PEEKSKILL – Representatives from environmental advocacy groups came together in a waterfront park on the Hudson River near Peekskill Tuesday to present the findings of a new study that examined the potentially catastrophic effects that a disaster at Indian Point could have on the region’s drinking water.

The new report from Environment New York states that over 11 million people’s water supply could be lethally affected by radioactive contamination released from Indian Point.

Eric Whalen, field organizer for the group, called the plant’s location “the most dangerous position” of any nuclear power plant in United States today.

“People in New York are overwhelmingly opposed to nuclear power,” Whalen said.  “They realize that we don’t need nuclear power, we don’t need radioactive waste, and we don’t need the risk of a catastrophic accident that could pollute our water supply or harm people directly.”

Phillip Musegaas, Hudson River program director for Riverkeeper, Inc., said that Indian Point, located just 34 miles from Times Square, has a “long history of safety problems and accidental shutdowns, water leaks, contaminating” the Hudson.

He said that the population at risk from an accident at Indian Point is twice as large as the next American region endangered by a nuclear power plant.

“If you had a large release of radiation, and the wind was blowing from the north down towards New York City, you would potentially have to evacuate Manhattan island and the five boroughs.”  

Whelan, left, and Musegaas

The lessons from the unprecedented nuclear disaster in Japan last year, were that “a hurricane, a storm, an earthquake that cuts off electrical power to a nuclear power plant, shuts off power to run the pumps and other safety systems.”  While they have backup power at the site, he said there is “a very short time window before the fuel in the reactors and the fuel in these spent fuel pools overheats and begins to melt.  That’s what we saw in Fukushima, and what happened in Fukushima can happen here,” Musegaas said.

But, Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi said Indian Point was designed to withstand far more than the region has ever experienced.

“When they built these plants, they looked at the worst that could happen and built to a margin well above that,” Nappi said. “Unfortunately, at Fukushima, they did not design those plants to withstand the worst tsunami that that area had ever experienced,” he said.

Recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Homeland Security Commissioner Jerome Hauer cited Indian Point as the main potential terrorist target outside the five boroughs.

Musegaas shares his concern, saying that the report from the 9/11 commission definitively stated that Al Qaeda has already specifically considered attacking the Peekskill plant.