The ongoing disaster in Japan has renewed efforts by activists to shut down the Indian Point Nuclear Complex.
Roughly 20 activists gathered at Union Square on Saturday afternoon to call for the plant to be shut down.
Operators of the plant, which is located 40 miles north of New York City, said their two nuclear reactors are safe from all types of dangers. What happened in Japan won’t happen here, they said.
But some people say Indian Point is a disaster waiting to happen.
“The Indian Point Power Plant is located near the intersection of two earthquake faults. Nuclear energy cannot be safe. Plutonium can contaminate the environment for hundreds of years. Studies show that New York City could not be evacuated in time,” protester Tom Syracuse said.
One person said on a YouTube post that the plant’s frequent siren tests are leading residents to believe that everything in the future could just be a test and not a real emergency.
“If you have to test them so much to see if they work right, how will people react when there’s an actual problem?” the man said.
One of the problems people fear could be an earthquake like the one in Japan.
There are some fault lines near the plant, but geological experts say the chance of a earthquake happening hear are slim.
Some people also worry about the plant being a target for terrorists.
(Source: WCBSTV)
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2 Responses
A bunch of ostrich headed chickens! Just like with the problem in the Gulf of Mexico these tipshim refuse to look at the reason for the problem. In the gulf a MAJOR reason as much oil was “lost” was because all the envirowackos who forced the drilling that far out. In Japan where we won’t know the true extent of the damage for YEARS, the major reason for the problem was not due to the 9.0 earthquake but due to the tsunami’s flooding.
The problem is that these people are staunch anti-nuclear power activists who would like to see nothing less than the world go back to so-hu vavohu.
No. 1: Your fowl remark about opponents of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant misses the point: The Japanese reactors were built to withstand earthquakes, but they could not withstand everything nature can throw at them. The failure of the Japanese plants is not a design or construction failure, it is just the result of human inability to foresee everything that can go wrong. The use of nuclear power is a difficult issue, and name-calling does not advance or raise the utility of the discussion.
The building of a nuclear plant in a population-dense area like New York, particularly at a location where known quake-faults exist, seems unduly risky.