, which takes billions of gallons of water in and billions of gallons of water out.

And when it’s pulling that water in, it pulls in fish, larvae and other organisms. They then basically get cooked as they go through the system, and then they discharge out the other side. So the initial concern from Riverkeeper’s perspective was the effect on the river. And then Victoria, you want Chiming on some of the other issues that then popped up over the years, more issues then got added to the the overall pot making our concerns ever greater.

Victoria Leung: Yeah, I think some of the main [00:03:00] safety concerns that have popped up over the years are there is a high pressure gas pipeline that runs and crosses edges of the site boundary and both Riverkeeper and community members have raised safety concerns about that gas pipeline running so close to a power plant.

So that if there was a catastrophe at 1 or the other, it would, magnify the issue they would build upon each other. In addition, there has been leaks at the site. Leaks from the spent fuel pool with water that contains radioactive contamination and that’s actually still under the site slowly migrating into the Hudson River.

Nothing’s really been done about that. That’s just sitting and seeping out. There’s been also safety concerns that have been brought up over the years. I believe They stopped operation for a little bit during the time that they were looking at [00:04:00] relicensing because of various safety concerns.

And then now with decommissioning, we have lots of concerns. In addition to the safety and the environmental, concerns are worried about how to deal with suspend fuel that’s on site with the wastewater that’s on site. All that nuclear waste has to go somewhere, but our country hasn’t figured out a plan for how to deal with that.

In addition, with the closure of Indian Point, this is something that Riverkeeper hasn’t been the lead on, but there’s Big just transition issues Indian point, whether we like it or not, was a huge economic driver of the area. Huge employer for those towns. And now that’s closed, the local communities have to grapple with transitioning there. Economic base and making sure that they [00:05:00] have strong, stable funding for their schools for all the services that they provide to the community. 

Richard Webster: And then we were talking about 9 11 and the impact of 9 11. And I think that made everybody realize that terrorists are looking for innovative ways to create havoc.

And although the, domes, whether the reactions inside these pressure domes, those are quite well protected from airborne attack the spent fuel pools where the fuel used to be actually are not well protected at all. I’m happy to say the fuel is now out of those spent fuel pools, but during operation, those spent fuel pools were very densely packed.

With a very large inventory of very deadly radionuclides. And an attack on the spent fuel pool could have resulted in a catastrophic fire. And after 9 11, people started to realize that this Sort of airborne attack had not been taken into account by the industry or the regulator. And what were we going to do about it?

Thomas Hynes: Yeah. [00:06:00] I just to throw my own personal experience into this. I grew up in the suburbs of here north of the city just like the old power plant. And I was my last year of college on September 11th and I remember immediately it becoming a storyline locally that saying, Oh, there was this other huge target.

Really? Did that speed up the efforts to decommission it? Because it seems like the opposition was very well established at that point. 

Richard Webster: I think, I should emphasize that this wasn’t an effort by Riverkeeper alone to close this plant, right?

 There were a lot of different groups. We were working with and different groups had different primary concerns. And basically what happened was that we gradually, it was like a snowball, it picked up momentum over time, picked up the amount of people over time.

Riverkeeper was in the lead from the opposition side on the relicensing proceeding, which happens before the NRC, and also on the the permit proceeding about what’s called the speedies permit, the permit that allows [00:07:00] them to discharge the cooling water. And so Riverkeeper was pushing very hard in those areas.

But we also had lots of other groups pushing in the political sphere as well, and in the, on the press sphere. All of these concerns came together, and I think definitely 9 11 was a big concern for people in the area. I think it added to, those people who are concerned about the river, those people who are concerned about safety.

I should mention the safety problems that we highlighted were, significant. They were recurring problems. With safety that the industry was saying, don’t worry, we’ve got it all under control, but then repeatedly they didn’t have it under control. And I think that’s another thing that undermined the case for Indian point is the industry was.

Entergy really was always overplaying their hand, reassuring people they had things under control when they didn’t. And in some ways the industry is its own worst enemy by trying to paint the rosiest picture possible, rather than being transparent about what’s actually happening.

So the other participant in these formal [00:08:00] proceedings was the state, right? And so the state actually opposed the relicensing of Indian Point. Really quite effectively alongside Riverkeeper and they also were obviously instrumental in the permit proceeding and those two proceedings really worked together To open up the space where the closure of indian point could even be considered.

Thomas Hynes: Yeah It seems like there’s a lot of reasons to close it and A lot of people fighting for that.

I want to just step back a little bit And Talk a little bit more about the effects on the river. And when I was reading up on the issue, I had heard that, correct me if I’m wrong, that the plant took in 2 billion gallons of water a day. Is that possible?

Richard Webster: I think that’s right. Yeah. 

Thomas Hynes: And that’s twice the amount of water that New York City uses every day. Use a ton of water. 

Richard Webster: It comes, as I say, they 

draw it in, it’s used to cool the steam and then it goes back out again. I should say that there is a biological survey of the river, [00:09:00] which is ongoing.

And actually we push very hard to ensure this survey was actually paid for. By the Indian Point plant operator because they knew at the time that it was going to have an effect on the river. And I should also say that Indian point originally was supposed to be designed with a closed cycle cooling system, but it never got built the closed cycle cooling system because it would be more expensive.

Thomas Hynes: Can you explain? So what they did was, is that they were taking water from the river and putting it right back in the river, heated and killing these fish. 

 Explain to me what the closed loop system, is that what you call it?

Richard Webster: So the closed loop system is what where you see these cooling towers.

It’s where the water goes up through a cooling tower, it cools down the cooling tower, and it cycles back and that actually cuts down about 95 percent of the intake and discharge because you just recirculate the water round and round. There was a huge fight about that, which I’m old enough to remember where Entergy basically didn’t want to do it.

They proposed all sorts of different alternatives, [00:10:00] none of which was as effective. And In the end, the state was about to require some quite stringent cooling technologies, which would have made the plant harder to operate. I think that that was a linchpin. That’s an important linchpin In these proceedings for anybody that’s working on a nuclear reactor is the discharge permit, the clean water discharge permit is a critical part of these reactor operations and it’s handled generally by either the state environmental agency, in this case DEC or the EPA, and that they’re a lot more sympathetic than the NRC, which is the nuclear regulatory commission.

And That has proved to be a good angle if you have some issues with a nuclear power plant, and I should say, by the way, no, Riverkeeper is not anti nuclear, we’re not trying to close nuclear power plants because we don’t like nuclear power the question is what impacts Is it having and how is it being run?

And I personally avoid discussions about nuclear power as a kind of a concept. Obviously as a concept is great, right? Concept you take you split atoms, you get energy, you boil some water [00:11:00] and then you create some electricity, right?

The problem is the few little problems along the way, which is, obviously spent fuel is a problem to waste, is a problem. But then you have all these other ancillary issues. How do you cool the plant? How do you maintain the plant? How old can it be before it really should shut down and so forth?

It’s not that we’re anti nuclear. We just felt like Indian Point was the wrong plant. In the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Thomas Hynes: Yeah, it definitely seems like the wrong place. And Victoria, I can go to you on this. What was the impact on the community? Tens of millions of people live within the evacuation zone.

Is that right? Something like 20 million people. Live in this area.

Victoria: that sounds right to me. I don’t know the exact number off the top of my head. So I think there is a very strong, group of activists that live in the area, I think, while there are some in the community that really celebrated the plan that depended on it for employment, um, for its economic stability.

There was [00:12:00] also a big push from the community members that raise these safety concerns. Um, Indian point. It’s very close to the elementary school of. Buchanan. I know parents have raised concerns about the safety, the possible effects of radiation exposure to the Children in the area, also concerns about drinking water, communities use the Hudson for recreation. How does that impact, their health if they’re allow their families to, be exposed to the water. There’s many, many viewpoints in the area, but I think there’s always been, people that have been pushing to make Indian points safer and ensure that their communities, 

Victoria Leung: while they are getting the economic benefit, they’re not paying for it with their own health. 

Richard Webster: Right, and I should say on community impact, so one thing that came up some time ago, I think this is under George [00:13:00] Pataki. Or something called the WIT report, which was a report by an expert on the effectiveness of the evacuation plan. And basically it found that the evacuation plan for Indian Point would be ineffective. And it’s not that surprising, because you’re right up against the river, and so you only have one way to go.

And very hard to get that number of people out from that area fast enough. Because most of the roads run, as you probably know, north south. You really want to go east west, and there’s not a lot of road capacity. And of course the other problem was, and actually I was involved in doing something in the formal proceeding on this which is that the provisions for people that don’t own cars were very poor.

Basically you had to go to a bus stop that was literally said evacuation bus stop, right? And then while everybody else was told, go inside and shelter inside, if you don’t have a car, you have to go and stand in the open at this bus stop. and then there is, of course, a large prison, within 10 miles, and basically there was no plan to evacuate the prison.

And we showed that the prisoners ready [00:14:00] to to be evacuated was, would be a very slow process, because they have to shackle them and all this kind of stuff. Basically those prisoners didn’t have a plan and overall, The evacuation plan was at best, I think an exercise in hope rather than an exercise in actual evacuation.

And so that caused a lot of concern at the time, and I think they never really could fix it. 

Victoria Leung: And one more piece. On the evacuation plan, because there’s also the pipeline in the area, there’s actually conflicting actions that you should take in the case of a pipeline emergency versus a nuclear emergency and The community members have raised a lot of concern about being properly informed about what to do.

Do they stay inside? Do they try to leave the area with the movement of the spent fuel from the spent fuel pools to the dry cast storage. They’ve actually gotten rid of those evacuation protocols. But I know there are still concerns from community members that [00:15:00] believe there needs to be more emergency planning in place even though the risk is highly reduced.

That does not mean there is no risk with the spent fuel. On site. 

Thomas Hynes: And if you see me shaking my head, I’m not disagreeing with anything. Either of you are saying I’m just shocked flabbergasted and scared. So this is, it’s just, I keep coming back to the ticking time bomb.

This just felt such a dangerous thing to have so close to the biggest, most densely populated area in the country and one of the most densely populated areas in the world. And New York city would have been affected by this. I saw some things that it was a 25 mile radius or a 50 mile radius, but with 50 miles, New York city, 90 percent of the city is in that.

So that’s pretty terrifying. Yeah, 

Richard Webster: So generally the NRC evacuation zone I think was 25 miles But when the spent fuel pool that was based on a reactor accident, right? Whereas the spent fuel pool accidents can go a lot further [00:16:00] and during Fukushima The NRC actually put out a 50 mile evacuation for US citizens so the 50 mile radius is not inconceivable although unlikely, but I think overall you’re putting a lot of faith in your systems by citing it so close to a very large City and within a very dense population zone 

Thomas Hynes: that’s what I really can’t get away from. It’s not like New York City sprung up overnight. I mean it sprung up over the 19th century, but how This is not a question for either view. I’m just shocked by how this decision was made the whatever it was but Maybe this is a place to ask this question because I and I’ll admit I was surprised to hear that you’re not against nuclear energy in the abstract.

What are safe conditions for nuclear power? What is an ideal situation for that? I could probably guess based on some of the things you’ve said, but, let me know. 

Richard Webster: I don’t think we really know. If you show us a plant, we can evaluate it, right?

 First of all, the idea that like, we, [00:17:00] climate change is obviously a huge issue, right? And we need to figure out ways of generating power with very low carbon emissions. And no doubt nuclear power achieves that, but there are other technologies that achieve that too.

And basically the idea is to select some combination of the lowest cost and the lowest impact technology. And at the moment, it’s a moot point for nuclear power because, Every nuclear power plant’s been built in the U. S. recently has gone massively over budget, massively over time, so we know those aren’t low cost and we know they aren’t very fast, so the moment there isn’t a piece of nuclear technology on the table that would beat wind and solar.

But in the future, if it comes along, I think there are some people and I, I respect these people who believe that nuclear power is like just inherently a bad thing. And there’s some people of course who think it’s the greatest thing ever. I guess we’re saying we’re in the middle somewhere where if it’s better than everything else, then sure.

But show me a plan and, let’s [00:18:00] look at it. Is it better to build a wind farm? Is it better to build a solar farm? Is it better to build a nuclear power plant?

Victoria Leung: to add a note that Riverkeeper we’re really focused on environmental impacts to the Hudson river and the Hudson watershed. We aren’t renewable energy experts. We aren’t energy experts. We don’t engage on energy policy except for where it, Is intersecting with our interests when it’s actually or proposed to impact the river. So that’s really where our expertise is and where we get engaged. 

Thomas Hynes: Yeah. So I want to talk more about that. And I just want to add 1 thing to what Richard said about wind and solar powers that there’s never been a nuclear meltdown solar plant, right? And it may not be up to speed, but the risks seem very low

let’s talk a little bit more about the effects on the river. So I have a background in urban wildlife. Before I worked at Waterkeeper Alliance, I was very interested in the animals of New York City and then also obviously the Hudson River is [00:19:00] such a huge part of that and the striped bass and all the other fish.

And even now we have some more marine mammals coming back, which is so exciting. What Effect did this plant have on marine biodiversity? I think I have some sense of it, but I would love to hear from you both about how this affected this ecosystem.

Richard Webster: So big picture, what we know about the Hudson is that the water quality has recovered. Dramatically but the fish stocks have not, and so there are things that are, inhibiting the. re emergence of the fish stocks and the replacement of the fish stocks.

And the thought is that this plant is one of the reasons that the fish were not. are regenerating. Now we’ve had a couple of years. We have surveys. I don’t think we have any definitive evidence yet of dramatic recovery, but we are certainly we know that it’s going to help recovery,.

The question is how much? Victoria, anything else on that? 

Victoria Leung: Yeah. And while the plant was operational, all that cooling system that Richard mentioned it would [00:20:00] kill about a 1Billion fish and fish larvae a a year by pulling them in through the system. The fish and fish larvae get entrained on the various screens.

They get killed by the temperature of the water. So it made a big impact when it was operational. 

Thomas Hynes: Yeah. A billion fish a year is nothing to sneeze at. And correct me if I’m wrong on this and on anything, but I was doing some research on this before we spoke and, Am I correct in saying that the plant had designed this intake so that it wouldn’t, or they claimed that it wouldn’t that it could keep fish out?

Is that correct? That was one of their claims? 

Richard Webster: Some of them get trapped on the screen and die on the screen and some of them go through and get cooked in the plant and they had a series of attempts to retrofit Technology to minimize that effect, but none of them were very effective.

Thomas Hynes: Well, I mean, a billion fish a year doesn’t sound very effective. Um,

Can we talk a little bit more about I think we understand [00:21:00] the threats that this posed both to the river, both the communities, both to just, catastrophic events and everything tied in there.

What was the process of getting this plant decommissioned? And we can talk about the process and maybe later we can talk about where we are now. 

Richard Webster: I think, as we said, there was a, there’s a building head of steam, if you like, Which was thinking this plant is not a great idea.

 Nuclear plants were initially licensed for 40 years, right? So when it was coming up towards its I think about five years from the end of operation, it had to apply for a new license. And when it applies for a new license, then, which is a process called re licensing, then both citizen groups and the state can intervene in that proceeding and try to show, problems with its application for re licensing.

And so both Riverkeeper, actually Riverkeeper the state and Clearwater, another environmental group on the Hudson intervened in that process. So that was one sort of formal thing that was going on. [00:22:00] Parallel to that, it’s Clean Water Act permit was coming up for renewal and so there was a hearing going on its Clean Water Act permit, which was an odyssey.

I think that one went on for, I think over 10 years decision was being made. And then there were various other decisions being made, the coastal consistency determination, so basically what happened was The state, I would say, was pulling the strings in every possible way to make life difficult for Entergy to get their license renewal. And also, 

Victoria: difficult And expensive.

Richard Webster: yeah, inexpensive, and then also the state was ensuring, the state really decided that this open cycle cooling system was inadequate. And they needed to replace it with something much better. And basically, between the state And Entergy decided that this is just getting too expensive for us.

We’d rather just close the plant down. And so we then ended up settling with the state, with Entergy, to agree to close the plant within [00:23:00] what I think was a three year closure period from the date the closure agreement was made. And that provided some time for people to adjust, obviously it was a bit of a shock to the local community, but They had been banking on this plant basically being there forever.

And so it, caused a huge amount of consternation that the plant was going to close because those communities were relying on the plant, not just for jobs. But also for tax revenues, 

Thomas Hynes: right. Victoria mentioned that it’s not just the jobs, right? It’s the teacher’s jobs. It’s the fire department. It’s not flipping a switch. 

Richard Webster: and cynically speaking, that’s kind of how they, how these plants embed themselves into the community, right? Um, to make it harder , for them to close. And so there was a three year closure agreement. And then after the planet closed, then the issue came up who’s going to decommission it?

And then the question was would N2G decommission it or would they get somebody else to decommission it? And N2G basically said, we could wait under the regulations, we’re allowed to wait [00:24:00] 60 years before we decommission. But if you’d like it done faster, we could sell the plant to these other guys who will do it faster.

So that was the kind of background. For this company, Holtech coming in and promising to do it faster.

Victoria Leung: And there was also a lot of opposition to the Holtech at the time. Riverkeeper was one of the voices. This company has a history of cutting corners, of lying. It has been convicted of bribery of government officials 

We felt that it wasn’t a reliable company, a trustworthy company to take over this task where there are so many safety risks that are implicated. And that actually set the framework for our current. Decommissioning process and how community members and how Riverkeeper gets involved because there was another round of negotiations on another round of legal challenges, [00:25:00] because both At the federal level and the state level needed to approve this license transfer to Holtec, the company that owns Indian Point.

With these legal challenges that opened the door for some negotiations and the state, Entity Holtech, Riverkeeper and a few other groups were able to negotiate some of the strongest say oversight provisions in the country. It’s really a landmark deal where we got the decommissioning oversight board, which brings together all the state agencies and local municipalities and experts. Riverkeeper, we are represented by Richard on the decommissioning oversight board. There is a technical advisor Dave Lockbaum on the board and they meet every. I believe it’s like roughly every quarter, to make sure the decommissioning is On track, and it’s also a great forum for [00:26:00] community members.

One of the goals we had was to have a space where the community can learn about what is going on with decommissioning and also provide input to provide public comment on this. And while there are still some kinks to be worked out the DOB has. Given us that space to work with.

Thomas Hynes: So to that end I originally wanted to ask this is I’ll just ask the first question first.

Where are we with the decommissioning? And then I guess the second part, is what risks remain, to health, civilization, water quality. I mean, however you want to take that

Richard Webster: Okay. We’ve made substantial progress, right? Obviously the reactor’s shut down, so there’s no fuel in the reactor itself.

And then they’ve moved all the spent fuel from the spent fuel pools. To what’s called dry cast storage, which is basically where they put the fuel into a canister, which sits in the middle of a big cask and sits on a, just on a concrete pad, Victoria and I have been out and look at those concrete pads.

There’s [00:27:00] very, some very big canisters sitting on some concrete pads. The good thing about that is that it divides the fuel up into separate compartments. And so even if you could have a problem with one compartment, it’s very unlikely to spread to the next compartment. We still have some issues by the way with the potential for terrorist attack but, nothing is perfect but we’ve got a long way down the track in terms of safety.

And it doesn’t mean to say we, we have to lower our guard but it just means that if something goes wrong, it won’t be as bad as it would have been in the past as it had been right now, but there’s a lot left to do, right? So one of the issues is. The groundwater is Victoria saying that this fuel has leaked out of the spent fuel pools.

And that water contains, cobalt, strontium other heavy radionuclides which can be absorbed into the body. So we have to make sure those Substances don’t get to people, and we’d also like to make sure that they don’t get into the Hudson River, and so that’s one of the things we’re working on.

[00:28:00] Then there’s the question of radioactive water. In the past, the plant, when it produced radioactive water, just basically treated it, but then, for the heavy radionuclides, but then dumped it into the river. There’s been a bill passed in the, and signed, which outlaws that practice. But there are generally, there are these federal laws which say states have very little ability to regulate nuclear plants and even decommissioning nuclear plants.

And basically, the decommissioning entity, Holtec, is suing New York State trying to suggest that law is preempted by federal law. Now obviously we disagree with that position but unfortunately we are in a position where the federal law is not favorable to the state. The state has to work at it to regulate nuclear Facilities.

The question is, with that radioactive water on the site, if it doesn’t get put into the river, where’s it going to go? The radionuclide that’s left in the water is tritium. It has a half life of 12. [00:29:00] 6 years, so our position is let’s just store it for a while.

Let’s hope that some good technology comes up that allows us to separate the tritium from the water, which is very hard to do because there’s no chemical difference between tritium and . hydrogen. And so when it’s in water, H2O, right? So when it’s water, there’s no difference in the water with tritium in it and the water without tritium in it in terms of chemical behavior.

There’s only a difference in terms of weight. And so separation is hard, but not impossible. So our position is that store it, let’s wait, let’s see if better technology comes along. And then if it doesn’t, ultimately we’ll have a lot less activity to discharge. Whole tax position is they wanna discharge it now.

I think they’ve used this as an excuse to delay the decommissioning. I personally and anybody wants to go look at the tapes of the decommissioning oversight board will see me expressing some skepticism about whole tax position. That basically they’ve used that, that law as an excuse. To delay. Are not that law. Let’s put it that way. 

Thomas Hynes: Yeah. But [00:30:00] are they profit? Is this about their bottom line? 

Victoria Leung: It is. Yeah. I smell it. It’s very much completely about their bottom line. So Holtec they, in addition to owning Indian Point and handling the decommissioning they have various.

So these are subsidiaries or related companies where they develop the technology to the dry cast storage technology, for example. During a lot of the decommissioning, they can contract basically to themselves and they get paid for running the decommissioning and they also get paid as the contractor that does the task.

In addition Indian Point, while it was in operation, it built up this decommissioning trust fund. This is a precautionary trust fund that is required by the NRC. It’s actually required for all nuclear power plants so that the operator keeps this money. So when the plant closes, we know we have enough funds to.

fully decommission the site. This is really important [00:31:00] because decommissioning is a really expensive process. And in the past, there have been plants where they have run out of money 

And then you’re just stuck. So with Holtec, they’re hoping to decommission it. On Indian point as  cheap as possible using the trust fund.

So all of this is coming out of this pot of money. I’m not holding its own pockets and they can take home whatever is left. 

Thomas Hynes: Oh, my God. It’s 

Richard Webster: by the way, we’re not talking about small sums of money here. I 2. 6 billion dollars. Okay. 

Thomas Hynes: Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Webster: One of the thoughts I have is that why are they delaying? I think that reason they’re delaying is likely to be that they basically are allowed to invest this money. I think they’ve got 2. 1 billion left. They’re allowed to invest this money and see if it can grow faster than the cost of decommissioning.

Thomas Hynes: Okay. That’s this is crazy. And this is You know and again, I’m not an expert on this at all. So definitely correct me. But a lot of this waste and a lot of these materials are going to be a problem [00:32:00] for 100, years, right? This is something that has to be done, right?

And this is not going away anytime soon. 

It’s all right. 

Richard Webster: you’re right, really, you’re talking about the spent fuel.

Thomas Hynes: yeah sure. Yeah. 

Richard Webster: That’s that remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. And we’ve been supposedly coming up with a solution for this for basically ever since the nuclear reactors invented, we’ve been about to invent some technology to deal with the spent fuel but we haven’t yet.

Now, that was in 1941, I think, or 42 we’ve spent quite a while not solving the problem we’re going to spend a long time not solving the problems of the future and that what it means is, effectively, that the reactor communities become the place where the waste sits, and it sits basically On the spent fuel pad at the moment, and it probably sit there for, , I’m certainly not gonna be alive to watch it move out of the spent fuel pad.

I can say that. And one of the problems is that the system to check for corrosion of the canisters that the spent fuel is in is totally [00:33:00] inadequate. They basically assume no corrosion for 20 years. And then they assume we’re going to take the oldest cast.

We’re going to monitor it once every five years. And if it’s showing no problems, then the other cast don’t have a problem either. 

Victoria Leung: I just want to emphasize this. This is a single cask That’s on the pad that and that’s the only one they look at once every five years. 

Thomas Hynes: you would think that with this kind of Thread that you would check them all this is not Like baking muffins and you’re like, i’ll just put a toothpick in one like I bet they’re right wow, that’s yeah, it’s 

Richard Webster: For those out there who are thinking about challenging nuclear power plants, it’s a challenging business because, the regulator is extremely friendly to the industry, and they really allow the industry to get away with the minimum possible. And the way we managed to make some progress on these issues, despite the fact that the federal government is basically designed to give the industry everything it wants. . Is by going through the state and we [00:34:00] were able to get the state to exert maximum jurisdiction and through that process, we got some of the things we wanted.

We didn’t get everything we wanted, but we got some of the things that we want. 

Thomas Hynes: And it sounds like to, this is so obvious in the larger waterkeeper movement, but I just think to anybody listening out there you want to protest a dirty nuclear power plant or something. The timing is really important too.

And I hear this just from other waterkeepers across the world, or especially around the country rather is when the permits come up, right? that’s the time to strike. 

It really absolutely feels just from the outside looking in it does seem like a huge success with that is still a real problem, but it also feels like a blueprint for other sites. This roadmap for how to do it. 

Richard Webster: Yeah actually, I should say that working for other groups in New Jersey, we also did a similar approach on another reactor called Oyster Creek. Where we challenged the Clean Water Act permit at the same time as the license renewal and that one also ended up [00:35:00] closing.

 I think that because the Clean Water Act permit is normally in the state domain, that’s the one to really pay attention to. And then what I found is that the relicensing proceeding, it generally gives you a lot of useful information.

Because. Nuclear reactors, if you’re in a community around a nuclear reactor, they’re opaque. It’s hard to find out what’s going on. And there aren’t many good tools to really both find out what’s going on and that affect what’s going on.

I’ve even had, US senators write to the NRC saying what’s going on. And they basically. Are told, none of your business. 

Thomas Hynes: That’s such an interesting posture to take with the nuclear power plant in your backyard.

So this is been really such a fascinating conversation and just again, as a resident of the blast zone or whatever of the impact zone, I thank you just personally.

But Victoria, just tell me again, like, where are we now? Where are we with this process?

Victoria Leung: We hit a big milestone on the past year where all the spent fuel has been transferred. Of 

the spent fuel pools [00:36:00] into those dry cast storage, this greatly reduced risk, as we mentioned before up until recently, a Holtech had actually been making good progress on the decommissioning, they had been able to take down some of the buildings. 

on the site with some problems. They didn’t have the proper dust controls and that was raised and hopefully remedied for going forward, but they had been making good progress. Recently with the challenges to the Disposal of wastewater that we’ve mentioned that tritiated water. And also, I think, economic factors, the high inflation.

At the moment, Holtech has announced that it plans eight year delay in decommissioning. Richard said it. speculation, it’s possible that they want to invest that money longer while 

interest rates are high and cost of decommissioning is low so that they can come out of this whole process [00:37:00] with more dollars in their pocket. 

That’s something that we’re pushing really hard against. We want them to keep up the speed. We want them to really move forward with the groundwater. They Don’t plan on addressing the contaminated groundwater that’s seeping into the Hudson until after they’re done taking down all the buildings on the site.

We don’t agree with that. They can start putting in different measures. Actually groundwater has been well monitored over the years. So we think that they should have A good amount of data to start looking at different solutions for it.

So that’s something that Riverkeeper is really going to be focused on coming up.

Richard Webster: Yeah, maybe I can just mention, I remember somebody at Riverkeeper, I wasn’t at Riverkeeper when we started opposing, because I’m not quite that old. But somebody told me that when Riverkeeper started opposing Indian Point, trying to get it closed, somebody said it’s impossible to get a nuclear power plant closed.

So I think that kind of sets the background, which is, the people that came before us at Riverkeeper did wonderful things [00:38:00] on this project. We were able to continue it. And we have lots of problems left as you hear. Every time we win something, we have a problem as a result of that win.

But we’ve scored some wins. We’ve made some progress. And I think, we’re very happy that we have and we conscious that, having helped close this plant We carry a responsibility to try to ensure that the decommissioning is done safely, effectively, but also that there’s a transition made for the local towns so that they can actually, get through this transition period and for the workers, because we can’t, just go around closing things and then not taking responsibility for what we do.

And we need to take that responsibility and We need to ensure that people understand that we know this was a huge deal for all concern. And we want to make sure that it comes out in the best way it can, and it won’t always be perfect, but we can at least do the best we can.

Thomas Hynes: And I think that’s so interesting the way you put that, because this [00:39:00] is One example of a thing that needs to be replicated in a number of different venues, right? Like we need to rethink our transportation fleet. We need to rethink our power. I keep coming back to coal country and coal power plants and coal mining, right?

We can’t leave people behind, but we can’t continue in these terrible practices either. So how do we do that? And I also just want to say you touched on something here about how when this process began the chorus was saying, this is impossible. And you recognize that there are still so many problems inherent with this that, that are gonna continue to exist past our lifetimes.

But I think it’s really important to recognize these victories and recognize when the impossible actually becomes possible, because I think that’s really important as we face. A myriad of other challenges. And yeah, it’s personally, I find it very inspiring. So thank you again for your work on this.

Richard Webster: Good. Thank you.

Thomas Hynes:  Thank you so much for being with us today. It’s been terrifying, enlightening and also very enjoyable to speak with both of you. Victoria [00:40:00] Richard, thank you so much for being here today. 

 Victoria Leung:Thank you so much for having us. It was a pleasure.