Owner Of New York City’s Defunct Nuclear Plant Sues The State

Holtec International says a state statute blocking routine water releases from Indian Point violates federal law.

The company that owns the shuttered nuclear plant that once provided the bulk of New York City’s zero-carbon electricity is suing the state over a law passed last year specifically to block the Indian Point power station from carrying out routine releases of treated wastewater into the Hudson River, HuffPost has learned.

Virtually every nuclear power plant all over the world releases tiny volumes of a radioactive isotope known as tritium from its cooling water into surrounding waterways. Unlike the long-lasting and dangerous radioisotopes that form during the atom-splitting process, tritium ― an isotope of hydrogen ― laces into water, making it almost impossible to extract. Luckily, tritium, which has never been linked to cancer in humans, is too weak to penetrate skin and decays quickly in 12-year half lives, so power plants spew small amounts into the environment at rates indistinguishable from what naturally occurs from cosmic rays from space or what ends up leaked into waterways via dump neon signage.

When a nuclear reactor is generating electricity, these releases are a matter of routine operation. Once those plants shut down and the utility that runs them sells off the facility to a decommissioning company, the onus falls on firms, such as Florida-based Holtec International, to obtain new permits to resume releases of tritium. That means going through a regulatory process that includes public hearings, giving Americans who visualize all radioactive waste as the scientifically absurd caricatures of green glowing goop depicted on shows like “The Simpsons” fresh cause for panic.

Last August, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed legislation “restricting discharges of any radiological substance into the Hudson River in connection with the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant.”

Holtec now says that statute violates the federal law that gave the government in Washington complete control over how radioactive materials are regulated.