Rally: Indian Point Tritium Leaks

Media Advisory – 2/23/16

What – Rally: Indian Point Tritium Leaks – Close Indian Point

Question – “Mayor de Blasio – Is Our Water Safe?”

When – Thursday, March 3, 2016,         12:00 Noon – 1:00 PM

Where – Chambers & Centre St; NE of City Hall; #4, #5, #6, E, A, #1-3 Trains

Sponsoring Organization – Shut Down Indian Point Now   www.sdipn.net / 347-640-3660 / www.facebook.com/sdipn / @sdipn

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The winds of change are blowing

Wind power, an alternative, clean, green energy source is having a very good week.

On Monday, the #3 Reactor at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan NY shutdown after IP personnel reported seeing arcing on a transmission line tower. A mandatory event report was sent to the NRC as required (see report – click on event #51606). The incident was dutifully covered by the local press, although they all seemed to be reprinting the same AP report, with the same lack of any real information or any probing questions. However, this headline in Bloomberg Business caught our attention: “Wind Rescues New York Power After Nuclear Plant Shutdown” (see article). You would have been hard pressed to find it by googling., which might have been due to a lack of keywords or tags. None-the-less, there it was.

Did We Almost Lose New York?

by Harvey Wasserman

Smoke seen rising from the Indian Point Energy Center on Saturday, May 9.       (Photo: Ricky Flores/AP)

For the third time in a decade a major fire/explosion has ripped apart a transformer at the Indian Point reactor complex.

News reports have taken great care to emphasize that the accident happened in the “non nuclear” segment of the plant.

Ironically, the disaster spewed oil into the Hudson River, infecting it with a toxic sheen that carried downstream for miles. Entergy, the nuke’s owner, denies there were PCBs in this transformer.

It also denies numerous studies showing serious radioactive health impacts on people throughout the region.

You can choose whether you want to believe the company in either case.

But PCBs were definitely spread by the last IP transformer fire. They re-poisoned a precious liquid lifeline where activists have spent decades dealing with PCBs previously dumped in by General Electric, which designed the reactors at Fukushima.

Meanwhile, as always, the nuclear industry hit the automatic play button to assure us all that that there was “no danger” to the public and “no harmful release” of radiation.

But what do we really know about what happened and could have happened this time around?

Resolution to close Indian Point introduced into NYC Council

SDIPN officers Ann Eagan (l) and John Reynolds (r, holding sign) in the council chamber of City Hall witnessing introduction of resolution to close Indian Point.

Dear Friends,

Today is a day to celebrate as we turn the corner in our efforts to shut down Indian Point, our own Fukushima on the Hudson! The new Chair of the NYC Committee on Environmental Protection, Donovan Richards, introduced Resolution 0694-2015 into the City Council together with Councilmembers Stephen Levin and Helen Rosenthal. The resolution calls on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission not to relicense  the Indian Point reactors! (click here for text). Now we have to get a whole bunch of our 51 NYC Council members to co-sponsor the resolution, to make sure it will pass successfully. Please call your NYC Council member and ask him or her to sign on as a co-sponsor. If you’re in the district of Richards, Levin or Rosenthal, call them and thank them, and ask how you can help to insure the successful passage of Resolution 0694-2015.  To look up your Council member and contact info go to: http://council.nyc.gov/html/members/members.shtml and enter your address.

On a personal note, I started working for this resolution after 911, in 2001, when the NY Times, and later the 911 Commission, reported that Al Qaeda was considering Indian Point as a target, when it decided instead to attack the World Trade towers!! Together with Code Pink, we marched around City Hall with a marching band and pink feather boas to attract attention and met with the head of the environmental committee at that time, Gennaro, who said he would put our Close Indian Point  resolution forward but nothing happened.  In 2011, after Fukushima, we tried again with Council member Mark- Viverito who also said she would move it forward but it disappeared into a black hole. Our new City Council is very progressive. They marched at the head of the 400,000 strong People’s Climate March this past fall. Donovan Richards represents the people of Far Rockaway who were underwater during hurricane Sandy. He and his new colleagues on the Council really “get it.” They know we have to move to a sustainable NYC, 100% powered by sun, wind, geothermal, small scale hydro, coupled with efficiency and conservation by 2030 as other cities are doing. We can do it too! There are already existing solutions. For example, CUNY has done a solar rooftop study that shows we can get 40% of our peak power from solar paneled rooftops in NYC.  Other studies show the huge potential of wind energy and the enormous savings from insulating our buildings properly, using magnitudes less fuel for heating and cooling—using “negawatts” as Amory Lovins has named those savings from efficiency.

PLEASE TAKE ACTION TODAY!   Call your Council member to sponsor Res. No. 0694-2015 and spread the word. Ask your friends and neighbors to call too! And look for additional action alerts coming your way, including a big sign-on letter for organizations. Thanks for your help.

Alice Slater

PS:  for some reason, Mayor DiBlasio, in issuing his report for One NYC http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/html/home/home.shtml, on how to move forward towards sustainability, forgot to delete Bloomberg’s touting of nuclear power and keeping Indian Point pointed like a dagger at NYC.   We have to get to DiBlasio as well and ask him to amend One NYC so that it really works for people without relying on toxic nuclear power, threatening the very survival of our city and our health and well being.