The safety precautions at Indian Point may be worse than we'd thought. Nearly 40 percent of the nearby nuclear plant—which has been under increased scrutiny since the devastating earthquake in Japan led to a Chernobyl-level crisis around the Fukushima reactor there—has no manual fire suppression systems, like hydrants or fire extinguishers. And 63 percent of the plant is lacking in smoke, heat or flame detectors, the News reports.
Indian Point's two active reactors are divided into 275 fire zones, of which 198 lack automatic fire suppression systems, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) records from 2009. According to the News, particularly vulnerable spots include the spent fuel pool at Indian Point 3, "where radioactive and superheated fuel rods are kept cool. A spent-fuel pool triggered Japan's nuke accident."
The tabloid picked up on the troubling news from a March 28 petition by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to the NRC that argued that most of the plant's fire zones "violate minimum federal fire safety regulations."
"For years," Scheniderman said, "the NRC has looked the other way as Indian Point ignores the most basic safety standards. With nearly 20 million people living and working within 50 miles ... that's a risk we simply cannot afford."
Not that Entergy, which runs the plant, agrees. "Public safety is our No. 1 priority," said Fred Dacimo, vice president of operations. "Nothing is more important." But even so, he acknowledged to the paper the absence of fire proper protection in dozens of the reactor's fire zones, saying, "It's hard to explain that to John Q. Public."
According to Dacimo, several fire zones include large expanses of concrete and steel that can't burn while others have open space and still more hold few combustible materials.
A spokesman for the NRC, which has been reviewing Entergy's requested exemptions for the plant since 2009, tells the tabloid that it has not "identified any issues that rise to the level of an immediate safety concern." Schneiderman, for his part, responded by saying that the feds are too tight with the industry.
