INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT and MIT PLASMA CENTER TOUR

Nuclear energy has never been a subject of peace and agreement. Almost every one of its aspects is extremely controversial and cause dilemmas. Indian Point Energy Center is a Nuclear power plan that was located in Buchanan New York, close to New York City and right on the bank of the Hudson River. The nuclear plant has been active since 1962 and is now owned and operated by the Entergy Corporation. Already the target of criticism and revolt, the corporation didn’t make it any easier making numerous mistakes that have caused accidents and lead to federal inspection. As with every nuclear power plant, there are pros and cons as to whether it should be active or not. Is it a safe plant that benefits us by providing energy or is it a harm that places its surroundings at risk?

Lets begin with the bad news first.

According to Yahoo, there are 17 Million Residents within 50 Miles of Indian Point, if anything were to happen to the plant that forced evacuation or released radiation it would put these people in danger and at the risk of death.

The plant also puts the area in risk of an earthquake. NY Daily News explains this, “The plant is near the Ramapo Fault line in the earth. Thus the area has a higher than average risk for an earthquake. The fault line had not yet been identified at the time the Indian Point nuclear plant was built. The ability of scientists to identify potential earthquake zones has advanced rapidly since the 1962 when Indian Point was built”.

In 2010, the state of New York declared that the outdated technology used to keep the nuclear reactors cool is in violation of the Clean Water Act. The Indian Point nuclear plant damages and contaminates the water from the Hudson River; killing life and overusing the water taken from the river.

“The world has changed” since the earthquake and tsunami that wrecked Japan’s Fukushima nuclear complex, Cuomo said. The governor of New York called for the shut down of the plant due to these risks.

The pros of the plant are almost obvious to our eyes.

Not only does it produce carbon-free electricity, which is a vital source for New York; but it also employs more than one thousand workers. It is also a price-stable energy source.

I am all for being sustainable as long as it is done correctly and safely. This nuclear power plant has had so many problems and has been shut off and on so many times, that in my eyes, it doesn’t feel very reliable. I understand that shutting it off would cause problems in providing energy for the near buy areas; but then the government should reinforce inspection and make sure the plant is being used for the purpose it was built: to provide benefits and not harms.

REFERENCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/indian-point-shuts-down-reactor-20120229-APX http://voices.yahoo.com/should-indian-point-nuclear-plant-8145276.html http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Indian%20Point%20Nuclear%20Power%20Plant http://www.safesecurevital.com/community_planning/community-contributions.html

MIT PLASMA CENTER VISITATION

This week’s class was a little different, instead of having lecture; we took a field trip to one of the country’s “Leading University Research Laboratories in the Physics and Engineering Aspects of Magnetic and Inertial Fusion” as described by MIT.

We began our visitation with a power point presentation in what seemed like a classroom or presentation room; the presentation was given by a 4^th year PhD student who is working on the project. Although it was very informative in providing us with a background on the project, I felt that he repeated a lot of what we learned in class but forgot that we were not PhD students and many times didn’t understand technical terms and explanations. To be honest, this part could have been skipped and done on the actual site. I think that we would have been more interested and maybe even understand more by actually seeing it.

Once that was finished we moved on to the actual site of Alcator Project. Through Fusion research, MIT’s Alcator C-Mod project is the world’s highest magnetic field tokamak plasma confinement experiment. The project provides research to the ITER project, which is an attempt to create clean and renewable energy through fusion.

The MIT website explains everything very clearly if you’re interested in reading more: http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/alcator/intro/info.html#solution

Unfortunately, the funds for this project have been cut off by the government and is not currently running.