June 8, 2021 • 43 mins
On Friday, April 30, 2021, the Indian Point nuclear power plant permanently closed. Located less than 40 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River, Alec and others worked for decades to shut Indian Point down. In this episode, Alec reminisces with key leaders in the fight: Paul Gallay, Richard Webster, and Joseph Mangano. Paul Gallay is the president of Riverkeeper, an organization dedicated to the health of New York Waterways. Richard Webster is an environmental lawyer at Riverkeeper and formally the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic. Joseph Mangano is the Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. On Friday, April twenty one,
the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant permanently closed down. For
those who've been fighting for this for decades, it's a
moment to pause and breathe a sigh of relief. While
(00:23):
supporters of nuclear power promise affordable, clean energy that's too
cheap to meet her time and again, leaks, accidents, and
the general decay of decades old nuclear power plants create
risks that should keep everyone up at night. My guests
today are activists I'm proud to call cocombatants in the
(00:44):
fight to close Indian Point. Paul Gallet and Richard Webster
work at River Keeper, a nonprofit dedicated to the health
of New York's waterways. Indian Point is on the Hudson River,
less than forty miles north of New York City. Joseph
Mangano is the executive director of the Radiation and Public
(01:05):
Health Project research group. My conversation started with Joe. He's
written dozens of studies and three books on radiations effect
on the body. In the late eighties, many nuclear reactors
existed around the United States. In the world, over a
hundred were here and there were basically no studies being
(01:26):
done on basic issues like what are cancer rates in
nuclear power plants? Right? We know it's generating as toxic chemicals.
We know some is getting into the environment, into people's bodies,
but there were no studies done. There was a need
to be filled here. That's what we've done. And then
when you say no studies done, you meant no modern
studies because the baby to study was in the sixties. Correct, Yes,
(01:48):
such a spectacular study. In the late nineteen fifties, atomic
bombs were being exploded above the ground in the United
States and Soviet Union, uh the total of over four
undred of them, and fallout was was circling around the
globe and getting into the precipitation and thus into the
food chain. People were concerned and two groups of one
(02:09):
of citizens and one of scientists at Washington University in St.
Louis said, we need to find out how much of
this fall it is getting into people's bodies. They are
tougher ways to do it, like autopsies and biopsys, but
this was a very ingenious way to do it. You
wait until the child sheds a baby tooth, the tooth
is donated and the tooth is tested for this chemical
(02:30):
strontium ninety, which is one of a hundred plus chemicals
not found in nature, but only when an atomic bomb
explodes or a nuclear reactor. If I'm not mistaken, it
appears in the first set of teeth of children. They
were looking for atrium levels in the teeth of these children.
That was the daughter element of strontium ninety that was
(02:50):
in the bombs, so high levels of atrium in their teeth.
Mothers were asked to donate their children's first set of teeth,
their baby teeth, and they would study these teeth because
it mimicked calcium, correct in the teeth, that's right. The
body thinks it's calcium, and when it's taken in as
food or water, it goes quickly to the stomach and
(03:11):
quickly to the bloodstream, quickly to the bone and the teeth.
And as the testing went on, the amounts of strom
ninety and the teeth got higher and hired. Kids born
in nineteen sixty three had fifty times the amount of
kids born in ninety as the test started, not fifty
five thousand more. And this study was published in medical
(03:34):
journal articles. The first article has been sent to President
John F. Kennedy where his science advisor and he discussed it,
and the U. S. Senate discussed the test band Treaty.
One of the Washington University faculty, Eric Reece, testified and
he used it to study results as evidence why we
need to ban these tests. And in fact Kennedy did
(03:55):
sign the test band Treaty just a month before he
was killed. You and I our work really takes off
together when we go down to Toms River, New Jersey,
and the facility is called the Oyster Creek Nuclear Facility.
Describe how you first came across the idea that there
was a problem there. Really, the first knowledge I had
of there was some trouble around Oyster Creek was a
(04:18):
cluster of childhood cancers. It starts with the grassroots. Parents
of people who essentially sitting in waiting rooms found out
about each other and their neighbors and so, and kind
of forced the state Health department to do a report,
and all of a sudden they found cancer among children
living in the Toms River area was quite high, and
(04:42):
the Toms River area was sort of a toxic triangle.
If you will there was a plant run by Union Carbide,
what one by Seba Guide and then of course the
nuclear reactor Oyster Creek, and each emitted different types of
pollutants into the environment and into people's bodies. And we
know that children, of course, they're most susceptible to to toxins.
(05:05):
And the issue became not so much wait for the government,
wait for leaders to do something about it, but to
really do a grassroots effort to force change. And I
think that was the same thing with the earlier sat
It was baby to study, you know it was. It
was a bottoms up movement and our efforts were twofold.
(05:26):
We did a number of studies, same with Indian point.
The recipe is the same of cancer rates around this area,
especially after the nuclear plant opened. And then we came
in with our own version of the baby tooth study.
Did Dr Gul said, hey, that that St. Louis study
years ago. It was incredible. Three teeth and it helped
(05:49):
past test ban treaty. Let's do one of our own,
and in places like Oyster Creek, you and I and
others went down and appeal for donations of teeth. We
had them tested in lads and we appeal for the
money to do the testing. Yes, yeah we did. We
did get support from this to state government. Now this
is when Jim McGreevey was governor. To do the test.
We found basically that number one, the levels nearest to
(06:13):
the plant were a lot higher than people living far
from the plant. Number two, as time went on, the
levels are getting higher and higher as the reactor got
older and leaked more. And number three we found a
link with childhood cancer. Just picture a graph with two lines.
One is the trend in Stradia ninety and one is
the trend in childhood cancer and the local area they
look the same. And we found this near Indian Point
(06:36):
and near Brookhaven and Long Island as well, and we
published them in medical journals. That which separates us from
other activist groups for nuclear I I am the author
call author of thirty eight medical journal articles on these
topics in order to give this similar perspective. And then
is we go down to an area where what we're
basically saying is don't extend the license of this operation.
(06:58):
The licenses expired, the licenses have to be renewed. These
things have to be inspected. That's machinery. It wears out.
There's leakage, there's this, there's that, there's problems. All of
these nuclear reactors have to varying degrees. Not all of
them are life threatening catastrophes in the making, but but
many of them have some serious problems. But when we
went down to Oyster Cree, because I want to get
(07:19):
to Indian Point in a minute. But when we went
down to New Jersey, here's a couple of highlights that
I recall. One was Linda Gillick. Linda Gillick was a
woman who became an activist over autism clusters, another soft
tissue ailment, their prostrate breast brain autism clusters in the
Toms River area, that coastal area of New Jersey down
(07:40):
there mimics Long Island with a very narrow lens of
soil Union card. But I believe was putting toxins into
the ground and poorous sandy soil going right into the
water table. Green piece was actually gonna target see bagagis
pipe that they had out into the ocean. They were
dumping resin or something. And Lynda Gillick turns around and
she says to her congressman, I would like some discretionary
(08:03):
funds to do some research into the groundwater and find
out what's in there and what's causing these cancer clusters
here and these other soft tissue clusters like autism. The
moment that the Congressman is going to give her five
million bucks to do this research see Bagogy and Union
Carbide settled the case. And then when all the records sealed,
didn't want anybody to know what's in the ground there,
(08:23):
what they were pumping out into the ocean. They settled
the whole thing. So of the three villains in my
mind who were responsible for the toxicity in that Tom's
River area see Bagogy, Union Carbide. Some people even suspect
that these places are cited where there is cross contamination,
so you can't prosecute them. Some people would argue that
not only are nuclear facilities cited where there's low income
(08:46):
labor who crave these jobs, because some of these guys
are making thirty an hour in a union where our
technicians who were responsible for operating these these facilities. Like
what happened to us when we went to Ocean County
and we're at Ocean County College and we packed the place,
we pack it. I mean they're sitting in the aisles,
and the one guy looks to me. He's out of Steinbeck.
(09:08):
He's a young dad with his wife and two kids,
and he says, you're not here to close the plant,
are you? And I said, no, we're not here to
close the plant. We're here to present you with all
the information and the facts, and you decide if you
want the plant closed. But then we go to those
two guys, the father and son, who were the state
senator and his son was an alderman or whatever they
(09:29):
call them down there in New Jersey, and we asked
him for discretionary money to use for the baby Tooth study,
and they agree to give us the money. And then
Governor Christine Todd Whitman line item vetos those requests that
we get the money to do the baby tooth study,
that there was ever a shill for the nuclear industry.
God it was her. Talk to me now about the
(09:51):
work you've done specifically related to Indian Point. Indian Point was,
in addition to Oys to Creak, another one of our
major prior ease because of its proximity to New York City,
I mean, the most densely populated area of the country,
meant the greatest health risks, so we focus a lot
of our work on those two plants. Indian Point is
(10:12):
located thirty five miles north of Times Square. It's on
the Hudson River, which is quite close. Even though years
ago there were numerous proposals to build nuclear reactors, not
just around New York City, but in New York City.
Let's build one below Central Park, below Roosevelt Island, right
across the East River from the u. N. Let's build
(10:34):
an island just off Coney Island, build reactors. These all
made the New York Times. These were actual ideas. None
of them came through, but the closest one was Indian Point,
which opened in nineteen three reactors. One was a small
one that closed in nineteen seventy four, but there were
two much larger ones built in the mid nineteen seventies,
and those are the ones we we focused on. The
(10:56):
way we approached any point was sort of two ways.
The burden of proof was on us to show that
there was not just radiation being released and entering the body,
but to show that there was harm. The releases were easy,
taking um data that the industry is required to report
every year, and the Indpoint was one of the highest
(11:17):
amounts of radiation in the seventies and nineties into the air.
Number two was the baby Tooth study. We appealed to
people to donate teeth and we collected five teeth near
Indian Point. We found the strontium ninety levels higher than
elsewhere in New York State. And again the similar patterns
(11:39):
with child cancer. And then finally, the litany of cancer
statistics dress cancers higher, child cancer is higher. The biggest
one is thyroid cancer, which is not one of the
high profile cancer. It's usually treatable, although it's a horrible
experience ba CANNA. In the nineteen seventies, when these two
(12:02):
big reactors are opening, the rate in the four county
area within twenty miles of New Point was two below
the US and by the year two thousand, fifty five
percent higher. And that's where where it is today. I mean,
instead of fifty cases a year in the fourth it's
like over four cases. In emergency circumstances like a possible
(12:22):
meltdown or a leak or whatever, where there's contamination and
the public is exposed on a larger scale, don't they
issue like iodine or something for people to consume to
to prevent thyroid cancer. The thyroid is very vulnerable to radiation. Yes, yes,
iodine goes directly to the thyroid glands all right where
it kills and in your cells. And yes, one of
(12:43):
the ways that are used to reduce the effects of
a meltdown would be to take this what they call
potassium iodide, which sort of coats the thyroid gland and
protects it from iodone. All along, they've never copped to
the fact that there was a be radiation emitted from
these facilities on a daily basis. Am I correct, they have,
(13:05):
but their slogan is too low to be harmful. Officials
new they couldn't operated without allowing at least some of
this highly toxic radio activity to be released into the environment.
So they said what they called permissible limits and took
the big giant step of saying that permissible limits means
(13:28):
they are safe, they don't harm people. It's like a
doctor's telling a patient, well, you spoke five cigarettes today,
so let's below the permisible limits and there's no health
rents are your You know your wife smokes, but you don't,
so you're okay. No, all radiation is harmful at all
levels and you know, a lot of the discussion about
a place like Indian Point was about potential harm from
(13:50):
a meltdown or if radioactive waste were at least somehow.
We dealt with actual cases of cancer, We dealt with
actual deaths from the actual releases that you actually went
into people's bodies, into their baby teeth. And we also
feel that it probably resulted in the greatest hostility from
(14:11):
the nuclear industry being pointed at us. We had evidence,
and they didn't like it one bit. Well, they wanted
an industry that evolved from a process of bomb making
to end the war, and they're saying in the wake
of the war, they're saying, hey man, these guys are
our partners and making armaments to defend our country, so
let's give them a little bit of a break. They
(14:32):
would like to take these reactors and put them in
hundreds of sites around the country, and these things are
gonna boil water and you're gonna have steam turbines. It's
going to be, you know the famous quote, too cheap
to meter. And let's throw these guys a bone. Let's
let him make a little money on the side. And
you know, you realize that's always been the fight, which
this is about money. These companies, whether it's geor who
(14:55):
would you say the dominant power corporate wise in nuclear
technology far the too biggest funds where g E and Westinghouse.
G E and Westinghouse made almost of the reactors, and
they're like, hey, man, you know we're making money here.
Get out of the way. We're not hurting anybody, and
so they claimed. So tell people what happened recently at
Indian Point. Indian Point, but the two reactors reached their
(15:16):
forty year license and applied for an extension from the
federal government of twenty additional years. And you know, reactors
weren't supposed to last more than forty years, but with
no reactors being built, they hatched this idea to keep
it going. A number of the citizen groups against Indian
(15:36):
Point took on the license extension, and they took it
to court and legal actions, and finally a deal was
worked out where the reactors continued to run until last
year and this year, but no more closed forever, which
leaves the hundred mile radius around New York City with
(15:57):
zero operating nuclear reactors where at one time there was
supposed to be many. Joe Man Gano is the executive
director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. The dangers
of nuclear power are sometimes only apparent in the aftermath
of disasters three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chair NOBIL in
(16:20):
the Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japan. For more in depth
conversation on the challenges of nuclear power, listened to my
conversation with Gregory Yasco. He became Chair of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission just before the Fukushima disaster. While in office,
he tried to tackle the persistent question of where to
(16:41):
store radioactive waste in a lot of ways. The best
alternative is probably to leave it where it is, you
know it really, I mean there are some places where
you don't want to keep it, you know, the probably
Indian Point, which is close to New York City. Um
so some of the fuel you want to move, you
want to get it into maybe another location, you think,
for for from an engineer ring standpoint, from a physics standpoint,
it's better to leave it there. Yeah, I think it
(17:03):
is right now. I mean, were certain transporting it is dangerous.
Transporting it adds a risk, and we just we don't
have any place to put it here. More of my
conversation with Gregory Jasco at Here's the Thing dot Org.
After the break, Richard Webster, Riverkeepers legal director, joins Joe
Mangano to explain the logistics involved in the fight to
(17:25):
close Indian Points. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Here's the Thing. When they say the Earth needs a
good lawyer, Richard Webster is who they have in mind.
(17:48):
Richard works at Riverkeeper and before becoming an attorney, he
was a hydrologist and an environmental scientist. But in order
to close Indian Point you had to know what we're
up against, and she was the owner at the end.
Niper built in the point. Niper New York Power Authority,
so it's a public company, and actually Connor built in
(18:10):
your point too. Basically, just to go all the way
back to the start. Nuclear plants to build them is
incredibly risky. They have a tradition of being away over
budget and way behind schedule. So the only people that
can really afford to build nuclear plants are either public
corporations or public utilities. But then the problem came that
(18:32):
they weren't operating them very efficiently in the sense that
the run times were not very high, so there has
a sense that if you're into a private company, they
will increase the run times, which they did. By run times,
you mean how long their online and active and producing
power exactly, so that the availability went up from about
I think seal which you can make the difference between
(18:54):
the reactor making money or the reactor losing money. What
experience shows is that it's hard to keep a reactor
maintained in the first place, and it's doubly hard if
you don't want to come offline when you detect problems. So,
for example, an Indian point, they had a problem with
the reactor lid and how well it fitted, and repeatedly
(19:16):
what they found was that there was leakage around the
top of the reactor lid. Every outage they found this leakage,
but they didn't stop the reactor in the middle to
investigate this leakage because they wanted the production. And that's
what you see repeatedly. Davis Bessie was the most egregious
example of this, where cooling water actually eight all the
(19:36):
way through the reactor head, which was about six inches
of steel. The only thing left holding the pressurized water
in the reactor together was half in layer of stainless steel.
They refused to take that offline four weeks and got
very close actually to a meltdown there. So that's one
problem in the nuclear industry is there's a lot of
(19:57):
pressure for production and that tends to lead to undermining
of maintenance and safety. Another example I'll give you is
the battle bolts at Indian Point. When they finally measured
the battle bolts, they found that over half of them
were defective, but they didn't then take a new point
three offline and measure that one. They let that run
for another year. And then when they measured the battle
(20:18):
bolts there, which is baffle bolts, by the way, the
things that kind of hold the inside of the reactor together,
they found that over seventy percent of those are defective.
So people who say, oh, you know, nuclear plants that
they're pretty safe are too complacent. We haven't seen any
major nuclear disaster apart from t m I here yet,
But just because we got lucky so far doesn't mean
(20:40):
to say we shouldn't get smart. What happened to t
m t M I was operator arm That could obviously
happen again, but the chance of operator probably goes down
or stays the same more or less over time. The
thing that concerns me is that as the reactors get older,
the margin between what's exceptional and what's unacceptable get smaller
and smaller as you have corrosion fatigue and all these phenomena.
(21:02):
And I don't think the industry is doing a very
good job at managing these phenomena. They're just basically hoping
and chancing it. You know, we saw that at Oyster
Creek where the secondary pressure vessel had been corroding and
points was half as thick as it started off. It
started off about an inch and a half thick and
at points it was point seven inches thick. But the
industry was saying excellent. There was saying, oh no, it's okay,
(21:23):
it's stopped corroding. We promise, and therefore we don't need
to do any more measurements for twenty years. I mean,
that's just wishful thinking. And explained to people how we
have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which of course was the
precursor was the Atomic Energy Commission, and the NRC is
there presumably to protect the interests of the American people.
(21:44):
How would you evaluate how good of a job they're
doing in that Department. Well, I've been to a lot
of meetings with NRC personnel, and you know, they're generally
nice people, and I think they're generally competent engineers. But
I think there's a fundamental problem with the agency. And
I think my best anecdote this was all the time
as own meeting in New Jersey and a guy stood
up from the back and said, you guys at the NLC,
(22:05):
you're taking taxpayers money and you should be protecting the taxpayers.
The n l C. You guys stood up and said,
actually funded by industry, so don't worry about it. That
was illustrative to me. That is that accurate? Yes? Yes, Now,
what was the a e C completely funded by the government.
Did they replace the a C with the n RC
(22:27):
to put the industry in charge of its own regulation? Joe,
do you have an answer? Yeah, I think the a
C was government funded, but definitely the NRC is ninety
funded by industry fees. Energy is supposed to be a
regulator and not to promote nuclear power, which is what
the a e C was doing to help sell this
(22:47):
project to the American people, right, they kept promoting it.
That was right. To go back another step, it all
comes out of Atoms for Peace, right. The original idea
was to show we hadn't spend all this money just
creating a nuclear bomb, we also created something useful. So
that's where the a C came in. And then there
was a concern that the a C, because it had
to promote nuclear power, couldn't really be an effective safety regulator,
(23:09):
so they formed the NRC. But I do think there
was some deliberate shenanigans in the setup of the NRC,
because the NARC was designed to be rigidly independent of politics,
and so that's why the industry largely funds and r C.
And it also stands as what's for an independent agency
with like five commissioners, which are normally three from the
president's party and two from the other party. But they've
(23:30):
been steadfastly pro industry. So basically, the NRC is one
of the very few agencies where a senator could write
the letter asking him a reasonable question and they basically
say get lost. And in fact, I found that's the
most effective way to get a senator on your side,
you know, because when you complain to a senator, oh
you know, the NRC won't tell me. This, won't tell
me that. Then the Senator says, I'll soon find that out.
(23:51):
Write some a letter, and they basically right back saying, sorry,
we're not going to tell you. By I want to
ask you, Richard Webster, win Napor in cooperation, I guess
we're Carnet or whatever they build these facilities, what is
the path and what is the reasoning why they pass
into the hands of companies like Energy? When does that
happen and why? So that happened around twenty years ago,
and the theory was Entergy has a fleet of nuclear actors,
(24:14):
so they don't just own one or two nuclear actors.
They get They owned I think twenty at the time,
and so they gain knowledge and because they have a fleet,
they were able to maintain them more effectively and run
them more effectively. So that was the theory, and they
did keep the reactor running for longer. But I question
whether they ran it as safely and what was your opinion?
(24:34):
Didn't I be and carn Ed overall run it more
safely than Entergy do? Yes, because the production pressure wasn't
there right, so they were content to go offline when
they had a lower expectation. I think actually they had
a higher expectation about safety. I mean, it's very interesting.
You meet a lot of people in the nuclear industry
come from the nuclear Navy, and they always say, well,
(24:54):
you know, like people wouldn't go on a submarine with
a nuclear actor if the nuclear actors weren't safe. The
difference is in the Navy, they're very procedurally orientated and
they don't have a pressure to produce all the time.
They can take the thing offline. When you're in a
commercial situation, there's a lot of pressure to produce, and
that pressure to produce producers as we've seen with with
(25:15):
Indian Point, I mean a litany of maintenance problems, you know,
that o ring problems sort of about on the reactor
lid that recurred I think three times, so they never
actually fixed it. What do you think was ultimately responsible
for closing Indian Point? What finally made it happen? People
power votes. It's notable that in New York the state
(25:36):
subsidizes some upstate nuclear plants while at the same time
closing down Indian Point. Where are the other plants in
New York? The ones in Oswego, that's Genae, and then
there's Fitzpatrick, I think, which is up on Lake Ontario
nine mile point nine. So combine that with with pressure
from US Rear keeper on the cooling water permit. Describe
(25:59):
the speci a fix of that for people who don't
understand the massive amounts of water that are necessary. These
things are always built on a river. Correct. Correct, And
they deliberately decided to install an outdated system of cooling
even when they built the plant, which is called wants
through cooling, so that the water just comes in, cools
the hot water from the reactor, and then goes out again.
(26:20):
There's no recycling of the cooling water that takes in
billions of gallons a day, puts out hot water billions
of gallons a day, kills billions of organisms a year.
It has a huge impact on the ecosystem, and there
is a lot of clean water rate that requires the
best technology available to be fitted. And so we were
pushing very hard on that side of things, and the
(26:41):
state was coming along with us. So that was essentially
one of the things that helped close it was that
you insisted and the government eventually fell on line to
have them adjust this cooling operation. Correct. That's right, because
you see that the state can't just close a nuclear
plant out of safety concerns. Only the NRC can regulate safety.
Only the organization in the pocket of the industry has
(27:02):
the right to close down the plant. Well, so that's
where the cooling water comes in, because the state has
a right to impose protection of their environmental resources. Exactly,
is there a place in the United States or anywhere
around the world where they're doing the cooling more effectively?
Where are they getting the cooling right? I don't know
if they wrinkling up his nose here, No one's getting
(27:26):
it right, Joe. The bottom line is the state had
could insist on high standards for cooling, and that's indeed
the route that the callsign administration went down for Oyster Creek,
and basically the administration went down the same route in
New York and in the lights of the threat of
the strict standard, Entergy agreed to take a deal where
(27:47):
they had four more years and then they could close.
So that's interesting they'd rather I mean, who knows whether
the extension of the least would have gone the twenty
years at Indian Point that they wanted, But they were
willing to close the plant rather than adjust the cooling operation. Yeah,
they were willing to close the plant rather than stop
(28:07):
destroying the aquatic life. Now, when you're on the Hudson,
you're dealing with fresh water presumably, and that's Harrison where
Indian Point is. Where did the water come from? For
Oyster Creek? Well, actually, on the Hudson, you're dealing with
with brackish. It's the tide comes up and down, still
brackish at that point Oyster Creek, it came basically out
(28:27):
of the bay there, out of Bottegat Bay. So they
can't use ocean water. They can't use salt water, they
can't use so Santa no free in places like that,
they use ocean water. Yeah, yeah, because I was wasn't
sure about the corrosian factor. Okay, a question I should
have asked you back in actually, so that anyway, So
Joe Mingano from our PHP, you tell me what do
(28:48):
you think contributed to closing Indian Point. The two reasons.
The first one was public concern about safety and health,
which is something that we helped to build by our
studies on our work. The second one is economics. Why
are nuclear plants costly? It's because they are dangerous to operate.
It takes many trained, and it takes complex safety systems,
(29:13):
and it requires lots of security, and it involves lots
of money that goes to waste storage, you know, as
you don't see from other So for both reasons, it
goes back to safety and health. Joe man Gano from
the Radiation and Public Health Project and Richard Webster from
Riverkeeper follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app,
(29:35):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there,
leave us a review when we come back. Paul Galley,
president of Hudson Riverkeeper, talks about Indian Points risk to
New York waterways. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
(30:02):
Here's the Thing. Water plays a key role in nuclear
power plants heated by fission. Water becomes steam that spins
the turbines that generate energy. Water also cools the reactors
and spent fuel rods. Indian Point was built on the
Hudson River and for more than five decades, Riverkeeper has
(30:24):
fought to keep the Hudson clean. Paul Gallet is its president.
I've been with Riverkeeper for eleven years and Indian Points
just been a huge focus. We also help stop fracking
in New York, got New York to reinvest in water
infrastructure so that water quality could come back. And one
of the most interesting things that we've been involved in,
(30:46):
thanks to support from the state, is removing all the old,
unneeded dams that are blocking the fish from getting to
their areas where they spawn and where they used to feed,
so that we can reconnect our rivers and tributaries restore
our biodiversity in the Hudson Watershed. Was this related to
the reservoir system in New York at all or no?
(31:06):
The reservoir systems still up and probably gonna stay up.
But these are old dams that used to be used
for factories that haven't existed for sixty years. But they
never took the dams down and they've been blocking the river.
So we took the first three down and our partners
and government have taken others down. So we're gonna bring
the fishback. Where were you working What kind of work
were you doing before you came to Riverkeeper? So I
(31:28):
worked for the State of New York at the Department
of Environmental Conservation. You know, when I was at the
d E. C. Basil Sagos was at River Keeper, and
then I came to Riverkeeper. Now Basil Sagos has running
d e C. There's a little funny story for you
musical chairs over there. Also worked in land conservation for
ten years. And you know, I'm thirty five years in
(31:48):
on environmental protection and I'm pretty excited about the work
that we're doing. Remember in the eighties we went up
to go visit Mario Cuoma and they were going to
have in the wake of the certification of the passing
of the Big Green Initiative in California, they wanted a
similar referendum here in New York and they put up
the Environmental Bond Act. They wanted one point one billion dollars.
(32:09):
And of course, the friction between the Democratic and Republican
leadership in both the House and the Senate in Albany
was that the Republicans wanted eight hundred million dollars for
construction projects that they could hand out to their supporters
and three d million dollars for land acquisition and for
passive measures, and the Democrats wanted the opposite. They wanted
(32:29):
eight hundred billion dollars and land acquisition and passive measures.
And and as many people know, there was a very
somewhat sinister move afoot to force the treatment of New
York City water. They wanted to switch from New York
City's water remains filtered but not treated correct. Yeah, the
city has avoided filtration for its larger system. The smaller
(32:53):
system has the filtration. And it's because they protect the
lands around the reservoirs. And that's the big watershed agreement
that riverkeepers struck with the City of New York in
the state and the upshed upstate towns. Way back in
about so some people accused certain administrations in Albany, the governor,
(33:14):
and I don't think I need to name who. This
is a very long term serving governor who wanted to
denigrate He wanted to impact the quality of the water
to force treatments. They wanted to force stream because it
could be a multi billion dollar project in terms of
construction for many people who don't live in the area.
The water supply for the City of New York comes
from reservoirs and the mountains above and the hills above.
(33:36):
And historically they flooded private land. They displaced hundreds of
not thousands of people years ago, and they flooded it
with these reservoirs, which became the drinking water supply for
the city of New York, which remains relatively well protected.
There was some runoff from roads and so forth, and
some still some untreated sewage that seeps into that water
in developments and so forth. But there were Republican governors
(33:59):
and representatives in Albany who wanted to see that system
go down enough well, they wanted to relax those protections,
which would necessitate the building of treatment plants for the water,
which would have been multibillion dollar projects to treat that
water the way other cities water was treated. I think
they came around because ultimately Mario Cuomo had the idea
(34:22):
to do this agreement to avoid the filtration, and George Pataki,
his successor, ended up sealing the deal, and I worked
for both of them actually at the d e C
and h PATTACKI ultimately ended up being pretty proud of
his partnership with River Keeper. Fantastic that. I'm glad that
you mentioned that, because Pataki was exactly who I was
talking about as the person who I was under the
impression was trying to force the treatment of the water.
(34:45):
POTACKI is an environmental hero. I didn't know it, so
Riverkeepers role in helping to close Indian Point. What kind
of work have you guys been doing in terms of
Indian Point. Well. Riverkeeper got involved on Indian Point back
in the ninet seventies when the plant was first doing
so much damage to the river. It was incredible, and
(35:05):
we've made sure that we got the studies necessary to
show the damage that the plant was doing to the river.
And the state saw those studies, and to their credit,
they decided that the plant would need to build cooling
towers to avoid damaging the river so much so they
didn't have cooling towers initially at all. Now they still
they never did. They never built them. Had they built
(35:27):
them back in the day, that plant might still be operating,
but they refused to comply with the Clean Water Act.
They refused to protect the river from the damage that
was being done. That plant used more water every day
than the entire city of New York, almost double, and
they destroyed a tremendous amount of river life. And they've
done a real number on the biodiversity of the Hudson.
(35:48):
But after nine eleven, that's when we realized there was
a bigger threat, a bigger threat to the river. A
bigger threat to our communities, and that was the spent
fuel that's sitting right now and relatively unpretend pools that
could be damaged by attack or greater leak. So the
spent fuel is as vulnerable, if not more vulnerable than
(36:09):
the actual reactor inside the dome, correct much more vulnerable.
There's no concrete around it, and there's five times as
much radiation in those spent fuel pools as there is
in the reactors. And that's why not only do we
have an agreement that has allowed us to close the
Indian Point as of last Friday, but Richard has negotiated
in the agreement that requires all that spent fuel to
be moved by into far safer, dry cask storage. So
(36:33):
the regions safer as a Friday, and will be still
safer when that spent fuel is moved. When you shut
down a reactor like Indian Point, what is the impact
on the available power for the community at large. So
the good news here is we've had so much energy
efficiency added into the system and some renewables as well.
(36:54):
We're actually burning less natural gas now than we were
the day we signed in that closure agreement, because, like
I said, we're been busy for a decade now. The
state began preparing for Indian Points closure. In they came
up with a renewable energy program called Clean Energy Standard.
(37:15):
They required a tripling of energy efficiency programs by utilities.
In they passed the Best Climate Leadership and Community Protection
Act to cut carbon in the Nation, which is going
to require seventy of our power to come from carbon
free sources by. I could go on and on, but
(37:36):
because of the work that's been done, we're on track
to replace Indian points power output roughly three times over
by and offshore wind will do it a fourth time
over and we're ahead of schedule for meeting that seventy
reduction by As the industry thrown in the towel is
(37:57):
in terms of development of these tech novelogies and using
them for utility reactors or are they still going to
keep coming with modern developments and what do you think
the odds are that they're going to succeed When you
go around the horn here, Joe, you go first. They're
gonna keep trying to push these new types of reactors,
but there's really not going to get beyond the talking stage.
(38:19):
In fact, there have been several bright ideas in the
past that have bombed terribly, the sodium pools reactors, where
there was a meltdown near Los Angeles, at Santa Susanna,
there was a near meltdown near Detroit that went out,
the breeder reactor concept that went out. They'll keep trying,
but in the past more than half century, it's it's
never gone beyond just the talking stage. What about you, Paul,
(38:42):
what do you think? Well, even if they were to succeed,
and there's no evidence that they will, they're not going
to have any scale on this for decades. And there's
one nuclear plant being built in the US right now
in Georgia. They're billions over budget. They just announced yet
another dual A but long story short. While we're waiting
(39:03):
for the so called fourth generation nukes to show up,
we've got all the technology we need to solve our
energy challenges in hand. Wind and solar and battery storage
keeps getting cheaper beyond hopes and expectations. The build out
keeps getting bigger, and so we got the tools in hand.
(39:23):
Let's focus on what we have in hand, because we
don't have twenty years to start building stuff. We got
to build stuff now and Paul. What's the status of
the fracking thing in New York? Now, stop hard stop.
The governor banned and then the legislature banned it legally,
and the governor signed that law about a year ago.
Richard Webster, what do you think is the future for nukes? Well,
(39:44):
you know, my niece actually works in fusion research, and
she says, the joke there is that fusion is always
twenty years away. But it's been twenty years away for
fifty years, right, So so that's kind of the submary
of affordable nukes. I think. Let me just say this,
I've never been more gratified working in public policy. Things
(40:05):
I've worked on that our campaign, finance, reform, reproductive rights,
a women's right to choose, gun control, whatever issues I've
been involved with. It has never been an issue I've
been involved with like shutting down utility reactors where I
encountered a group of men and women. Because Jeanette Sherman
passed away who we worked with him, I want to
(40:26):
have a tip of the hat to her and all
of our colleagues that we worked with over the years.
I've never been more gratified working with a group of
people than I had them with you guys, and I
want to say that that Indian Point is closed. Indian
Point's not gonna close. We're not trying to pressure them
to close it. Indian Point is closed. Was an epic battle,
(40:47):
but Indian Point is closed because of the work of
each of you on this podcast with me. You worked
with many other groups. We know that. We always acknowledge
our colleagues who were out there and worked with us,
and we're very great to them. But name one that
you helped really worth the Indian Point. What's a local
group that was really ferocious on that? Oh? Well, I've
(41:07):
got a name, clear Water. I actually represented clear Water
at the re licensing hearing on an environmental justice contention
and we actually one of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board,
which is quite rare. Of course, we lost on appeal,
but you know, I always say with the NRC, the
question is not whether you win, it's how long do
you not lose? For Well, my phrase with the NRC
is we're always going to win twenty years from you,
(41:28):
and we've been saying that for fifty years. One last
comment from each of you, Richard, how do you feel
about it? I feel great about it. I think We
worked hard, we marshaled the facts, the people were persuaded,
and the politicians listened. So that's probably a rare thing,
but it's nice when it happens. Paul galleis grateful, and
I've got to give my tip of a hat to
(41:49):
a man who has not been mentioned, but for fifteen
years or so, Andrew Cuomo stayed true to this cause
and he was on that agreement. In the agreement also
wouldn't have happened if not for the commitment, and New
York State in this administration got it, got it well done.
Joseph Banano I feel mixed. On the one hand, we
know from our studies that we've done that local rates
(42:10):
of child cancer and infantests are going to plunge immediately,
and cancer at all ages and eventually will go down.
On the other hand, it's unfortunate that we had to
go through this period where people had to suffer to
get to this point. Now that right there, that's the
Joe Bangano I grew to love. The guy was never satisfied.
We had to have one more lunch. We need to
(42:31):
raise more money and give him. How that's the Joe
I love. He's never satisfied. We're gonna be a million
years old trying to raise money for anti nuclear utilities. Gentlemen,
I want to thank you very much. Indian Point is closed,
and that is due in large part to the work
that each of you have done. My thanks to all
three of you for doing this show. I'm very grateful.
Thanks a lot like wonderful to told to you. Thank you,
(42:53):
Thank you for the work you did too. Thank you
all very much. Thank you. Hall Galley is the president
of Hudson Riverkeeper. My thanks to him, Richard Webster and
Joe Mangano for their time and their dedication to this
long fight. Indian Point has closed, but there are still
(43:13):
nine three other nuclear reactors still operating in the United
States and more than four others around the world. We're
produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donohue, and Zach McNeice. Our
engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing.
Is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. On Friday, April twenty one,
the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant permanently closed down. For
those who've been fighting for this for decades, it's a
moment to pause and breathe a sigh of relief. While
(00:23):
supporters of nuclear power promise affordable, clean energy that's too
cheap to meet her time and again, leaks, accidents, and
the general decay of decades old nuclear power plants create
risks that should keep everyone up at night. My guests
today are activists I'm proud to call cocombatants in the
(00:44):
fight to close Indian Point. Paul Gallet and Richard Webster
work at River Keeper, a nonprofit dedicated to the health
of New York's waterways. Indian Point is on the Hudson River,
less than forty miles north of New York City. Joseph
Mangano is the executive director of the Radiation and Public
(01:05):
Health Project research group. My conversation started with Joe. He's
written dozens of studies and three books on radiations effect
on the body. In the late eighties, many nuclear reactors
existed around the United States. In the world, over a
hundred were here and there were basically no studies being
(01:26):
done on basic issues like what are cancer rates in
nuclear power plants? Right? We know it's generating as toxic chemicals.
We know some is getting into the environment, into people's bodies,
but there were no studies done. There was a need
to be filled here. That's what we've done. And then
when you say no studies done, you meant no modern
studies because the baby to study was in the sixties. Correct, Yes,
(01:48):
such a spectacular study. In the late nineteen fifties, atomic
bombs were being exploded above the ground in the United
States and Soviet Union, uh the total of over four
undred of them, and fallout was was circling around the
globe and getting into the precipitation and thus into the
food chain. People were concerned and two groups of one
(02:09):
of citizens and one of scientists at Washington University in St.
Louis said, we need to find out how much of
this fall it is getting into people's bodies. They are
tougher ways to do it, like autopsies and biopsys, but
this was a very ingenious way to do it. You
wait until the child sheds a baby tooth, the tooth
is donated and the tooth is tested for this chemical
(02:30):
strontium ninety, which is one of a hundred plus chemicals
not found in nature, but only when an atomic bomb
explodes or a nuclear reactor. If I'm not mistaken, it
appears in the first set of teeth of children. They
were looking for atrium levels in the teeth of these children.
That was the daughter element of strontium ninety that was
(02:50):
in the bombs, so high levels of atrium in their teeth.
Mothers were asked to donate their children's first set of teeth,
their baby teeth, and they would study these teeth because
it mimicked calcium, correct in the teeth, that's right. The
body thinks it's calcium, and when it's taken in as
food or water, it goes quickly to the stomach and
(03:11):
quickly to the bloodstream, quickly to the bone and the teeth.
And as the testing went on, the amounts of strom
ninety and the teeth got higher and hired. Kids born
in nineteen sixty three had fifty times the amount of
kids born in ninety as the test started, not fifty
five thousand more. And this study was published in medical
(03:34):
journal articles. The first article has been sent to President
John F. Kennedy where his science advisor and he discussed it,
and the U. S. Senate discussed the test band Treaty.
One of the Washington University faculty, Eric Reece, testified and
he used it to study results as evidence why we
need to ban these tests. And in fact Kennedy did
(03:55):
sign the test band Treaty just a month before he
was killed. You and I our work really takes off
together when we go down to Toms River, New Jersey,
and the facility is called the Oyster Creek Nuclear Facility.
Describe how you first came across the idea that there
was a problem there. Really, the first knowledge I had
of there was some trouble around Oyster Creek was a
(04:18):
cluster of childhood cancers. It starts with the grassroots. Parents
of people who essentially sitting in waiting rooms found out
about each other and their neighbors and so, and kind
of forced the state Health department to do a report,
and all of a sudden they found cancer among children
living in the Toms River area was quite high, and
(04:42):
the Toms River area was sort of a toxic triangle.
If you will there was a plant run by Union Carbide,
what one by Seba Guide and then of course the
nuclear reactor Oyster Creek, and each emitted different types of
pollutants into the environment and into people's bodies. And we
know that children, of course, they're most susceptible to to toxins.
(05:05):
And the issue became not so much wait for the government,
wait for leaders to do something about it, but to
really do a grassroots effort to force change. And I
think that was the same thing with the earlier sat
It was baby to study, you know it was. It
was a bottoms up movement and our efforts were twofold.
(05:26):
We did a number of studies, same with Indian point.
The recipe is the same of cancer rates around this area,
especially after the nuclear plant opened. And then we came
in with our own version of the baby tooth study.
Did Dr Gul said, hey, that that St. Louis study
years ago. It was incredible. Three teeth and it helped
(05:49):
past test ban treaty. Let's do one of our own,
and in places like Oyster Creek, you and I and
others went down and appeal for donations of teeth. We
had them tested in lads and we appeal for the
money to do the testing. Yes, yeah we did. We
did get support from this to state government. Now this
is when Jim McGreevey was governor. To do the test.
We found basically that number one, the levels nearest to
(06:13):
the plant were a lot higher than people living far
from the plant. Number two, as time went on, the
levels are getting higher and higher as the reactor got
older and leaked more. And number three we found a
link with childhood cancer. Just picture a graph with two lines.
One is the trend in Stradia ninety and one is
the trend in childhood cancer and the local area they
look the same. And we found this near Indian Point
(06:36):
and near Brookhaven and Long Island as well, and we
published them in medical journals. That which separates us from
other activist groups for nuclear I I am the author
call author of thirty eight medical journal articles on these
topics in order to give this similar perspective. And then
is we go down to an area where what we're
basically saying is don't extend the license of this operation.
(06:58):
The licenses expired, the licenses have to be renewed. These
things have to be inspected. That's machinery. It wears out.
There's leakage, there's this, there's that, there's problems. All of
these nuclear reactors have to varying degrees. Not all of
them are life threatening catastrophes in the making, but but
many of them have some serious problems. But when we
went down to Oyster Cree, because I want to get
(07:19):
to Indian Point in a minute. But when we went
down to New Jersey, here's a couple of highlights that
I recall. One was Linda Gillick. Linda Gillick was a
woman who became an activist over autism clusters, another soft
tissue ailment, their prostrate breast brain autism clusters in the
Toms River area, that coastal area of New Jersey down
(07:40):
there mimics Long Island with a very narrow lens of
soil Union card. But I believe was putting toxins into
the ground and poorous sandy soil going right into the
water table. Green piece was actually gonna target see bagagis
pipe that they had out into the ocean. They were
dumping resin or something. And Lynda Gillick turns around and
she says to her congressman, I would like some discretionary
(08:03):
funds to do some research into the groundwater and find
out what's in there and what's causing these cancer clusters
here and these other soft tissue clusters like autism. The
moment that the Congressman is going to give her five
million bucks to do this research see Bagogy and Union
Carbide settled the case. And then when all the records sealed,
didn't want anybody to know what's in the ground there,
(08:23):
what they were pumping out into the ocean. They settled
the whole thing. So of the three villains in my
mind who were responsible for the toxicity in that Tom's
River area see Bagogy, Union Carbide. Some people even suspect
that these places are cited where there is cross contamination,
so you can't prosecute them. Some people would argue that
not only are nuclear facilities cited where there's low income
(08:46):
labor who crave these jobs, because some of these guys
are making thirty an hour in a union where our
technicians who were responsible for operating these these facilities. Like
what happened to us when we went to Ocean County
and we're at Ocean County College and we packed the place,
we pack it. I mean they're sitting in the aisles,
and the one guy looks to me. He's out of Steinbeck.
(09:08):
He's a young dad with his wife and two kids,
and he says, you're not here to close the plant,
are you? And I said, no, we're not here to
close the plant. We're here to present you with all
the information and the facts, and you decide if you
want the plant closed. But then we go to those
two guys, the father and son, who were the state
senator and his son was an alderman or whatever they
(09:29):
call them down there in New Jersey, and we asked
him for discretionary money to use for the baby Tooth study,
and they agree to give us the money. And then
Governor Christine Todd Whitman line item vetos those requests that
we get the money to do the baby tooth study,
that there was ever a shill for the nuclear industry.
God it was her. Talk to me now about the
(09:51):
work you've done specifically related to Indian Point. Indian Point was,
in addition to Oys to Creak, another one of our
major prior ease because of its proximity to New York City,
I mean, the most densely populated area of the country,
meant the greatest health risks, so we focus a lot
of our work on those two plants. Indian Point is
(10:12):
located thirty five miles north of Times Square. It's on
the Hudson River, which is quite close. Even though years
ago there were numerous proposals to build nuclear reactors, not
just around New York City, but in New York City.
Let's build one below Central Park, below Roosevelt Island, right
across the East River from the u. N. Let's build
(10:34):
an island just off Coney Island, build reactors. These all
made the New York Times. These were actual ideas. None
of them came through, but the closest one was Indian Point,
which opened in nineteen three reactors. One was a small
one that closed in nineteen seventy four, but there were
two much larger ones built in the mid nineteen seventies,
and those are the ones we we focused on. The
(10:56):
way we approached any point was sort of two ways.
The burden of proof was on us to show that
there was not just radiation being released and entering the body,
but to show that there was harm. The releases were easy,
taking um data that the industry is required to report
every year, and the Indpoint was one of the highest
(11:17):
amounts of radiation in the seventies and nineties into the air.
Number two was the baby Tooth study. We appealed to
people to donate teeth and we collected five teeth near
Indian Point. We found the strontium ninety levels higher than
elsewhere in New York State. And again the similar patterns
(11:39):
with child cancer. And then finally, the litany of cancer
statistics dress cancers higher, child cancer is higher. The biggest
one is thyroid cancer, which is not one of the
high profile cancer. It's usually treatable, although it's a horrible
experience ba CANNA. In the nineteen seventies, when these two
(12:02):
big reactors are opening, the rate in the four county
area within twenty miles of New Point was two below
the US and by the year two thousand, fifty five
percent higher. And that's where where it is today. I mean,
instead of fifty cases a year in the fourth it's
like over four cases. In emergency circumstances like a possible
(12:22):
meltdown or a leak or whatever, where there's contamination and
the public is exposed on a larger scale, don't they
issue like iodine or something for people to consume to
to prevent thyroid cancer. The thyroid is very vulnerable to radiation. Yes, yes,
iodine goes directly to the thyroid glands all right where
it kills and in your cells. And yes, one of
(12:43):
the ways that are used to reduce the effects of
a meltdown would be to take this what they call
potassium iodide, which sort of coats the thyroid gland and
protects it from iodone. All along, they've never copped to
the fact that there was a be radiation emitted from
these facilities on a daily basis. Am I correct, they have,
(13:05):
but their slogan is too low to be harmful. Officials
new they couldn't operated without allowing at least some of
this highly toxic radio activity to be released into the environment.
So they said what they called permissible limits and took
the big giant step of saying that permissible limits means
(13:28):
they are safe, they don't harm people. It's like a
doctor's telling a patient, well, you spoke five cigarettes today,
so let's below the permisible limits and there's no health
rents are your You know your wife smokes, but you don't,
so you're okay. No, all radiation is harmful at all
levels and you know, a lot of the discussion about
a place like Indian Point was about potential harm from
(13:50):
a meltdown or if radioactive waste were at least somehow.
We dealt with actual cases of cancer, We dealt with
actual deaths from the actual releases that you actually went
into people's bodies, into their baby teeth. And we also
feel that it probably resulted in the greatest hostility from
(14:11):
the nuclear industry being pointed at us. We had evidence,
and they didn't like it one bit. Well, they wanted
an industry that evolved from a process of bomb making
to end the war, and they're saying in the wake
of the war, they're saying, hey man, these guys are
our partners and making armaments to defend our country, so
let's give them a little bit of a break. They
(14:32):
would like to take these reactors and put them in
hundreds of sites around the country, and these things are
gonna boil water and you're gonna have steam turbines. It's
going to be, you know the famous quote, too cheap
to meter. And let's throw these guys a bone. Let's
let him make a little money on the side. And
you know, you realize that's always been the fight, which
this is about money. These companies, whether it's geor who
(14:55):
would you say the dominant power corporate wise in nuclear
technology far the too biggest funds where g E and Westinghouse.
G E and Westinghouse made almost of the reactors, and
they're like, hey, man, you know we're making money here.
Get out of the way. We're not hurting anybody, and
so they claimed. So tell people what happened recently at
Indian Point. Indian Point, but the two reactors reached their
(15:16):
forty year license and applied for an extension from the
federal government of twenty additional years. And you know, reactors
weren't supposed to last more than forty years, but with
no reactors being built, they hatched this idea to keep
it going. A number of the citizen groups against Indian
(15:36):
Point took on the license extension, and they took it
to court and legal actions, and finally a deal was
worked out where the reactors continued to run until last
year and this year, but no more closed forever, which
leaves the hundred mile radius around New York City with
(15:57):
zero operating nuclear reactors where at one time there was
supposed to be many. Joe Man Gano is the executive
director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. The dangers
of nuclear power are sometimes only apparent in the aftermath
of disasters three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chair NOBIL in
(16:20):
the Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japan. For more in depth
conversation on the challenges of nuclear power, listened to my
conversation with Gregory Yasco. He became Chair of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission just before the Fukushima disaster. While in office,
he tried to tackle the persistent question of where to
(16:41):
store radioactive waste in a lot of ways. The best
alternative is probably to leave it where it is, you
know it really, I mean there are some places where
you don't want to keep it, you know, the probably
Indian Point, which is close to New York City. Um
so some of the fuel you want to move, you
want to get it into maybe another location, you think,
for for from an engineer ring standpoint, from a physics standpoint,
it's better to leave it there. Yeah, I think it
(17:03):
is right now. I mean, were certain transporting it is dangerous.
Transporting it adds a risk, and we just we don't
have any place to put it here. More of my
conversation with Gregory Jasco at Here's the Thing dot Org.
After the break, Richard Webster, Riverkeepers legal director, joins Joe
Mangano to explain the logistics involved in the fight to
(17:25):
close Indian Points. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Here's the Thing. When they say the Earth needs a
good lawyer, Richard Webster is who they have in mind.
(17:48):
Richard works at Riverkeeper and before becoming an attorney, he
was a hydrologist and an environmental scientist. But in order
to close Indian Point you had to know what we're
up against, and she was the owner at the end.
Niper built in the point. Niper New York Power Authority,
so it's a public company, and actually Connor built in
(18:10):
your point too. Basically, just to go all the way
back to the start. Nuclear plants to build them is
incredibly risky. They have a tradition of being away over
budget and way behind schedule. So the only people that
can really afford to build nuclear plants are either public
corporations or public utilities. But then the problem came that
(18:32):
they weren't operating them very efficiently in the sense that
the run times were not very high, so there has
a sense that if you're into a private company, they
will increase the run times, which they did. By run times,
you mean how long their online and active and producing
power exactly, so that the availability went up from about
I think seal which you can make the difference between
(18:54):
the reactor making money or the reactor losing money. What
experience shows is that it's hard to keep a reactor
maintained in the first place, and it's doubly hard if
you don't want to come offline when you detect problems. So,
for example, an Indian point, they had a problem with
the reactor lid and how well it fitted, and repeatedly
(19:16):
what they found was that there was leakage around the
top of the reactor lid. Every outage they found this leakage,
but they didn't stop the reactor in the middle to
investigate this leakage because they wanted the production. And that's
what you see repeatedly. Davis Bessie was the most egregious
example of this, where cooling water actually eight all the
(19:36):
way through the reactor head, which was about six inches
of steel. The only thing left holding the pressurized water
in the reactor together was half in layer of stainless steel.
They refused to take that offline four weeks and got
very close actually to a meltdown there. So that's one
problem in the nuclear industry is there's a lot of
(19:57):
pressure for production and that tends to lead to undermining
of maintenance and safety. Another example I'll give you is
the battle bolts at Indian Point. When they finally measured
the battle bolts, they found that over half of them
were defective, but they didn't then take a new point
three offline and measure that one. They let that run
for another year. And then when they measured the battle
(20:18):
bolts there, which is baffle bolts, by the way, the
things that kind of hold the inside of the reactor together,
they found that over seventy percent of those are defective.
So people who say, oh, you know, nuclear plants that
they're pretty safe are too complacent. We haven't seen any
major nuclear disaster apart from t m I here yet,
But just because we got lucky so far doesn't mean
(20:40):
to say we shouldn't get smart. What happened to t
m t M I was operator arm That could obviously
happen again, but the chance of operator probably goes down
or stays the same more or less over time. The
thing that concerns me is that as the reactors get older,
the margin between what's exceptional and what's unacceptable get smaller
and smaller as you have corrosion fatigue and all these phenomena.
(21:02):
And I don't think the industry is doing a very
good job at managing these phenomena. They're just basically hoping
and chancing it. You know, we saw that at Oyster
Creek where the secondary pressure vessel had been corroding and
points was half as thick as it started off. It
started off about an inch and a half thick and
at points it was point seven inches thick. But the
industry was saying excellent. There was saying, oh no, it's okay,
(21:23):
it's stopped corroding. We promise, and therefore we don't need
to do any more measurements for twenty years. I mean,
that's just wishful thinking. And explained to people how we
have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which of course was the
precursor was the Atomic Energy Commission, and the NRC is
there presumably to protect the interests of the American people.
(21:44):
How would you evaluate how good of a job they're
doing in that Department. Well, I've been to a lot
of meetings with NRC personnel, and you know, they're generally
nice people, and I think they're generally competent engineers. But
I think there's a fundamental problem with the agency. And
I think my best anecdote this was all the time
as own meeting in New Jersey and a guy stood
up from the back and said, you guys at the NLC,
(22:05):
you're taking taxpayers money and you should be protecting the taxpayers.
The n l C. You guys stood up and said,
actually funded by industry, so don't worry about it. That
was illustrative to me. That is that accurate? Yes? Yes, Now,
what was the a e C completely funded by the government.
Did they replace the a C with the n RC
(22:27):
to put the industry in charge of its own regulation? Joe,
do you have an answer? Yeah, I think the a
C was government funded, but definitely the NRC is ninety
funded by industry fees. Energy is supposed to be a
regulator and not to promote nuclear power, which is what
the a e C was doing to help sell this
(22:47):
project to the American people, right, they kept promoting it.
That was right. To go back another step, it all
comes out of Atoms for Peace, right. The original idea
was to show we hadn't spend all this money just
creating a nuclear bomb, we also created something useful. So
that's where the a C came in. And then there
was a concern that the a C, because it had
to promote nuclear power, couldn't really be an effective safety regulator,
(23:09):
so they formed the NRC. But I do think there
was some deliberate shenanigans in the setup of the NRC,
because the NARC was designed to be rigidly independent of politics,
and so that's why the industry largely funds and r C.
And it also stands as what's for an independent agency
with like five commissioners, which are normally three from the
president's party and two from the other party. But they've
(23:30):
been steadfastly pro industry. So basically, the NRC is one
of the very few agencies where a senator could write
the letter asking him a reasonable question and they basically
say get lost. And in fact, I found that's the
most effective way to get a senator on your side,
you know, because when you complain to a senator, oh
you know, the NRC won't tell me. This, won't tell
me that. Then the Senator says, I'll soon find that out.
(23:51):
Write some a letter, and they basically right back saying, sorry,
we're not going to tell you. By I want to
ask you, Richard Webster, win Napor in cooperation, I guess
we're Carnet or whatever they build these facilities, what is
the path and what is the reasoning why they pass
into the hands of companies like Energy? When does that
happen and why? So that happened around twenty years ago,
and the theory was Entergy has a fleet of nuclear actors,
(24:14):
so they don't just own one or two nuclear actors.
They get They owned I think twenty at the time,
and so they gain knowledge and because they have a fleet,
they were able to maintain them more effectively and run
them more effectively. So that was the theory, and they
did keep the reactor running for longer. But I question
whether they ran it as safely and what was your opinion?
(24:34):
Didn't I be and carn Ed overall run it more
safely than Entergy do? Yes, because the production pressure wasn't
there right, so they were content to go offline when
they had a lower expectation. I think actually they had
a higher expectation about safety. I mean, it's very interesting.
You meet a lot of people in the nuclear industry
come from the nuclear Navy, and they always say, well,
(24:54):
you know, like people wouldn't go on a submarine with
a nuclear actor if the nuclear actors weren't safe. The
difference is in the Navy, they're very procedurally orientated and
they don't have a pressure to produce all the time.
They can take the thing offline. When you're in a
commercial situation, there's a lot of pressure to produce, and
that pressure to produce producers as we've seen with with
(25:15):
Indian Point, I mean a litany of maintenance problems, you know,
that o ring problems sort of about on the reactor
lid that recurred I think three times, so they never
actually fixed it. What do you think was ultimately responsible
for closing Indian Point? What finally made it happen? People
power votes. It's notable that in New York the state
(25:36):
subsidizes some upstate nuclear plants while at the same time
closing down Indian Point. Where are the other plants in
New York? The ones in Oswego, that's Genae, and then
there's Fitzpatrick, I think, which is up on Lake Ontario
nine mile point nine. So combine that with with pressure
from US Rear keeper on the cooling water permit. Describe
(25:59):
the speci a fix of that for people who don't
understand the massive amounts of water that are necessary. These
things are always built on a river. Correct. Correct, And
they deliberately decided to install an outdated system of cooling
even when they built the plant, which is called wants
through cooling, so that the water just comes in, cools
the hot water from the reactor, and then goes out again.
(26:20):
There's no recycling of the cooling water that takes in
billions of gallons a day, puts out hot water billions
of gallons a day, kills billions of organisms a year.
It has a huge impact on the ecosystem, and there
is a lot of clean water rate that requires the
best technology available to be fitted. And so we were
pushing very hard on that side of things, and the
(26:41):
state was coming along with us. So that was essentially
one of the things that helped close it was that
you insisted and the government eventually fell on line to
have them adjust this cooling operation. Correct. That's right, because
you see that the state can't just close a nuclear
plant out of safety concerns. Only the NRC can regulate safety.
Only the organization in the pocket of the industry has
(27:02):
the right to close down the plant. Well, so that's
where the cooling water comes in, because the state has
a right to impose protection of their environmental resources. Exactly,
is there a place in the United States or anywhere
around the world where they're doing the cooling more effectively?
Where are they getting the cooling right? I don't know
if they wrinkling up his nose here, No one's getting
(27:26):
it right, Joe. The bottom line is the state had
could insist on high standards for cooling, and that's indeed
the route that the callsign administration went down for Oyster Creek,
and basically the administration went down the same route in
New York and in the lights of the threat of
the strict standard, Entergy agreed to take a deal where
(27:47):
they had four more years and then they could close.
So that's interesting they'd rather I mean, who knows whether
the extension of the least would have gone the twenty
years at Indian Point that they wanted, But they were
willing to close the plant rather than adjust the cooling operation. Yeah,
they were willing to close the plant rather than stop
(28:07):
destroying the aquatic life. Now, when you're on the Hudson,
you're dealing with fresh water presumably, and that's Harrison where
Indian Point is. Where did the water come from? For
Oyster Creek? Well, actually, on the Hudson, you're dealing with
with brackish. It's the tide comes up and down, still
brackish at that point Oyster Creek, it came basically out
(28:27):
of the bay there, out of Bottegat Bay. So they
can't use ocean water. They can't use salt water, they
can't use so Santa no free in places like that,
they use ocean water. Yeah, yeah, because I was wasn't
sure about the corrosian factor. Okay, a question I should
have asked you back in actually, so that anyway, So
Joe Mingano from our PHP, you tell me what do
(28:48):
you think contributed to closing Indian Point. The two reasons.
The first one was public concern about safety and health,
which is something that we helped to build by our
studies on our work. The second one is economics. Why
are nuclear plants costly? It's because they are dangerous to operate.
It takes many trained, and it takes complex safety systems,
(29:13):
and it requires lots of security, and it involves lots
of money that goes to waste storage, you know, as
you don't see from other So for both reasons, it
goes back to safety and health. Joe man Gano from
the Radiation and Public Health Project and Richard Webster from
Riverkeeper follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app,
(29:35):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there,
leave us a review when we come back. Paul Galley,
president of Hudson Riverkeeper, talks about Indian Points risk to
New York waterways. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
(30:02):
Here's the Thing. Water plays a key role in nuclear
power plants heated by fission. Water becomes steam that spins
the turbines that generate energy. Water also cools the reactors
and spent fuel rods. Indian Point was built on the
Hudson River and for more than five decades, Riverkeeper has
(30:24):
fought to keep the Hudson clean. Paul Gallet is its president.
I've been with Riverkeeper for eleven years and Indian Points
just been a huge focus. We also help stop fracking
in New York, got New York to reinvest in water
infrastructure so that water quality could come back. And one
of the most interesting things that we've been involved in,
(30:46):
thanks to support from the state, is removing all the old,
unneeded dams that are blocking the fish from getting to
their areas where they spawn and where they used to feed,
so that we can reconnect our rivers and tributaries restore
our biodiversity in the Hudson Watershed. Was this related to
the reservoir system in New York at all or no?
(31:06):
The reservoir systems still up and probably gonna stay up.
But these are old dams that used to be used
for factories that haven't existed for sixty years. But they
never took the dams down and they've been blocking the river.
So we took the first three down and our partners
and government have taken others down. So we're gonna bring
the fishback. Where were you working What kind of work
were you doing before you came to Riverkeeper? So I
(31:28):
worked for the State of New York at the Department
of Environmental Conservation. You know, when I was at the
d E. C. Basil Sagos was at River Keeper, and
then I came to Riverkeeper. Now Basil Sagos has running
d e C. There's a little funny story for you
musical chairs over there. Also worked in land conservation for
ten years. And you know, I'm thirty five years in
(31:48):
on environmental protection and I'm pretty excited about the work
that we're doing. Remember in the eighties we went up
to go visit Mario Cuoma and they were going to
have in the wake of the certification of the passing
of the Big Green Initiative in California, they wanted a
similar referendum here in New York and they put up
the Environmental Bond Act. They wanted one point one billion dollars.
(32:09):
And of course, the friction between the Democratic and Republican
leadership in both the House and the Senate in Albany
was that the Republicans wanted eight hundred million dollars for
construction projects that they could hand out to their supporters
and three d million dollars for land acquisition and for
passive measures, and the Democrats wanted the opposite. They wanted
(32:29):
eight hundred billion dollars and land acquisition and passive measures.
And and as many people know, there was a very
somewhat sinister move afoot to force the treatment of New
York City water. They wanted to switch from New York
City's water remains filtered but not treated correct. Yeah, the
city has avoided filtration for its larger system. The smaller
(32:53):
system has the filtration. And it's because they protect the
lands around the reservoirs. And that's the big watershed agreement
that riverkeepers struck with the City of New York in
the state and the upshed upstate towns. Way back in
about so some people accused certain administrations in Albany, the governor,
(33:14):
and I don't think I need to name who. This
is a very long term serving governor who wanted to
denigrate He wanted to impact the quality of the water
to force treatments. They wanted to force stream because it
could be a multi billion dollar project in terms of
construction for many people who don't live in the area.
The water supply for the City of New York comes
from reservoirs and the mountains above and the hills above.
(33:36):
And historically they flooded private land. They displaced hundreds of
not thousands of people years ago, and they flooded it
with these reservoirs, which became the drinking water supply for
the city of New York, which remains relatively well protected.
There was some runoff from roads and so forth, and
some still some untreated sewage that seeps into that water
in developments and so forth. But there were Republican governors
(33:59):
and representatives in Albany who wanted to see that system
go down enough well, they wanted to relax those protections,
which would necessitate the building of treatment plants for the water,
which would have been multibillion dollar projects to treat that
water the way other cities water was treated. I think
they came around because ultimately Mario Cuomo had the idea
(34:22):
to do this agreement to avoid the filtration, and George Pataki,
his successor, ended up sealing the deal, and I worked
for both of them actually at the d e C
and h PATTACKI ultimately ended up being pretty proud of
his partnership with River Keeper. Fantastic that. I'm glad that
you mentioned that, because Pataki was exactly who I was
talking about as the person who I was under the
impression was trying to force the treatment of the water.
(34:45):
POTACKI is an environmental hero. I didn't know it, so
Riverkeepers role in helping to close Indian Point. What kind
of work have you guys been doing in terms of
Indian Point. Well. Riverkeeper got involved on Indian Point back
in the ninet seventies when the plant was first doing
so much damage to the river. It was incredible, and
(35:05):
we've made sure that we got the studies necessary to
show the damage that the plant was doing to the river.
And the state saw those studies, and to their credit,
they decided that the plant would need to build cooling
towers to avoid damaging the river so much so they
didn't have cooling towers initially at all. Now they still
they never did. They never built them. Had they built
(35:27):
them back in the day, that plant might still be operating,
but they refused to comply with the Clean Water Act.
They refused to protect the river from the damage that
was being done. That plant used more water every day
than the entire city of New York, almost double, and
they destroyed a tremendous amount of river life. And they've
done a real number on the biodiversity of the Hudson.
(35:48):
But after nine eleven, that's when we realized there was
a bigger threat, a bigger threat to the river. A
bigger threat to our communities, and that was the spent
fuel that's sitting right now and relatively unpretend pools that
could be damaged by attack or greater leak. So the
spent fuel is as vulnerable, if not more vulnerable than
(36:09):
the actual reactor inside the dome, correct much more vulnerable.
There's no concrete around it, and there's five times as
much radiation in those spent fuel pools as there is
in the reactors. And that's why not only do we
have an agreement that has allowed us to close the
Indian Point as of last Friday, but Richard has negotiated
in the agreement that requires all that spent fuel to
be moved by into far safer, dry cask storage. So
(36:33):
the regions safer as a Friday, and will be still
safer when that spent fuel is moved. When you shut
down a reactor like Indian Point, what is the impact
on the available power for the community at large. So
the good news here is we've had so much energy
efficiency added into the system and some renewables as well.
(36:54):
We're actually burning less natural gas now than we were
the day we signed in that closure agreement, because, like
I said, we're been busy for a decade now. The
state began preparing for Indian Points closure. In they came
up with a renewable energy program called Clean Energy Standard.
(37:15):
They required a tripling of energy efficiency programs by utilities.
In they passed the Best Climate Leadership and Community Protection
Act to cut carbon in the Nation, which is going
to require seventy of our power to come from carbon
free sources by. I could go on and on, but
(37:36):
because of the work that's been done, we're on track
to replace Indian points power output roughly three times over
by and offshore wind will do it a fourth time
over and we're ahead of schedule for meeting that seventy
reduction by As the industry thrown in the towel is
(37:57):
in terms of development of these tech novelogies and using
them for utility reactors or are they still going to
keep coming with modern developments and what do you think
the odds are that they're going to succeed When you
go around the horn here, Joe, you go first. They're
gonna keep trying to push these new types of reactors,
but there's really not going to get beyond the talking stage.
(38:19):
In fact, there have been several bright ideas in the
past that have bombed terribly, the sodium pools reactors, where
there was a meltdown near Los Angeles, at Santa Susanna,
there was a near meltdown near Detroit that went out,
the breeder reactor concept that went out. They'll keep trying,
but in the past more than half century, it's it's
never gone beyond just the talking stage. What about you, Paul,
(38:42):
what do you think? Well, even if they were to succeed,
and there's no evidence that they will, they're not going
to have any scale on this for decades. And there's
one nuclear plant being built in the US right now
in Georgia. They're billions over budget. They just announced yet
another dual A but long story short. While we're waiting
(39:03):
for the so called fourth generation nukes to show up,
we've got all the technology we need to solve our
energy challenges in hand. Wind and solar and battery storage
keeps getting cheaper beyond hopes and expectations. The build out
keeps getting bigger, and so we got the tools in hand.
(39:23):
Let's focus on what we have in hand, because we
don't have twenty years to start building stuff. We got
to build stuff now and Paul. What's the status of
the fracking thing in New York? Now, stop hard stop.
The governor banned and then the legislature banned it legally,
and the governor signed that law about a year ago.
Richard Webster, what do you think is the future for nukes? Well,
(39:44):
you know, my niece actually works in fusion research, and
she says, the joke there is that fusion is always
twenty years away. But it's been twenty years away for
fifty years, right, So so that's kind of the submary
of affordable nukes. I think. Let me just say this,
I've never been more gratified working in public policy. Things
(40:05):
I've worked on that our campaign, finance, reform, reproductive rights,
a women's right to choose, gun control, whatever issues I've
been involved with. It has never been an issue I've
been involved with like shutting down utility reactors where I
encountered a group of men and women. Because Jeanette Sherman
passed away who we worked with him, I want to
(40:26):
have a tip of the hat to her and all
of our colleagues that we worked with over the years.
I've never been more gratified working with a group of
people than I had them with you guys, and I
want to say that that Indian Point is closed. Indian
Point's not gonna close. We're not trying to pressure them
to close it. Indian Point is closed. Was an epic battle,
(40:47):
but Indian Point is closed because of the work of
each of you on this podcast with me. You worked
with many other groups. We know that. We always acknowledge
our colleagues who were out there and worked with us,
and we're very great to them. But name one that
you helped really worth the Indian Point. What's a local
group that was really ferocious on that? Oh? Well, I've
(41:07):
got a name, clear Water. I actually represented clear Water
at the re licensing hearing on an environmental justice contention
and we actually one of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board,
which is quite rare. Of course, we lost on appeal,
but you know, I always say with the NRC, the
question is not whether you win, it's how long do
you not lose? For Well, my phrase with the NRC
is we're always going to win twenty years from you,
(41:28):
and we've been saying that for fifty years. One last
comment from each of you, Richard, how do you feel
about it? I feel great about it. I think We
worked hard, we marshaled the facts, the people were persuaded,
and the politicians listened. So that's probably a rare thing,
but it's nice when it happens. Paul galleis grateful, and
I've got to give my tip of a hat to
(41:49):
a man who has not been mentioned, but for fifteen
years or so, Andrew Cuomo stayed true to this cause
and he was on that agreement. In the agreement also
wouldn't have happened if not for the commitment, and New
York State in this administration got it, got it well done.
Joseph Banano I feel mixed. On the one hand, we
know from our studies that we've done that local rates
(42:10):
of child cancer and infantests are going to plunge immediately,
and cancer at all ages and eventually will go down.
On the other hand, it's unfortunate that we had to
go through this period where people had to suffer to
get to this point. Now that right there, that's the
Joe Bangano I grew to love. The guy was never satisfied.
We had to have one more lunch. We need to
(42:31):
raise more money and give him. How that's the Joe
I love. He's never satisfied. We're gonna be a million
years old trying to raise money for anti nuclear utilities. Gentlemen,
I want to thank you very much. Indian Point is closed,
and that is due in large part to the work
that each of you have done. My thanks to all
three of you for doing this show. I'm very grateful.
Thanks a lot like wonderful to told to you. Thank you,
(42:53):
Thank you for the work you did too. Thank you
all very much. Thank you. Hall Galley is the president
of Hudson Riverkeeper. My thanks to him, Richard Webster and
Joe Mangano for their time and their dedication to this
long fight. Indian Point has closed, but there are still
(43:13):
nine three other nuclear reactors still operating in the United
States and more than four others around the world. We're
produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donohue, and Zach McNeice. Our
engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing.
Is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.