March 11, 2006

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Sirens Fail in Indian Point Test
Associated Press
Poughkeepsie Journal, NY
March 9, 2006

WHITE PLAINS — The emergency siren system for the Indian Point nuclear power plants locked up during a test Wednesday, was out of service for hours and had officials crossing their fingers even after it came back up.

While it was out, from about 12:45 p.m. to about 4 p.m., the area within 10 miles of the nuclear plants was without its primary means of emergency notification.

"It's an abomination," Susan Tolchin, chief adviser to Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, said during the outage. "If an emergency happened right now, we couldn't sound the sirens."

Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, owner of the plants, announced at 4:30 p.m. the system was back up.

"We believe it would work based on what we've done to this point, but we're continuing our investigation and we need additional testing," he said.

"I hope they're right," Tolchin said, adding Spano was demanding a federal investigation.

Steets said the system was taken down so experts could troubleshoot computer glitches that marred a morning test of the 156 sirens. Had there been an emergency during the outage, "we could, if needed, quickly reboot the computer and hopefully restore the system to service," he said. "We can't say for sure."

Various problems have plagued the siren system recently. In July, they stood useless for nearly six hours when power was lost to a signal transmitter and the failure went undiscovered. In recent tests, as many as 51 sirens have failed to sound.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has demanded, and Entergy has promised, a state-of-the-art system by January.