It's no secret that environmentalists, as well as Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have for years sought to shut down Indian Point, the 2,083-megawatt nuclear plant located 35 miles upstream of New York City. The May 9 fire at one of the plant's transformers has only made those calls more strident, with Riverkeeper, an environmental group, citing this latest incident as more proof that Indian Point is unsafe and unhealthy — at least for the fish and insect larvae Riverkeeper wants to protect.
What's odd about the reaction to this latest incident is that electrical transformers, which increase the voltage of the power generated to make it easier to transmit electricity to local utilities like ConEd, are not unique to Indian Point. All generators require transformers, whether wind, solar, natural gas or nuclear. So if Indian Point were replaced with a natural gas-fired plant on the same site, as called for by one proposal under the governor's "Energy Highway" plan, the replacement plant would need electrical transformers, too.
It is still not clear what caused the transformer to fail. It's possible that Entergy, the company that owns and operates Indian Point, did not maintain the transformer properly. The real problem is that an electrical transformer, like any other piece of equipment, can fail without warning, even when properly maintained.
It's easy to demand Indian Point be shut down, whether to protect fish or to reduce the chance of radiation exposure from a Fukushima-type tidal wave. Of course, if a 50-foot tidal wave strikes Indian Point 35 miles upstream, it will be the least of New York City's problems. It's far more difficult to address the real costs of doing so, because the electricity produced by Indian Point is not only reliable — the plant supplies as much as one-fourth of New York City's electricity in the high demand summer period — it is also cheap.
Three years ago, in a detailed 50-page report I wrote for the Manhattan Institute on the economics of Indian Point, I evaluated the alternatives to replace the electricity the plant now provides. The report evaluated both realistic alternatives, such as replacing the power with new gas-fired generation or importing electricity over new, high-voltage transmission lines — as well as unrealistic ones, such as replacing Indian Point with rooftop solar panels on Manhattan buildings, building offshore wind turbines, or simply conserving the equivalent of Indian Point's output.
But realistic or not, all of the alternatives shared one thing in common: Each would increase the average residential ratepayer's bill by $100 per year. I also estimated that a typical small business would see an increase of $1,000 per year on its electric bill. The MTA would end up paying $1 million to $2 million more per year for its electricity, which would be paid for by taxpayers and straphangers.
So by all means determine the cause of the transformer's failure. If the cause was flawed maintenance, make sure those flaws are corrected. Consider building enclosures around all of the plant's transformers to prevent any future oil spills from leaking into the Hudson. Or consider using newer transformer technologies that don't use oil as an insulator. But please, don't use a transformer fire as a convenient excuse to shut down Indian Point. Fish and insect larvae may be important, but so is New York City's electricity supply.
This piece originally appeared in the Albany Times Union.
This piece originally appeared in Albany Times Union