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Cuomo Confirms Deal to Close Indian Point Nuclear Plant

The Indian Point nuclear power plant, about 30 miles north of New York City, plans to shut down both of its operating reactors by April 2021.Credit...Uli Seit for The New York Times

The Indian Point nuclear power plant north of New York City has been supplying low-cost electricity to the metropolitan area for more than 50 years. But to hear Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo tell it, New Yorkers will hardly miss Indian Point.

Mr. Cuomo announced on Monday that the state had reached an agreement with the plant’s operator, Entergy, to shut it down by April 2021. He minimized the effects the closure would have on the power grid, electric bills, workers and the regional economy.

In his State of the State address in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Cuomo characterized the deal as a hard bargain he had driven to rid the region of a “ticking time bomb” less than 30 miles from Midtown. He said the state would bear no costs in the shutdown or decommissioning of the plant’s two operating nuclear reactors.

“I have personally been trying to close it down for 15 years,” said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat. He added that the proposed closing “eliminates a major risk, provides welcome relief, and New Yorkers can sleep a little better.”

An Entergy executive said the company had financial motives in making the decision. Still, other company executives and energy experts were left wondering how the state would replace the plant’s capacity of 2,000 megawatts, or about one-fourth of the power consumed by New York City and Westchester County. The state will have to do that while trying to meet Mr. Cuomo’s goal of having renewable energy account for half of the electricity delivered by utilities in New York by 2030.

“There is currently not enough carbon-free energy in the pipeline to replace Indian Point,” said Robert Freudenberg, the director of energy and environmental programs for the Regional Plan Association. “We feel that now the most urgent priority is that the state take all the steps necessary to ramp up the state’s renewable energy supply.”

Mr. Cuomo said the state would invest in wind farms and other renewable energy sources and add transmission lines to carry hydropower from Quebec.

Bill Mohl, the president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities, said “there’s a practical challenge there of replacing” the power generated by Indian Point. But he said Entergy had agreed to close the plant in four years because the growing supply of less expensive natural gas had made nuclear power less profitable.

Mr. Mohl said the company had spent $200 million over the past decade battling New York State over the renewal of licenses to operate the reactors. The state’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and Riverkeeper, a nonprofit environmental group, joined the governor’s office in challenging the renewals and permits that Entergy needed to keep the Indian Point running.

In his speech, Mr. Cuomo thanked Mr. Schneiderman for his office’s efforts in negotiating the settlement with Entergy. The agreement involves the withdrawal of the state’s challenges and is expected to clear the way for Entergy to renew the licenses with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Mr. Mohl said Entergy intended to shut one of the reactors by April 2020 and the other by April 2021. (A third reactor at Indian Point, the first to operate there, was shut down in 1974.) But he said the company planned to seek renewals of the licenses until 2024 and 2025 in case the operator of the state’s power grid determined that the plant must keep running longer to ensure reliability.

Mr. Mohl disputed any suggestion that Entergy had been pressured into agreeing to the shutdown, repeatedly asserting in an interview that the decision was made for economic reasons.

“We certainly respect the governor,” he said later at a news conference. “He’s entitled to say what he wants to say. We know what the facts are, and the facts are we made this decision based on the economics of the plant.”

Entergy, which is based in New Orleans, has been withdrawing from nuclear power generation in the North and focusing on its regulated utility business in the South. Mr. Mohl said the company would provide incentives to the workers at Indian Point to stay on through the shutdown. The company will offer displaced workers the chance to relocate to one of the company’s other facilities.

State officials said the impact on ratepayers would be negligible, adding that the governor’s office had estimated that, at most, the proposed shutdown would add $3 a month to electric bills in the New York City area. Utility customers in the city already pay rates that are higher than anywhere in the United States, except Hawaii.

James T. Slevin, the president of Local 1-2 of the Utility Workers Union of America, which represents about 350 workers at Indian Point, said: “Indian Point provides clean, affordable energy in abundance, which helps stabilize rates for ratepayers. New Yorkers are going to get hit hard in their pocketbooks when this shakes out.”

Local and county officials in Westchester complained that they had been excluded from the discussions between the state and Entergy and said that they had expressed concerns about the potential loss of jobs and tax revenue in their communities. The plant employs nearly 1,000 full-time workers; about 550 are union members.

A state official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the issue said there would be time to adjust to those losses. He said Entergy estimated that its work force would shrink by about 20 percent, or about 200 jobs, in 2021 and again in 2022. After the shutdowns, about 190 workers would stay on for the decommissioning process, he said.

Decommissioning, which can take decades, involves dismantling reactors and removing the used fuel from them. That fuel is stored in casks until it can be safely removed from the site. The fuel from the reactor that was shut down in 1974 has been stored at Indian Point since the mid-1970s.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: New York Reveals Deal to Close a Nuclear Plant. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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