Interesting. You can see the building from the beach and I always wondered what's inside. And while it's the only (decommissioned) nuclear power plant on Long Island, it's not the only nuclear reactor. There was also the High Flux Beam Reactor at BNL that was decommissioned in the 90s:
This video about Shoreham was my entry into the Proper People's channel. If you like this kind of abandoned structure exploration, I recommend checking out their other videos.
I grew up there. I was maybe 14 so I have some memory of how worked up the community was. I remember people talking about building a bridge to CT since there would be no other way to get people off the island. It was such a fierce time then, nothing compared to nowadays about seemingly anything though.
Not mentioned, but later on a gas turbine was built on site with some of the existing transmission infrastructure, and there’s also the Cross Sound Cable there, coming over from New Haven and connecting NYISO and ISO-NE.
Possibly not mentioned because some of the adjacent site is still very much used due to those facilities, making it even easier to be caught trespassing.
If you want to see the inside of another nuclear plant that New York decided to turn off, Radioactive Drew has a good tour of Indian Point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJSH1_GH1HQ
The overriding impression I get is that the whole facility is complicated. There are lots of processes in place, and lots of very trained people required to keep it all running. The size and complexity of the control rooms for example, but also the inevitable maintenance and inspection of all the piping etc. Even the details of the cleanup (checking each store foot, grinding surfaces etc.)
I've recently been on a train in Europe and I saw solar panels and wind turbines everywhere. And what's striking by comparison is the lack of people or extraneous construction. They're just solar panels, or wind turbines. They're easy to install, easy (read cheap) to maintain, and are mostly just left alone to do their thing.
If I had a $100b to invest then solar, wind, even battery, is much more attractive than the time, complexity, uncertainty, running cost etc of nuclear. Not to even start on cleanup issues.
I get the base-load issue. But even there current storage is more attractive. And investing in future storage technology seems like a better return.
The argument against nuclear (fission, and even more so fusion) is purely financial. We can nimby and worry about the radiation but ultimately nuclear doesn't happen because financially its a dead end.
As an aside, and as a life-long Long-Islander, it has long been considered an open-secret (whether it's true or not) by many that Cold Spring Harbor Lab has a small nuclear reactor somewhere on site.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 45.2 ms ] threadIntuitive, readily interpretable at a glance, spatially oriented (instead of tucked behind layers of tabs and recursive settings).
https://www.bnl.gov/hfbr/
https://www.bnl.gov/hfbr/hfbr-complex.php
Possibly not mentioned because some of the adjacent site is still very much used due to those facilities, making it even easier to be caught trespassing.
https://i0.wp.com/nickcarr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IM...
from the article: "Originally published February 26, 2014."
I've recently been on a train in Europe and I saw solar panels and wind turbines everywhere. And what's striking by comparison is the lack of people or extraneous construction. They're just solar panels, or wind turbines. They're easy to install, easy (read cheap) to maintain, and are mostly just left alone to do their thing.
If I had a $100b to invest then solar, wind, even battery, is much more attractive than the time, complexity, uncertainty, running cost etc of nuclear. Not to even start on cleanup issues.
I get the base-load issue. But even there current storage is more attractive. And investing in future storage technology seems like a better return.
The argument against nuclear (fission, and even more so fusion) is purely financial. We can nimby and worry about the radiation but ultimately nuclear doesn't happen because financially its a dead end.
how does that work? sounds like a lot.