For Indian Point 3, in the event of a meltdown with breach of containment, CRAC-2 estimates 50,000 "peak early fatalities," 167,000 "peak early injuries," 14,000 "cancer deaths" and a cost in property damage at $314 billion.
Compounding the problem of the Indian Point plants being old--consider driving a 60 year-old car on a high-speed Interstate--they are at the intersection of the Ramapo and Stamford earthquake faults. As a 2008 study by seismologists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found: "Indian Point is situated at the intersection of the two most striking linear features marking the seismicity and also in the midst of a large population that is at risk in case of an accident. This is clearly one of the least favorable sites in our study area from an earthquake hazard and risk perspective."
"This aging dilapidated facility has endless problems leaking radioactive chemicals, oil and PCB's into the Hudson River. It's unconscionable to permit the continued operation of Indian Point," said Susan Hito-Shapiro, an environmental attorney and member of the leadership council of the Indian point Safe Energy Coalition.
Further, she pointed out this week, Indian Point has been described as "the most attractive terrorist target" in the U.S. because of its proximity to New York City and it also being seven miles from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Indeed, there was consideration by the 9/11 terrorists of crashing into Indian Point. Both captured jets flew over the Indian Point nuclear station before striking the World Trade Center minutes later.
And she described it as "outrageous" that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved an evacuation plan for Indian Point "although it would never work" in the event of an major accident at the plants considering the millions of people who stand to be affected.
The key to New York State's strategy to shut down Indian Point is the denial by the state's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to give Entergy a "water use permit" to let it continue to send many hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day from the nuclear plants into the Hudson River.
"We need to make sure DEC stays strong," says Hito-Shapiro.
In light of the historic, reckless, scandalous weakness of the federal government when it comes to Indian Point--and the nuclear power plants of other utilities--strong state action is most necessary.
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