Shuttering of New York facility raises awkward climate crisis questions as gas – not renewables – fills gap in power generation
When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.
Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.
The plant was from 1956, nearing a century of age by now. Old plants like this one explode in their running costs and typically accumulate more and more maintenance incidences each year, ultimately becoming a security risk.
The main problem though is that countries betting on nuclear power do fuck all with renewables, which makes it unsurprising that you have to resort to other means to fill potential gaps to replace them. In this case they could’ve built renewables, or even other nuclear plants, for several decades already in order to replace this ancient one.
Articles & comments like this are basically just paid propaganda pieces by the nuclear lobby.
Calling 68 years ‘nearing a century’ as a comparison is a bit of a stretch.
It is really old in nuclear power plant tech terms and needed to be replaced. A combination of renewable amd nuclear is the way forward, but people treat nuclear safety concerns like they do airplane crashes, acting like the sky is falling even when there are no deaths for years and safety keeps increasing.
But why? There isn’t anything nuclear fills in to cover the cons of renewables. The old model of baseload power being cheap is no longer applicable, and that’s what nuclear is for.
Renewables are not effective everywhere, and while their power can be transmitted over long distances they can have periods of time where they are strained from extreme weather for longer than power storage can handle. Nuclear would be a less environmentally damaging way to cover those gaps compared to fossil fuels in some locations.
I’m thinking vast majority renewable with some nuclear, not like an even balance or anything like that.
They are where people tend to live.
This is how you hybridize things: you line up the pros and cons of each solution, and then use the pros of one to cover the cons of another.
Wind and solar are a good example. The wind is often at a standstill when the sun is brightest, and then wind picks up when the sun is blocked. There are lulls where you have neither, but the good news is that we have plenty of data for that. We can calculate an expected maximum lull for a region, and then add enough storage to cover that plus some more for a safety factor.
Nuclear does not actually help. Its pro is a low marginal cost for sitting at 100% all the time. Its biggest con (since we’re both in agreement that nuclear can be done safely) is high up front cost. Really high. Which means you had better leave it at 100% all the time, or that up front cost isn’t going to amortize well.
What happens when added to a renewable grid is that you hit an opposite problem: the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and combined with nuclear baseload, you now have too much (which causes other problems on the grid). Now you need to do one of three things:
The first two mean economic waste. The third one means you still need storage–but then, why not forget nuclear entirely and use that money to build more storage? And keep in mind, nuclear is expensive as fuck to build. That money can go into a lot of storage.
This winter my home city had a power supply crisis. It was night time (I live in a high latitude so nights last a long time during winter) which meant no solar, and it was -30C, which meant the wind turbines all shut down (they can’t operate when it’s below -30C). The whole province was short of power, only the coal and natural gas plants were keeping the lights on. We dodged rolling blackouts but it was a close thing. Lots of people live here.
Which is perfectly fine. Nuclear power plants can change how much power they’re putting out. It’s not “economic waste”, the term is “load-following power plant” and it’s routine for nuclear power plants.
You’re right that cold winters in northern latitudes present additional system constraints. But that doesn’t mean the renewables + storage strategy is flawed, it means we need more transmission and more storage, and gas backup will linger longer in such areas than it does in warmer areas. We’re still early in the transition and have a ton of low hanging fruit to capture before we need to really focus on the remaining 20%.
Yeah, article just offhand mentions that radioactive material was leaking into the river…
That means there was multiple ongoing leaks between multiple systems that need to be completely separate for safe operation.
If the stacks were still good, they should have replaced the reactor. But if those leaks were ongoing and either weren’t addressed or couldn’t be fixed, then it’s incredibly doubtful any maintenance was being done.
Any nuclear plant that’s leaking radioactive material needs shut down till it’s repaired.
And this one was just in such bad shape it couldn’t be repaired.
Everything can be repaired. It just stops being cost effective at a certain point to do so.
A leaky containment unit isn’t a hole in a bike tire, you can’t just get it patched.
And to get a new one in, you’re going to have to be ripping out other systems and literally knocking down walls.
By “replace the reactor”. I meant containment and primary systems. Secondary system probably didn’t have major issues because it’s basically normal plumbing at that point. But it’s so cheap it would be stupid to not replace it as well.
But the carbon downside to nuclear is the carbon release from the concrete stacks (cloud makers). So even if literally everything else needed to be replaced, it still would have been worth it.
If the stacks were fucked, yeah, it’s not salvageable.
You’d literally be demolishing everything onsite and then building a new one. That’s not even ship of Thesius level “repair”. Everything would be removed and then you’d start fresh.
Indian Point was water cooled, hence the river water leakage and heating concerns. Water cooled plants don’t have those huge stacks you’re talking about. Those only exist on air cooled plants.
You’re right.
I saw the giant concrete enclosure in the pic and my brain just saw it as a stack.
So yeah, to get the actual containment unit replaced, everything would have to be destroyed and replaced.
Aww man, you were so close to having it figured out. It mentioned that in an off handed way because it left you, the reader, with an impression of what was happening without having to get into the details. Why would they do that? Because said details don’t line up with what you’ve been talking about.
If we look at the NY RiverKeepers website, a source biased towards getting rid of this plant, we find this article: https://www.riverkeeper.org/campaigns/stop-polluters/indian-point/radioactive-waste/radiological-leaks-at-indian-point/
In there is a leak to the radiological events since the plant opened: https://www.riverkeeper.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Indian-Point-Radioactive-Leaks-Sheet.pdf
Oh. No leaking reactors, no leaking primary or secondary cooling systems…most of the problem was with their holding ponds and there were some valve failures.
Now none of that is good but it’s a FAR cry from the “leaking reactor” narrative that you seem to have.
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/10/nyregion/con-ed-to-replace-all-generators-at-indian-point-2-plant.html
It’s paywalled, but that’s what the wiki point to.
If radioactive primary go to SSTG’s then it got to the discharge.
They also had an incident where they intentionally vented radioactive steam to atmosphere, but then a valve got stuck and it took them two days to notice.
That plant was a shit show and had been for decades.
But when you act like you’re acting, most people won’t invest too much time helping you.
Building new nuclear plants isn’t particularly easy when there are environmentalists clamoring to shut them all down and a general public that’s scared of atoms.
Also, don’t accuse articles of being “propaganda” and then call 68 years “nearing a century” to fearmonger for your own view instead.
Coming from the guy claiming people are “scared of atoms”. 🤡
So you agree that hyperbole is uncalled for?
It’s not hyperbole when we’re past 2/3s of a century.
I’m not the only person calling you out on it.
That must certainly mean you’re right! That’s how the internet works after all.
It weakens your claim that it’s not hyperbole, since the meaning of words like that are consensus-based.
Do you seriously think it would make sense for a 68-year-old man to claim that he’s “nearly a century old”? That wouldn’t be misleading?
Good grief. If your little sample size of two people, you included, is enough for you to feed your confirmation bias then go right ahead, but I’m gonna cut this nonsense short as I have really better things to do than holding pointless internet arguments with simpletons who also compare nuclear power plants with humans.
The industry also thinks the problem is regulations. It isn’t. If you have your shit in order, federal regulators have been willing to issue new nuclear plant permits and extend old ones. The actual probably is that the tech is fundamentally unaffordable; nobody wants to buy what they’re selling. SMRs are not likely to fix this, and there doesn’t seem to be any other fission tech on the horizon that would, either.
Two things I think we should do is subsidize reactors for reprocessing old nuclear waste, and put SMRs on ships. There are reasons for both that don’t directly show up on balance sheets.