By MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times
As I reported in Tuesday’s paper, opponents of the Indian Point nuclear power plant assert that its two reactors can be retired in the next few years because alternatives exist that pose less risk and would not cost substantially more. New York City’s position, however, is that retiring the reactors would raise prices sharply and reduce reliability.
So, what would those alternatives be? New York’s electricity infrastructure resembles its highway system, prone to saturation. Once in a while, though, new transmission capacity does gets added.
This month, in a little-noticed development, the Bayonne Energy Center finished a 6.75-mile cable that runs from Bayonne, N.J., under the Kill Van Kull, through Upper New York Bay to Gowanus Bay and then to Con Edison’s Gowanus substation. The company plans to build a 512-megawatt gas-fired power station on the New Jersey side.
In May, work began on a 660-megawatt cable that would run eight miles from Ridgefield, N.J., to Pier 92 in Manhattan, and then to Con Edison’s 49th Street substation. Six miles of it will be underwater.
Opponents are also counting on projects like the Champlain-Hudson Express, a 1,000-megawatt submarine line that would connect Hydro Quebec with New York City. The two Indian Point reactors, in Westchester County, N.Y., produce a bit over 2,000 megawatts.
Opponents of Indian Point commissioned a study from the research and consulting firm Synapse Energy Economics. Synapse acknowledged that the effect of closing Indian Point was hard to predict because it depends partly on the overall level of electricity demand in the New York City area.
Opponents of Indian Point commissioned a study from the research and consulting firm Synapse Energy Economics. Synapse acknowledged that the effect of closing Indian Point was hard to predict because it depends partly on the overall level of electricity demand in the New York City area.
Synapse said that part of the portfolio of alternatives should be a high level of improvement in energy efficiency, effectively cutting demand by 1.5 percent from what it would be otherwise.
Under Gov. Eliot Spitzer, New York State committed itself to reducing its energy use to 15 percent below “business as usual” by 2015. At the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups that sponsored the Synapse study, Ashok Gupta, an energy expert, acknowledged that the state is “not on target” to meet the Spitzer goal, let alone a tougher one. But he pointed out that some smaller states like Vermont had achieved such reductions.
The feasibility study is part of a broader effort by Mr. Gupta’s group and Riverkeeper, the study’s other sponsor, to position themselves for license renewal hearings on Indian Point that are expected to start in the spring. At the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Scott Burnell, a spokesman, said, “I can’t remember any license renewal proceeding that has been this involved.”
The runners-up in terms of controversy are probably Oyster Creek in New Jersey, which eventually won a 20-year extension but whose owners promised to shut it in 2020 in a deal with state environmental regulators, and Pilgrim in Plymouth, Mass., a renewal process that is still under way.
So far the commission has not turned down any applications for license renewals, although it has instructed some applicants to do more work.
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