Fort Schuyler Magazine Spring 2020

NEW YORK CLOSES THE CHAPTER ON NUCLEAR ENERGY Maritime College alumni are on hand to manage the operation and the decommissioning.

Entergy Corp. is a Louisiana- based company that owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 MWe of electric generating capacity including 7 Nuclear Power Plants. In addition, it serves as the utility for Entergy sold Indian Point to a New Jersey subsidiary of Holtec International that has promised to cut decades off the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant. 2.9 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

INTERVIEWWITH SEAN SCOLLINS ’07 - BY BRIDGET BENDO ’96 A fter forty years of Indian Point supplying nuclear energy to the equivalent of two million homes – that is, 25% of the power for New York City and the Hudson Valley - Indian Point will be shutting down operations. The nuclear reactor Unit 2 is scheduled to cease operations by April 30, 2020, with Unit 3 following suit a year later. (Unit 1 had been decommissioned years ago, when Unit 3 came online). Nuclear Energy is a topic that is hotly debated. Is it an ignored solution that could expedite achieving green energy goals? Or is it a major disaster too

risky to allow in our backyards or within our states at all? To learn more about the process, we took the opportunity to interview an alumnus who is Shift Manager, Operations, at Indian Point, Sean Scollins ’07. Why is the plant being decommissioned? Sustained low current and projected wholesale energy prices reduced revenues resulting in Entergy seeking to exit the merchant nuclear market. Record low gas prices, due primarily to supply from the Marcellus Shale formation, have driven down power prices by about 45 percent. That, coupled with increased cost

Sean Scollins ’07

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