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The New York State Public Service Commission approved the sale of the Indian Point nuclear power facility in Westchester County. (Entergy)
BUCHANAN, NY The New York State Public Service Commission approved the sale of the Indian Point nuclear power facility to Holtec International subsidiaries.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced Wednesday the approval which was a negotiated agreement by the state, Westchester County, local governments, Public Utility Law Project, Riverkeeper, Entergy, which is the former owner of the power plant, and Holtec, the decommissioning company.
The agreement allows the transfer of the nuclear power facility to Holtec for a complete and safe decommissioning and site remediation.
A thousand plastic yellow hard hats were arrayed on fences alongside the field, a symbol of the 1,000 jobs that will be lost when Indian Point shuts down.
Friday was Indian Point s last day of generating power for Westchester County and New York City after nearly 60 years.
Around 11 p.m. workers in the control room of Unit 3 – the plant’s last functioning reactor pressed a button, shutting off the reactor for good.
The shutdown comes as Unit 3, which started up in 1976, recently set a record for days in operation. The reactor ran for 753 continuous days since it was last refueled in April 2019, a record for light water reactors.
New York has dropped its challenge to the sale of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in return for the new owner’s guarantee to keep $400 million in a decommissioning trust fund for the next 10 years.
The agreement reached Wednesday appears to resolve the state’s biggest concern with the Indian Point sale – that trust fund money could dry up during the teardown, sticking ratepayers with the tab for a cleanup expected to take at least 12 years.
The last of Indian Point’s two working reactors are slated to shut down at the end of the month, when ownership of the Buchanan plant shifts from Entergy to Holtec International, a New Jersey-based decommissioning firm.
New York drops challenge to Indian Point sale to Holtec poughkeepsiejournal.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from poughkeepsiejournal.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It s the latest flashpoint in a decades-long battle to find a home for the nation s nuclear waste and it s being waged by unlikely allies and competing interests in the hamlets north of New York City in the shadow of Indian Point s nuclear reactors and in the oil and gas fields of New Mexico.
In New Mexico, anti-nuclear groups and environmentalists have joined with the oil and gas industry in the Permian Basin to prevent Holtec from building an interim site midway between Carlsbad and Hobbs to store the nation s waste.
And in New York, local officials eager to find new uses for the Indian Point site have squared off against environmental groups who think it might be safest to keep the spent fuel there.