Catherine skopic, Chair
Carl Lundgren, Secretary-Treasurer
Founded: March 11th, 2011
Our Mission: To Shut Down Indian Point Now!
Email: SDIPN.NY@gmail.com
Twitter: @sdipn
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sdipn
Shut Down Indian Point Now NYC (www.SDIPN.info) is a grassroots organization, composed of individuals working in New York City to shut down Entergy’s Indian Point Nuclear Plant and against the use of nuclear power in the US and around the world.
FUKUSHIMA: Wake-Up Call for a New Energy Policy Based on Renewables and Conservation
The earthquake and tsunami that caused the unprecedentedly severe nuclear power plant disaster, and melt-down, in Fukushima, Japan have served as a wake-up call for people in America, and around the world.
The lessons of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima bring home the point that contrary to the bland assurances of industry and government officials, nuclear power can never be made safe. In particular, masses of people are becoming aware of the madness of maintaining a potential Fukushima-on-the Hudson located within 24 miles of NY City, where more than 20 million people live within 50 miles of the Indian Point nuclear plant, and where a melt-down would create an unimaginably horrific health, environmental, social, and economic catastrophe for the region, for the country, and for the planet.
There are insoluble problems not only with the safe operation of nuclear power plants, but with the entire nuclear fuel cycle from mining and milling to disposal of the radioactive nuclear waste that is the end-product of nuclear power operations, and which remains hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.
Furthermore, empirical evidence now demonstrates, or strongly suggests, the feasibility of providing for our region’s and the country’s energy needs entirely with renewables (solar, wind, wave, and geothermal), and with conservation; and without raising the costs of electricity. This is now within reach, inasmuch as renewable technologies are COMPETITIVE with nuclear power (given a level economic playing field), since NUCLEAR IS INHERENTLY UNCOMPETITIVE, and would cease to exist as a power source without heavy government subsidies.
Earth Calling Obama on Energy Policy and Climate Change: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way!
Other countries have taken the lead in migrating off nuclear and towards renewable energy economies. Switzerland, which has 40% nuclear power, and Germany which has 23% nuclear, are demonstrating that it is not only possible , but an actuality to migrate off nuclear power and to renewable energy NOW, and to do so at a modest cost.
Indian Point’s Egregious History of Problems with Health Hazards, Safety Violations, Accidents, and Pollution
• Indian Point has had numerous (relatively minor, but potentially serious) accidents;
• Indian Point has a documented history of unresolved safety violations that persist to the present day;
• There is a documented increase in cancer and leukemia rates in the vicinity of all nuclear power plants, and in particular in the vicinity of Indian Point;
• It has been documented that infant mortality rates drop sharply in the neighborhood of nuclear power plants when they are shut down;
• Indian Point is a major polluter of the Hudson River. Heated (radioactive) waste water emitted from the plant annually kills billions of fish (and other aquatic life forms) in the Hudson.
Unacceptable Risks Associated with Indian Point
• Indian Point is located on, or near three earthquake faults. Officially, the plant is built to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 6.1 on the Richter scale. Seismologists predict a realistic prospect of an earthquake that is many hundreds of times more powerful than the design parameters of the plant allow, and therefore a quake far more powerful than the plant could be expected to survive.
• Experts compare Indian Point to an old jalopy which has outlived its useful period of Serviceability; and therefore a plant which needs to be take out of service sooner rather than later.
• The consequences of a Class 9 nuclear accident at Indian Point are truly unimaginably catastrophic simply in terms of the health consequences to millions of residents, and the social, environmental, and economic DISRUPTION that such an accident would cause.
• The sheer impossibility of evacuating millions of residents from the 50-mile radius of the plant, and the resulting uninhabitable “dead zone” within many miles of the plant (as is the case with Chernobyl and Fukushima PRESENTLY) should be THE OVERRIDING CONSIDERATION ABOVE ALL OTHERS.
Economic Feasibility of Shutting Down Indian Point Now
• It has been reliably documented that Con Edison and the NYPA service area (essentially NY City and Westchester County) obtain, on average, LESS THAN 3% of their annual CONTRACTED ELECTRIC POWER SUPPLY from Indian Point!
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