Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant
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The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a General Electric boiling water reactor located in Wading River, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, 60 miles east of Manhattan. The Plant was designed to produce 800 MWe. The Plant never operated commercially, but did undergo low power testing. It never produced a single kilowatt of electric power. The plant was decommisioned in 1994..
On April 13, 1965, the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) announced the Shoreham Nuclear Plant, the first and only nuclear power plant on Long Island (although there has been nuclear research and multiple research reactors at Brookhaven National Laboratory). The plant was a virtual twin to the Millstone 1 plant in Connecticut, which was completed for $101 million.
The plant was built between 1973 and 1984. Originally set in an area dominated by potato fields, by the time the plant was ready to operate the urban area had grown out to encroach on the site. Since the Emergency Planning Zones crossed both of the highways leading off the island, the populace was concerned that in the event of an accident evacuation would be impossible. After the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl accidents, public opposition to the plant rose significantly.
The plant never received a full power license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) due to the fact that New York Governor Mario Cuomo representatives did not sign the Emergency Evacuation Plan. It did receive a low power license from the NRC.
On May 19, 1989, LILCO agreed not to operate the plant in a deal with the state under which most of the $6 billion cost of the plant was passed on to the consumers. The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), headed by Richard Kessel, was created in 1986 specifically to buy Shoreham from LILCO (which it did in 1992). Shoreham was fully decommissioned in 1994.
[edit] The Grassroots Opposition
The popular movement opposing operation of the Shoreham plant was one of the most diverse, sustained and ultimately successful of the many regional coalitions opposing particular nuclear projects. Just a few of the groups involved were The Lloyd Harbor Study Group (founded when the plant was set to be built in Lloyd Harbor, near Huntington), The Long Island Farm Bureau, The Long Island Safe Energy Coalition and its newsletter Chain Reaction, Safe'n Sound with its Sound Times newspaper, the S.H.A.D. Alliance (modelled on New Hampshire's Clamshell Alliance), and the Shoreham Opponents Coalition. Strong media support came from Suffolk Life newspapers and several local weekly papers. Early and significant political backing from several town boards of eastern Suffolk Country. The Suffolk County Legislature was a prime battleground, and finally emerged in the 1980s as the most active and effective organization within the movement. (Newsday's online archives offer some historical background.) The first small anti-Shoreham demonstration took place in June 1976; the largest, in June 1979, attracted 20,000 by police estimates. (The Suffolk County Police captain in charge of estimating numbers was himself a member of an anti-nuclear group, but the figure has not been disputed.)
As discussed in Karl Grossman's Power Crazy, Is LILCO Turning Shoreham into America's Chernobyl? (New York: Evergreen/Grove Press, 1986), the delays and construction flaws that plagued the project were largely attributed to the role of organized crime, which dominated some of the labor unions involved in Shoreham. The project was also the target of a CBS Sixty Minutes probe, which aired 24 March 1985. There were many whistleblowers who emerged at various times in the long Shoreham saga.
[edit] External links
- The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant Fiasco - Big $$ Spent, Taxpayers Screwed, all Due to Irrational Fear
- History of plant and decommissioning
- Newsday article
- Shoreham article
