Today’s groundwater is tomorrow’s drinking water.

So warned a far-reaching 2010 report on the rising number of leaks and spills from nuclear power plants and their spreading threat to water resources – groundwater, surface water, and drinking water wells — from radioactive contamination.

Leak Now, Fix Later, published by Beyond Nuclear, investigated a series of massive leaks at nuclear plants and found that its close ties with the nuclear industry kept the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission from taking needed enforcement action to address the problem. Continue reading →

“Imagine the scene: more than 300,000 people are running and driving away from the stricken reactor along winding Westchester roads, trying to reach their children, their spouses, and their mates. Then they begin to taste a strange, metallic flavor in their mouths. The radio blasts out dire warnings, yet nobody knows what they are doing and nobody is in control.”

So writes Dr. Helen Caldicott, long-time anti-nuclear activist, in her book, Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer, in describing the scenario of a ‘Manhattan Meltdown’ at the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River, 30 miles from New York City. Continue reading →

“Indian Point spent fuel storage has about three times more radioactivity than the combined total in the spent fuel pools at the four troubled Fukushima reactors,” according to a new report, Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the U.S.: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage (Robert Alvarez of the Institute for Policy Studies).

New York State and a statewide coalition of environment and public service watchdog groups have filed legal motions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission challenging the re-licensing of Indian Point. They cite, among a list of safety hazards, the leaks and other risks presented by spent fuel storage at Indian Point. The current licenses for the plant’s two reactors expire in 2013 and 2015. Continue reading →

The long-troubled Indian Point nuclear power plant outside New York City sits on an active seismic zone and has the highest probability of core damage from an earthquake disaster of any nuclear plant in the country. (What are the odds? US nuke plants ranked by quake risk).

A 2010 report by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission – obtained by MSNBC earlier this year and published in the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Japan – updates earlier studies on earthquake risk at nuclear plants. It shows that Indian Point’s Unit 1 reactor (there are two operating reactors on the site) is the U.S. plant most at risk to reactor core damage from an earthquake disaster. Continue reading →