Indian Point Made Men

(www.nuclearclown.com)

It's 2013. Indian Point's reactor 2 license has expired and it is operating illegally, because just like Vermont Yankee, the NRC hasn't renewed its license. Why? Because it can't, and yet, Entergy keeps these plants running despite the will of the people in hosting communities whose lives are most at risk, in our case New York City and Fairfield County.

The Vermont legislature voted 24-6 to decommission the Yankee nuclear power plant. Despite this overwhelming vote in favor of shutting down the plant, Entergy and the NRC keep the reactor running, in flagrant disregard for the democratic process. The law does nothing.

In New York, Indian Point lost its water permit when the Department of Environmental Conservation revoked it a couple years ago. It shouldn't be operating at all. Entergy has managed to keep it all in limbo in the courts.

The lawyers on both sides benefit from this, because that's what lawyers do to get paid, just like divorce lawyers do. The longer it goes on, the more money they make, both parties get sucked into a bottomless vortex of inane legalities draining us of common sense.

Then a group of anti-nuclear organizations out West managed the impossible. They won a legal battle to stop the NRC from licensing or relicensing any new or old nuclear power plant until the age old brain twister problem of storing waste on site was remedied.

The moratorium didn't stop anything, instead of rubber stamping old plants, the law backfired as the NRC simply used it as a pretext to allow all nuclear plants to keep operating at perpetuity way past their due date, without a renewed license until the waste issue was solved, an issue mind you, which hasn't been dealt with since the dawn of the nuclear age!!!

So what's going on. Simple really, and that might be why so few people dare challenge this status quo. The unions are all powerful! In other words, the Teamsters... the mob! All these workers are lied to by their bosses, who collect their dues, living fat on the hog with corporate thugs.

For every job the nuclear power industry gives a boilermaker, a dozen lucrative jobs are created in the solar energy industry providing the same amount of electricity. And yet, believe it or not, it's not until last year that the electrical unions started awarding solar installer certifications to their members!

I think a WTF is in order.

In the meantime, back at the ranch, Cuomo who keeps saying he wants to shut down Indian Point, spends all his time with the No Fracking crowd. He's already given them a two year breathing period, so pumping poisons into the ground isn't a burning issue for New York right now.

Yoko and her son Sean should divert their ample resources to tackle the most pressing problem at hand, that we're all living in the shadow of another potential disaster, which could spell an end to the fashion district! Artists Against Fracking should rename itself Artists Against NUKES and Fracking!

Do you realize that despite the many small events hosted over the years by Riverkeeper, ABC Home, Deepak Chopra, Donna Karan, etc... to discuss the future of Indian Point with those who have the most to lose, New Yorkers, there still hasn't been a big shut down Indian Point celebrity benefit gala in Manhattan, like ever?

Then we find out the Creative Coalition, an organization once founded by the likes of Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin, both on the record as opposed to nuclear power, is allowing the marketing executive for the Nuclear Energy Institute to host their benefits?

Can I hear another WTF, please?

Let's face it, if Governor Cuomo wanted to shut down Indian Point tomorrow, he could do it with the stroke of a pen, just like he passed those new gun laws. It's what Governors do! He could call in the National Guard and block the entrance to the gates, telling all the workers to go home. Except a nuclear power plant isn't like a coal plant, you just can't shut the door. You have to babysit that thing for decades!!!

You know that dumb science fiction show Revolution on television, where all the electricity goes out? What makes me crazy is the writers refuse to deal with the real life consequences of such an event. All nuclear power plants would melt down without cooling systems! We'd all be dead!

There is a certain madness at play here, some kind of irony, that we would make ourselves so vulnerable to natural disasters or human error. Faced with the absurdity of the situation, sit on our hands and do nothing to prevent the inevitable, just like we did with the Twin Towers... everyone knew that sooner or later it would happen, that it was just a matter of time before some asshole would fly a plane into them... we got two!

It's time for Cuomo, Riverkeeper, all the politicians, celebrities, scientists and activists involved in this fight to jam the nail in Indian Point's coffin. You can't do that without a big splashy event in the media capital of the world. Why this hasn't happened yet boggles my mind... What else can I do but bitch?

Shut Down SDIPN Now!

(wrong approach!)

Professional New Yorkers have nowhere to turn if they want to shut down Indian Point! The only New York City based organization working on the issue is so profoundly anti-capitalist it prevents businesses, especially green businesses, from joining. It's time for a new, green business friendly group to emerge.

Entergy, the company which owns and operates Indian Point, funds powerful pro-relicensing business associations in the Hudson Valley, like the Business Council of Westchester and the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance. Without similar strong green business coalitions opposing the relicensing, Entergy controls the political process. 

The first meeting of Shut Down Indian Point Now! was held March 28th 2011 at Green Spaces, the entrepreneurial collective on Broadway. It was spearheaded by Rosie Tovi, a figure skating champion, who had launched a facebook page and website.

People started walking out when the radical left overpowered the meeting by wanting to exclude businesses from the organization. In essence preventing solar companies, LED companies, organic farmers, eco-friendly stores, etc... from joining the organization, insulting the green business professionals in attendance.

Many came from the New York chapter of the Green Party and Time's Up which had already been organizing shut down Indian Point protests throughout the City, but also use the issue to promote their own narrow socialist agenda.

They label sustainable fashion and green beauty companies as "sexist" which is not conducive to enlisting the enthusiastic participation of such companies, who are otherwise quite supportive of our effort.

Rosie Tovi quit. She kept the facebook page and website she designed to herself. The remaining members created a new website and facebook page, with the same name, which is why there are now two different Shut Down Indian Point Now groups in New York.

The splintering of the shut down Indian Point community in Manhattan over this issue is costing the movement to shut down Indian Point precious time and resources.

Riverkeeper and Clearwater, have also not worked to form a green business association against the relicensing of Indian Point, leaving the road wide open for Entergy to influence the political process.

Green Drinks, a popular host of social networking events, held promise if members could be reached and organized. Instead it has played host to ConEd representatives touting energy efficiency at the expense of any mention of Indian Point. In fact, many attending Green Drinks now in New York, Weschester, and Connecticut, work for the utilities.

Large trade events like Go Green Expo and Green Festival were shunned by Shut Down Indian Point Now for green washing rather than used as an opportunity to gain more support, recruit volunteers and gain sponsors.

My own organization Rock The Reactors, which since 2006 has brought wide attention to the dangers of Indian Point, producing over 100 intervention papers with FUSE USA, is penalized by Shut Down Indian Point Now for selling t-shirts, promoting LED lighting, and partnering with soft drink and nutrition bar companies.

It's time we change all this, bring the shut down Indian Point movement to those who can really make a real difference, New York City green business professionals!

Do we want to shut down Indian Point or do we want use the Indian Point issue as a means to promote a radical feminist agenda? Can't do both and be successful I'm afraid. 

Why Is Indian Point Still Open?

- Michael Leonardi

Indian Point is still open because of the sheer madness of a system propped up by the machinations of an Industry that finances the political bureaucracy and keeps organized labor as a parasitic appendage that cares about nothing more than paychecks. It is still open because the most powerful organizations that say they want it shut down are compromised and their leadership and members unwilling to come out of their elitist comfort zones to really do what it takes to inform and galvanize the masses into shutting down New York City with a mock evacuation that would take say a week.

It is still open because of the taxpayer subsidies to Entergy and the fact that too many stupid people have been drinking the radiaoactive Kool Aid that convinces them that Nuclear Energy is "Safe. Secure. Vital." It is still open because too many well meaning people in a position to get it Shut down are too fucked up and embroiled in their own personal soap operas to be able to effectively engage with reality.

- Gloria Albasi

Due to a lack of serious education on energy issues in this country, the general population is perhaps ill-equipped to take a step back and look at the Big Energy Picture? While nuclear power plants were once thought to be the future of energy, we have since learned the risks far, far outweigh the advantages. If more people understood the nuts and bolts of why the risks are so great, more citizen advocacy might have already led to Indian Point's 'closure'. Instead, a general malaise or ignorance in this area has allowed it to stay open.

Dr. Helen Caldicott might suggest that Indian Point is still open because a nuclear reactor meltdown has not yet occurred in the USA. She expressed at Columbia University recently that some international nuclear power experts fear that only when an American reactor experiences a meltdown, will the US seriously implement a countrywide plan of phasing out nuclear reactors. And that the world might then follow suit. A frightening thought.

- Andrea Kalkstein Lieberman

Indian Point is still open because the feds want it that way. any more questions?
Indian Point is still open because the federal gov't has a need to nuke new yorkers?
Indian Point is still open because Entergy, the feds, their $$$ billions and minions have the POWER.

- MaryEllen Marucci

Because the Attorney General will not ask the hard question. Proof of how the ISO manipulates what type of power gets bought.

After Fukushima, I contacted the Coalition Against Nukes facebook community about Millstone suggesting more focus on Indian Point. Millstone would be much harder to shut down since its surplus power is used by the military bases, nuclear sub base, Electric Boat and other military contractors. Also many of the residents are used to a military focus to their economy.

Before the first CAN rally in NY, I called the NY AG office, as my conscious was bothering me. I could not remember if Indian Point was built at the same time as Haddam Neck (aka Connecticut Yankee) where they falsified earthquake analysis because they did not know at that time how the special metals used in the spent fuel racks would behave. The people doing the analysis substituted the behavior of what they assumed was a comparable metal. Haddam Neck was closed early because the corporation (Northeast Utilities) did not want this public, and to go for an extension of life for that plant would have required at that time a full public hearing.

So thinking that Indian Point would be one of 16 or more plants built around the same time as Haddam Neck, I called and spoke to a woman within AG immediate office. I told her what I wrote above, and asked if she knew when the seismic studies were done. She said there were no seismic studies! I said then "What are you waiting for, shut it down now! Get an injunction and shut it down!" There was silence at the other end and and then I said, "Are you worried about where the power is going to come from?" She agreed that was their concern.

I then suggested that the AG go after the Power Pool (ISO) and get their records to see how they manipulate the purchases to prove that IP is a necessary part of the mix. She thought that would be a good idea. I do not know what NY AG is doing, but I do not think he has gone after ISO. It can be the state is hesitating because certain industries suck the grid when usage is low and they do not want to be cut off from their free or cheap power. I suspect it is both the military and nuclear industry that is the end user of this surplus. Along with other industrialists tied to the same industrial, military, sickness industry.

- Barbara Warren

Indian Point is still open because this country is in denial about the seriousness of the Fukushima catastrophe. The only regulatory body allowed to deal with safety issues in this country, the NRC, is in denial about the significance of the danger for the US. The NRC was largely captured by the nuclear industry and is functioning as if it was a PR firm, doing damage control not by increasing safety, but by controlling the media messages.

Protecting Entergy and other industry participants has clearly become more important than the safety of twenty million people. Indian Point will not be closed until people rise up in their outrage and demand more accountability from their elected leaders and a REAL SAFETY AGENCY that can see danger and act accordingly.

- Well, as for myself, I think that as long as the Buchanan/Peekskill hosting community itself kowtows to Entergy by naming its PR director grand marshal of their St. Patrick's Day parade, allowing Entergy to lavish local arts and medical institutions with millions of dollars in annual donations, it will be impossible to pry neighborhood residents away from its dirty cash addiction.

If you'd like to contribute something constructive to this conversation, please comment below, thank you.

Why does the New York Post hate LEDs?

Over and over again, almost every other day, some NYPost writer pens an editorial about the incandescent bulb ban, lambasting fluorescents, and never mentioning a single thing about LEDs! Now why is that?

Well the answer is simple really. The NYPost, Murdoch & Bloomberg, are in bed with the utilities, with ConEd and with Entergy! They know that LEDs have the potential to make the Indian Point nuclear power plant an obsolete pile of junk destined to be thrown on the heap of history!

Bloomberg got a chill down his spine a few years ago when his staff made him realize that his promotion of LED lights for bridges and tunnels, for the Christmas tree in Rockefeller plaza, for the ball that comes down on Times Square every New Year's Eve, in fact spelled the death throes of old and dirty power plants. That suddenly, new lighting technology, allowed us to do a lot more with a lot less.

That's what you call a disruptive technology, a technology that ultimately displaces workers, makes their jobs no longer required, puts them in the unemployment line. So Bloomberg cooled down the rhetoric, now there's little mention of LEDs when the ball comes down at midnight, or the tree gets lit. These events are no longer used to promote energy efficiency, because God forbid we don't want the public to become too energy efficient, or we'd have to shut down Indian Point, as an unnecessary terrorist risk!

So the NYPost lies about there being no other alternative to incandescent except fluorescent. The NYPost doesn't tell you that LEDs pay for themselves in less than a year from the electrical savings on your utility bill. The NYPost doesn't tell you how beautiful LED light is, and that China is in the process of lighting the entire planet with LEDs, and that America, once again, has missed the boat because of the greed of a few dying oil, coal and nuke tyrants who are finishing their miserable lives in Greenwich, Westchester and Hampton mansions!

Few years ago, the NYPost thought it could buy into the green consumer movement, so it agreed to become the official sponsor of the GoGreen Expo, printing a beautiful 12 pages program insert, with Tommy Lee on the cover pumping his new show on the Planet Green channel. Entergy saw this as an opportunity to park a dozen pedicabs outside the Hilton Hotel wrapped in advertising promoting Indian Point as clean and green and the solution to global warming.

I yelled at the drivers so loud, they said they didn't have a choice or they'd lose their jobs. They didn't come back the next day, told their bosses they didn't want to be subject to that kind of verbal abuse again! Sometimes it pays to be adamant about what you believe.

The NYPost, which is the paper of record of New York City, should know better. It's there to tell us good juicy gossip tidbits, to tell us what CondeNasty was kept out of a fashion show, what celebrity gave to what charity, who got murdered in the most atrocious ways! It's not there to perpetuate the myth that Indian Point doesn't put us at risk each and every single day! The NYPost needs to break its sick editorial relationship with Entergy, and realize New Yorkers don't buy into the lies any more, and they want their NYPost to stand up for what's right!

Instead of kicking energy efficient lighting down the road, claiming losing our right to buy incandescent bulbs, which are destroying the air we breathe with excessive consumption of oil, coal and nuclear fuel... It should be writing about the National Defense Authorization Act and how that is REALLY going to affect our freedoms.

The National Guards should be retrofitting neighborhoods and bases with LEDs, not train with Homeland Security to indefinitely incarcerate US citizens in concentration camps without a trial for advocating energy independence! Whose side are you on NYPost?

New York, don't let Murdoch and Bloomberg dictate your energy future, don't let them take away the love and joy of reading all the fun stuff on Page Six. Don't let them kill your guilty pleasure. Fight to bring the NYPost back from the brink, yank it from the evil clutches of the shadow world.