Shut down Indian Point

As an ironworker, you end up working in some interesting places. Indian Point nuclear plant, about an hour north of the city was one of them. It was a particularly bad year on the heels of the financial crisis of 2008, and I had been bouncing around from job to job. Most jobs, you show up, have a brief safety training and get to work. Not at a nuclear power plant. Two weeks of safety training and orientation, a 500—question multiple choice mental stability test, drug tests and FBI background check are required. 

Some sitting through Entergy’s corporate sell on the benefits of nuclear energy is required — it supplies 25 percent of the downstate area’s power and, while recognizing the potential dangers, management said, it complies strictly with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s operating guidelines. The presentation wasn’t as over the top as I expected, although I was informed about the natural existence of radiation all around us. It’s in bananas after all I was told, and who doesn’t like bananas? I do. Two weeks later, training completed, and somewhat to my disappointment FBI background check cleared, I was OK’d to go to work. 

Though Indian Point is one of the original nuclear power plants built in the U.S., you have this expectation that given the dangers, the plant would reflect the up-to-date clean energy image that nuclear proponents like to project. I was shocked at how decrepit the facility seemed. Paint peeling on the walls, rusty pipes, water damage. The complexity of the plant was confounding too. Passageways here and there, and of course restricted areas. It did not inspire confidence in the state-of-the art image the nuclear industry likes to promote. So I was not entirely surprised when on Feb. 5, the company announced alarming levels of  radioactive tritium in the groundwater. Levels up to 65,000 percent higher than normal. The New York Daily News reported, “The leak occurred after a drain overflowed during a maintenance exercise while workers were transferring water containing high levels of radioactive contamination.”