BUCHANAN, N.Y. -- A 40-year battle to close the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant came to an end last week, as the last of its three reactors was permanently shut down.

Indian Point was once the single largest source of electric power in the state, but its presence on the banks of the Hudson River, just 25 miles north of New York City, has long raised safety and environmental concerns.

The first reactor shut down in 1974; the second just last year.

Liz Moran, environmental policy director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, called the final closure "a huge victory."

"This plant posed a major threat to New Yorkers," Moran contended. "Especially the over 19 million New Yorkers who live in or work in the New York metropolitan area."

Critics of the closure warned the loss of a carbon-free source of power will increase New York's reliance on natural gas at a time when the state is seeking to cut emissions from fossil fuels.

But Moran pointed out renewable energy sources are coming online at a rapid pace, including offshore wind farms capable of generating 4,300 megawatts of power, twice the capacity of Indian Point. They're scheduled to go into operation in 2024.

"There've been a number of studies that have found that this is very feasible to replace Indian Point with renewable energy," Moran explained. "We just need the political will to do it."

New York has an ambitious plan to transition to 70% renewable energy by the end of this decade.

And Moran noted the potential dangers of Indian Point and other nuclear power plants don't end when they stop producing electricity. The nuclear waste left behind will remain highly radioactive for thousands of years.

"So, the decommissioning of this plant is going to have to be closely monitored to make sure that it is done in a safe fashion that protects public health and protects the environment," Moran asserted.

Decommissioning is expected to take at least 12 years and cost $2.3 billion.

Federal officials are in Idaho to discuss where to store nuclear waste. The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent federal agency, is holding two meetings in Idaho Falls. The first is today and will feature a workshop on the siting of radioactive waste facilities. Wednesday's board meeting will focus on the Energy Department's consent-based siting process for waste.

Don Hancock, the nuclear waste program director for the Southwest Research and Information Center, said the consent-based process fell by the wayside during the Trump administration but has become a focus again under President Biden.

"They're starting off saying we think we want to come up with a consent-based process to see if we can store spent fuel for some considerable period of time," he explained. "But people would be consenting to temporary storage as opposed to permanent disposal."

Hancock added the Obama administration decided the siting process should prioritize temporary sites rather than long-term geological storage and the Biden administration has picked up there. The public can be involved in both Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board's meetings this week, either in person or online.

Hancock noted that Boise State University was selected by the Energy Department to receive $2 million dollars to study consent-based siting. However, he added it is not clear what that means for Idaho.

"An important question that I think people of Idaho would want to know is does Boise State and their partners think that what they're doing now and what they could be doing down the line is having Idaho consent to being this kind of interim storage site?," he said.

Boise State University did not respond to a request for comment by the deadline for this story.


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This summer's "Oppenheimer" movie will shine a light on development of the first nuclear weapons, but for many in southern New Mexico it is another reminder of the federal government's failure to recognize negative health effects their families have endured for generations.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist and director of New Mexico's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, led the research and development of the first nuclear weapons tested in the southern part of the state.

Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, said residents were unknowingly exposed to radiation from fallout, resulting in illness, emotional and financial distress, and death.

"The Manhattan Project and the Trinity bomb changed New Mexico forever," Cordova pointed out. "Instantaneously we became basically a sacrifice zone, and the people of New Mexico have never been part of the narrative."

Cordova participated in a weekend panel discussion following a sold-out showing of the film in Santa Fe, along with Charles Oppenheimer, grandson of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Cordova noted she has lost count of the number of relatives in New Mexico who have died from cancer, many within 10 years of the nuclear bomb testing.

"In my own family, I'm the fourth generation to have cancer since 1945," Cordova explained. "And now I have a 23-year-old niece who's the fifth generation, and my family's not unique. It's the story we hear all across the southern part of New Mexico, where people lived as close as 12 miles to the test site."

Cordova has spent the past 18 years trying to get areas of New Mexico included in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which provides money to people who were harmed, either from uranium mining or the atomic tests. The Act currently only offers compensation to "downwinders" who live in Arizona, Nevada and Utah.

"There was an admission of guilt on the part of the government when they established the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act but it didn't go far enough," Cordova contended. "Including New Mexico, there's a lot of the American West that received regular fallout from those tests."


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Concerns are growing in the west about nuclear waste transportation.

On Tuesday, the Snake River Alliance is holding a webinar on these concerns, heightened by the potential of a temporary waste facility opening in New Mexico.

Kevin Kamps is the radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear. He said these fears are combined with the recent train derailment of toxic waste in Ohio.

He said the federal government and nuclear power industry are rushing to create the New Mexico temporary waste facility.

"These dumps that are proposed are called consolidated interim storage facilities, which means it's only temporary and the waste will have to move again," said Kamps. "So it's really wrongheaded. It's going to automatically double transportation risks."

In May, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license for the temporary waste site in New Mexico.

The Biden administration says nuclear power is a key component for the country's clean energy future. However, state officials in New Mexico have voiced their opposition to the facility.

Nuclear waste also is a concern in Idaho. Experiments are starting on new nuclear reactor designs such as small modular reactors at the Idaho National Laboratory.

However, Kamps pointed out that recent research found these SMRs generate two to 30 times the amount of radioactive waste as traditional nuclear reactors.

"So another downside of all this SMR talk," said Kamps, "which unfortunately Idaho is on the cutting edge of."

Kamps said he believes the country is living on borrowed time when it comes to the potential for disaster from nuclear power.

"We really should be transitioning into a renewable energy economy in this country," said Kamps, "which is much safer, much more secure and actually much more cost effective than nuclear power."




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