Evacuation Plan Is Approved for New York Nuclear Plant
campaign to close the Indian Point nuclear power
plant over fears of a catastrophic terrorist attack suffered a major blow
yesterday when the federal government endorsed emergency evacuation plans for
it, asserting that the public would be safe.
For years, a band of antinuclear groups and elected officials have tried to close the plant, which is north of New York City in a more densely populated area than any of the nation's 66 other nuclear plant sites. The effort gained momentum after the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001, when it was learned that one of the hijacked jets had flown close to the plant on its way to the World Trade Center and that troops had discovered diagrams of unspecified nuclear plants in Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan.
Since then the plant's opponents have focused their attack on the emergency plan, which details how people living around the plant would be notified and evacuated if necessary.
Each plant is required to have an emergency plan as a condition of its license, and local governments are asked to participate in the process. But this year Westchester County, where Indian Point is, refused to submit its plans, saying federal guidelines for such an evacuation did not take into account a large release of radiation that could result from a terrorist attack.
That strategy has inspired similar challenges to nuclear plants in other parts of the country, and nuclear industry executives said they expected that the government's ruling yesterday would help forestall those efforts.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the Indian Point evacuation plan just hours after receiving a report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency endorsing it. The commission declared the plan "satisfactory" and said it provided a "reasonable assurance of adequate protection" in a nuclear emergency.
Although the commission rarely overrules the emergency management agency, the swiftness of its decision surprised both opponents and advocates of the plant, which sits along the Hudson River in Buchanan, a village 35 miles north of Times Square.
A spokesman for the nuclear commission said it had been in close contact with FEMA for months and believed that the public needed to know the government's position as soon as possible.
Both the commission and the emergency management agency, in an apparent bid to placate critics, said an emergency drill next year would include "a terrorist scenario."
The fight to close the plant set off a bureaucratic tussle among federal,
state and local governments and a public relations war that has included
advertisements calling the plant a "weapon of mass destruction."
The two camps have debated how or if Indian Point's two active reactors, whose 2,000 megawatts are a major source of power to New York City and its northern suburbs, could be replaced. And they have argued over whether, for example, a plane crashing into the reactors would cause a major leak that would harm thousands, sow panic and tax authorities' ability to evacuate people.
Several members of New York's Congressional delegation, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Representative Nita M. Lowey, disputed the government's findings yesterday and promised hearings and legislation that would give local communities a greater say in planning.
Ms. Lowey, whose district includes Indian Point, called FEMA's decision "bewildering," adding, "I am disappointed that the N.R.C. chose not to take a close look at the facts and instead rubber-stamped the FEMA decision."
Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper, an environmental group fighting the plant, said the release of the decision on a Friday afternoon suggested that the government was trying to sneak through "an unpopular decision."
Opponents of the plant have vowed to continue to fight for its closing by putting pressure on elected officials, including President Bush and Gov. George E. Pataki, to reverse the commission's decision. A legal challenge in court is possible, but a leading critic of the plant, State Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, Democrat of Westchester, said such a case might be difficult to win because the courts have been reluctant to interfere in federal administrative decisions.
Entergy officials said they considered the commission's decision final, though the company vowed to help the counties and state improve the plans. "It has never been a plan that just sits on the shelf," said James F.X. Steets, a spokesman for Entergy. But, he added, "I think people in the community can be reassured that the plan we said all along is a good one and can protect the public safety has now been endorsed by both the N.R.C. and FEMA."
The battle over the evacuation plan began in the late 1970's but was renewed after the terrorist attack in 2001, when plant opponents found they had leverage in the information that the four counties surrounding the plant are asked to provide the federal government every two years. All four counties initially refused to provide that information to the state, but all except Westchester eventually did. The state in turn told federal officials it could not act without participation from Westchester. That left the decision in the hands of FEMA.
The federal disaster-management agency made its determination even though Westchester County had refused to turn over details of updates made to its portion of the emergency plan. The plan, developed over several years, consists of documents, several inches thick, laying out how the counties and the state would respond to a radioactive emergency at the plant ・from which bus routes and radio frequencies would be used to where residents could seek shelter.
The agency said that despite Westchester's lack of cooperation, it could make its finding because the county had participated in a large-scale emergency drill in September 2002 and had in fact updated the plan with the help of two consultants paid by Entergy.
Opponents maintain that already-congested roads and bridges would make it impossible to evacuate the 305,000 people living within a federally mandated 10-mile evacuation zone, let alone people living as far away as New York City, which they believe could be jeopardized by a large radiation leak. Panic, they contend, would force people to flee willy-nilly, clogging roads and disrupting emergency workers.
FEMA officials countered yesterday that they never expected all 305,000 people in the 10-mile zone to be evacuated in an emergency. Instead, they said, in a major leak everyone within a two-mile radius would be evacuated, and then a more limited evacuation of people in a narrow corridor downwind from the radiation could be evacuated or ordered to "shelter in place" by staying put and closing windows and ventilation systems.
In an interview, Michael D. Brown, the head of FEMA and the acting undersecretary of the new Department of Homeland Security, said population density "does not create additional challenges, other than an educational challenge of really communicating well to a denser population about what their role is."
"Sometimes, sheltering in place is the best you can do," he said, adding that education was needed because "that is not intuitively obvious."
Opponents of the plan cheered in January when a consultant hired by Governor Pataki, who faced increasing questions over the plant in his re-election campaign last year, said that the plans were inadequate and that the possibility of a terrorist attack had not been not fully addressed. Mr. Pataki urged federal officials to modify their regulations to consider terrorism, but did not take a position on whether the plant should remain open.
Yesterday a spokeswoman said the governor would not comment on whether he agreed with the nuclear commission's decision. Earlier in the day, Mr. Pataki declined to comment on FEMA's decision, saying he had not yet seen the agency's letter, though he said he agreed with the findings of his consultant, the former FEMA director James Lee Witt.
"I think the Witt report is accurate, which is why when the evacuation plan was up for certification I refused to certify it," Mr. Pataki told reporters at an event in Peekskill, a few miles from the plant. His home in Garrison, N.Y., is within 10 miles of the plant.
Entergy has vigorously defended the plant as safe and says it has taken numerous measures, including better fortifying the property and training guards, since Sept. 11, 2001, to thwart an attack. Some steps were ordered by the N.R.C. for all plants, but Entergy says it has gone further.
The N.R.C., which licenses plants, established the emergency-planning requirement as a condition of operation after the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in March 1979.
In its decision yesterday, FEMA relied on a policy called the "realism doctrine." It states that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FEMA will assess the emergency capabilities of state and local governments independent of what those governments say about their own abilities.