First public meeting on Indian Point's license extension coming this week

First public meeting on Indian Point's license extension coming this week
By GREG CLARYTHE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: June 26, 2007)
BUCHANAN -Members of the public will get their first chance tomorrow to learn the steps Indian Point must go through if nuclear plant officials want to extend its license to create electricity for another 20 years.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold two meetings - one at 1:30 p.m. and the second at 7 p.m. - at Colonial Terrace, a catering hall in Cortlandt, to lay out the agency's highly technical relicensing process in every day language.
"It's the perfect opportunity for the public to learn the issues that we're going to be dealing with," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan, who arrived in the Hudson Valley yesterday with some of the two dozen agency experts expected to participate. "The timing couldn't be better because we're still reviewing the application license renewal to see if we will accept it."
Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns and operates Indian Point, applied at the end of April to extend its license from 2015 to 2035.
Indian Point 2, the older of the two working reactors at the site, has a license to generate electricity through 2013, while Indian Point 3's license expires two years later. The company is filing for extensions for both reactors in the application, each for 20 years.
Tomorrow's meetings will not get into the substance of the application; that will be reserved for meetings likely to happen in the next few months.
The environmental group Riverkeeper asked the NRC to increase its public outreach for the 22-30 month relicensing review period and to hold as many of the meetings on the subject as possible so that local residents could participate.
"To the NRC's credit, they respected our request to have these meetings," said Lisa Rainwater, Riverkeeper's policy director. "A generic meeting is just going to explain the process in detail, but that's what the public deserves. The next meeting will be on the environmental scoping process and that's when appropriate questions can be directed on the application itself."
Riverkeeper and other environmental organizations as well as some elected officials have worked to close the nuclear reactors, which generate enough electricity to power about two million homes. Opponents generally say replacement power should come from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power.
Tomorrow's presentations will also include NRC officials who will discuss the specifics of various issues facing Indian Point, such as groundwater contamination from continuing leaks of radioactive tritium and strontium-90.
The agency will also provide information on emergency planning and the safe storage of used uranium fuel rods at the site.
Other organizations such as Riverkeeper and Clearwater were invited to staff their own informational tables, as was Entergy, Sheehan said.
There won't be much else for officials from the nuclear plant to do during tomorrow's meetings.
"We're just audience members," said Entergy spokesman Jim Steets. "We expect to make ourselves available to people who have questions about what we're doing in connection with relicensing, and we'll take the opportunity to say why we think these plants ought to be relicensed."