Entergy Corp. has hired about 1,000 contractors to assist in the scheduled maintenance-and-refueling outage for its Unit 3 reactor that was shut down this week at the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan.
The operation will cost an estimated $50 million, more than half of which will be for employee salaries. A spokeswoman for Entergy estimated it will take about a month to complete the hundreds of maintenance projects and inspections.
About 50 companies are providing contracted workers for the effort, including General Electric Co., which is headquartered in Fairfield, Conn., Siemens and Chicago Bridge & Iron Co.
- Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan. File photo
“A lot of them are union tradesmen, and they live locally,” said Patricia Kakridas, an Entergy spokeswoman. “But there are others who come from all over the nation with special expertise.”
Indian Point contains two operating reactors, one of which is shut down each year, resulting in the surge of contract workers to the area.
Deborah L. Milone, executive director of the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce, said some of the workers have short-term rental housing; others usually stay in hotels.
“If you”™re bringing 1,000 people into the community, it”™s going to have a positive effect on the local businesses,” she said. “If they”™re here for a month, they need services, they need to eat.”
Kakridas and Milone said it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how much business is stimulated during the yearly outages, but Kakridas noted in an email that the salary dollars the workers are paid will “translate to economic activity for the communities surrounding the plant.”
Bruce Prehal, manager of the Inn on the Hudson, said the hotel has been housing Entergy contractors for the annual shutdowns since Indian Point opened in 1962. This year, he estimated, there are 30 to 40 workers staying at his hotel on Main Street in Peekskill.
“Our hotel is running around 90 percent occupancy because of (the shutdown), and we would be running significantly lower without it,” Prehal said. “In fact, the Indian Point shutdown saves our winter.”
Entergy boasts that in the two years since its last refueling, Unit 3 has generated electricity about 99 percent of the time, which means the plant runs continuously except for roughly 1 percent of the time when an unexpected disruption occurs that automatically shuts the reactor down. On average, U.S. nuclear facilities run continuously 90.9 percent of the time, according to 2013 data from the Nuclear Energy Institute.
The Business Journal reported in January 2014 that a malfunctioning controller caused the Unit 3 reactor to deactivate temporarily, during which time operators replaced the faulty controller. That reactor had been running for 159 straight days before shutting down.
Indian Point”™s Unit 2 reactor”™s license expired in 2013, and the license for Unit 3 expires at the end of 2015. As of right now, Indian Point is running on an extended license until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a federal agency, considers its applications for 20-year license renewals.
Entergy also is awaiting a state hearing that is scheduled for Sept. 14 about whether the plant should be forced to close during part of the summer in order to protect migrating fish and their eggs that get sucked into the cooling system from the Hudson River and exposed to warmer water returned to the river from the plants. Entergy denies that the returned water has any effect on aquatic life.
The proposal to have seasonal shutdowns is supported by the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who in the past has called for Indian Point to be shut down entirely.
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