New York – Manhattan and the Bronx would be uninhabitable if the accident-prone Indian Point nuke plant suffered a Chernobyl-like disaster, an environmental group charged Monday.
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A massive radiation release similar to the 1986 catastrophe in Ukraine could also contaminate Brooklyn and chunks of Queens and Staten Island, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“The more you learn about Indian Point, the more you know it must close,” said Robert Kennedy Jr., a senior attorney at NRDC. “It’s too old, it’s near too many people, and it’s just too vulnerable to fire, earthquake and attack.”
The doomsday scenario comes as political titans clash over the aging plant 24miles north of the city, which sits on an earthquake fault, and has been hit by radiation leaks and at least two fires since 2007.
“An accident at an Indian Point reactor on the scale of the recent catastrophe in Japan could cause a swath of land down to the George Washington Bridge to be uninhabitable for generations due to radiation contamination,” NRDC says.
It could also require the sheltering or evacuation of up to 5.6 million New Yorkers, the report says.
The company said an earthquake paired with a tsunami couldn’t happen at upriver Indian Point. It also said the primitive graphite reactor at Chernobyl had nothing in common with the multiple safeguards deployed at Indian Point.
I have my iodine pills ready….
Dont forget about what a Terrorist attack on Indian Point can create.
The main concern is that significant quantities of highly radioactive material that are stored in pools of water outside the primary containment structure. These cooling pools are out in the open unlike the reactor core which is surrounded by a concrete structure.
Im Hashem Lo Yishmor Er….
oy vey ……hashem yeracaim……loi olaynu
Fear-mongering stupidity.
Indian Point will NEVER suffer a Chernobyl-like disaster. If anything it would be like 3 Mile Island…
& if the sky fell in over NY, Brooklyn would be uninhabitable for years to come also
Kennedy weakens his case when he uses implausible scenarios. Indian Point is not 100% safe (nothing is) but it isn’t a Fukashima or Chernobyl. If a tsunami takes out Buchanon, NY then NYC will have other problems. Closing Indian Point won’t eliminate the problem (even shut down, the radioactive materials are still present) and the loss of its electricity production would hurt the area: like it or not, the City and surrounding Counties rely on electricity—try a day or two with no electricity in your home and office.
Glad Bin laden didn’t think of it before 911.
NYC is overcrowed, maybe it would help reduce the overcrowding issue and lower rent prices.
I’m confused. Much of Manhattan is already uninhabitable. Bloody expensive, too much traffic, too little parking.