“Today’s earthquake underscores yet another reason why a nuclear power plant does not belong in Westchester County.”

This quote came from Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins after the tremor on Tuesday, March 10. Jenkins tried to play on fears that he, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a cabal of environmental activists have been fomenting for decades.

Indian Point, the decommissioned nuclear plant in Buchanan, they said over and over, was too dangerous to operate in a county of more than 1 million that is a primary suburb for the largest metropolis in the country.

In a previous statement Jenkins said, “Opening this plant again is a hard no.”

The facts about Tuesday’s 'earthquake' and Indian Point’s protections

Tuesday’s event was hardly an “earthquake”. Tremor even feels generous. It was registered as a magnitude 2.3 by the U.S. Geological Survey.

I didn’t even notice the rumble sitting at my desk about six miles from the epicenter.

Indian Point was just fine.

The county executive’s fearmongering is centered around the notion that the Ramapo fault zone that runs mainly through New Jersey, where most seismic activity occurs, and extends into New York and Pennsylvania, is too close to where Indian Point is situated.

On April 5, 2024 a 4.8 magnitude earthquake occurred in Tewksbury, New Jersey. It was followed by small aftershocks that week.

Indian Point was just fine.

Indian Point was designed to handle a 6.1 magnitude earthquake — at least according to Entergy, its former operator — and the Ramapo fault zone has never produced any activity even remotely close to that.

Earthquakes are measured on a logarithmic scale, so a 6.1 magnitude is 20 times more powerful than a 4.8.

If a massive earthquake were to happen, Indian Point is still at risk

What Jenkins fails to consider, or more likely chooses to ignore, is that the dangerous part of nuclear operations at Indian Point will be an issue for the Hudson Valley for the forseeable future. The spent fuel rods from the decommissioned plant will remain on the property for decades.

Indian Point used an array of systems to protect against seismic activity including automatic reactor shutdown systems that would stop the reactor in seconds without requiring an operator to initiate the shutdown.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission regularly endorsed the safety of the plant and, in its decades of operations, it never had a single serious nuclear event.

Rob Astorino, who was the Westchester County executive at the time that Cuomo insisted the plant be shut down, criticized the former governor for not undertaking a proper environmental impact study. Such a study would have proved what we now know from experience, Astorino told me. Cuomo’s plan lacked a power generation source to replace the loss of energy from shuttering the plant. This led to reliance on more natural gas at higher prices.

In his 2017 state of the state address, Cuomo claimed the increase to ratepayers' bills would be negligible. His office claimed at the time that Westchester families’ bills would go up by about three bucks per month.

Maybe I’ll ask the former governor for a bit of his book advance money to make up for that massive underestimation because I’d guess my bills have gone up about 50%.

Is this really what Indian Point opponents were aiming for?

So, the activists got their way. Cheap, clean, safe energy production is replaced by more expensive fossil fuel powered energy production that moves us in the opposite direction of what is required by the state’s Climate Leadership and Community and Protection Act, or CLCPA.

I fail to grasp the logic.

On March 6, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, R-Pearl River, whose district includes Indian Point, and Kris Singh, the CEO of Holtec International, the New Jersey company hired to decommission the plant stood in front of the shuttered plant and called for Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has said the decision to shutter the plant was “done in haste,” to reopen the plant with new nuclear technology.

At the press conference, Singh said, “It will be new nuclear at the old plant. We are going to make numerous improvements, but it will be the same power output but maybe a little more. Mabye 10% more.”

You broke it, you bought it

I’m a pragmatist and I know that Hochul and Jenkins will never reopen Indian Point. They have staked too much of their political capital to closing it down. They do, however, owe it to their constituents to have a serious, adult conversation about the energy crisis their party has put ratepayers in.

Politics are what closed the plant and they are going to double down on the flawed plan that was executed to facilitate it.

As long as Hochul and Jenkins refuse to have a conversation about reopening the plant, they own the results of its closure. That includes a massive spike in energy costs to ratepayers, increased reliance on fossil fuels and the environmental costs associated with burning them.

Trying to scare Westchester, Rockland and Putnam residents with imaginary scenarios of a disaster is the worst kind of political theater.

The only disaster associated with Indian Point was Cuomo’s half-baked plan to shut it down.

Matt Richter, a veteran Hudson Valley journalist, is local news and regional opinion manager for lohud.com and The Journal News. He can be reached at mrichter@usatodayco.com.

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