nuclear-news

Yes, I do. I do. It was a confluence of events but they really raked him over the coals. This is a guy who self-admittedly says Fukushima changed how he viewed his job. He was a regulator who worked for a powerful industry and probably didn’t feel like he had a lot of power. Before Fukushima he bought into what the industry line was and what a lot of the NRC members believe, which is that a meltdown like Fukushima couldn’t happen.

Then when Fukushima happened, it changed the way he viewed his job. He became more of an activist chairman. He gathered the staff around him.

Much of what he was proposing wasn’t anything all that radical… He really was just trying to respond to Fukushima, to figure out what happened there and try to make sure it didn’t happen here in the US. Not the tsunami part — but the meltdown. He directed his staff to look closely at Fukushima and come up with recommendations for the NRC, which they did. The rest of the commissioners didn’t like it because — I’m totally convinced of this — they’re too close to the industry and knew it would cost the industry a lot to make the new changes and they weren’t going to do it.

I’m sure there was some real friction there, but the NRC blew it up into a different story, saying that Jaczko was a horrible boss and yelled at people. That he was an angry boss, he kept things from them, and he kept people out of meetings. When that didn’t really stick, the story became that he yelled at women staffers and made them cry. His staff, when he did resign, made this beautiful book for him, because they knew what he had been through and how he was really railroaded out of there.

I got to know him really well — he’s a gentle person, he’s not a tyrant. The NRC painted this picture of him but none of the allegations stuck in the end. The NRC’s Inspector General’s report came back with absolutely nothing on him. He’s unemployed now. ……..

I came out of there [Indian Point Nuclear Station] really, really respecting everyone who worked there and feeling better about it in some ways, but also ultimately feeling this is a dying industry. Especially now, with solar and wind, we don’t need it.

Well, those employees at the plant concerned with safety are literally on the frontlines.

Exactly………

In 2015, Indian Point was denied a permit to continue withdrawing water from the Hudson River, right?

Yes. Basically, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation decided after many years of looking at how the plant abuses the river that Indian Point should not be allowed a water permit because of the impact on the fish population. Water withdrawals just destroy too much fish larvae and disrupt the river’s aquatic life.

Indian Point Movie CLIP – Water (2016) – Documentary

Indian Point uses 1.5 billion gallons of water a day, sucked through the plant from the Hudson River, then spit back out, hotter — another way nuclear power plants affect the environment. Indian Point creates terrible pollution in the river and it’s destroying the river. The plant uses as much water in one day as everyone in New York City uses combined.

So the DEC denied the plant a water permit. It’s a great way to try and shut the plant down because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires plants to have a water permit from the state they operate in in order to get relicensed.

This is precedent-setting, because as far as I’m aware, at no other time has a plant been shut down because a water permit was denied. They haven’t done it yet. That’s why we’re so optimistic in the film, because the water permit denial could be the way the plant gets shut down. There’s a lot of momentum. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York State, and the DEC are not giving up on shutting down the plant.

In the midst of all this, licenses for both reactors ran out, and they haven’t been renewed by the NRC, so Indian Point is operating the reactors without a license. [Indian Point reactors can continue operating without a license during the relicensing process. The plant has experience several difficulties this year, however, including two shutdowns of the Unit 2 reactor since late June.]……..

Indian Point will be theatrically released July 8 in New York at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and on July 22 in Los Angeles, and released on DVD Oct. 25. For more information, visit the Indian Point website. http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/documentary_investigates_nuclear_power_new_york_to_fukushima/