DAN'S PAPERS, June 27, 2008 Page 23 www.danshamptons.com
Shoreham Reopening? The Nuclear Plant , Reported Torn Down, is Still There By Dan Rattiner A generation later, so few people remember the wild and passionate battle to stop the Shoreham Nuclear Plant that the announcement that LIPA is considering reopening it and forming an advisory committee to study the matter, passed by without even a ripple. That this story has simply passed out of the consciousness of this community (just ask 10 people — six won’t know what you are talking about) is an amazement to me. It so damaged the reputation of what was then the Long Island Lighting Company that the company got thrashed, torn apart, taken over temporarily by Governor Cuomo to stop a financial collapse that would have darkened the homes of Long Islanders and thrown this place into a deep recession, and finally, ordered the plant bulldozed to the ground. Guess what? They never did. Here is the story, in brief, of this amazing lifealtering catastrophe. In 1965, LILCO, as it was then known (the debacle was so deep that even its name got
changed to LIPA) announced that it would build three nuclear plants on the north shore of eastern Long Island. Two would be in Jamesport on the North Fork, and the third would be a little closer to New York City, in Shoreham. Long Island would be fossil fuelfree by 1970, and the most scientifically advanced community in the United States. The initial cost for each power plant would be $65 million. Furthermore, the president of
be operational not in 1970, but in 1976, and it would cost $400 million. Its total output would be 820 megawatts. They might only need one plant in Jamesport. During the next three years, construction at Shoreham proceeded by fits and starts. Not only was LILCO showing itself to be incompetent at building a nuclear plant, but the federal government kept changing the rules on what a new nuclear plant ought to look like in order not to spill active radioactivity out into the atmosphere. Occasionally, parts of the plant had to be knocked down and rebuilt entirely. On numerous occasions, entire concrete walls had to be jackhammered out. The cost would be $1 billion, then it would be $2 billion. And, it seemed, every month or two, the rates for electricity would be jacked up to handle the increased costs of building Shoreham. Soon, the date to open the plant was in 1981. By 1976, the rates paid by Long Islanders for electricity had gone through the roof. They were paying the highest rates for electricity anywhere in the United States by far. Even Con Ed executives in New York City were amazed. In addition, with all the building and tearing
On June 3, 1979, more than 50,000 protestors assembled at Shoreham, climbed fences & ran to the plant...
Dan Rattiner is the founder of Dan's Papers. His memoir, In the Hamptons: Fifty Years With Farmers, Fishermen, Artists, Billionaires and Celebrities, published by Harmony Books, is currently available wherever books are sold.
LILCO, Bob Uhl, announced that LILCO would, with all the technological resources here on Long Island, build these plants themselves. There would be no need to hire an outside firm familiar with building nuclear plants. Seven years later, in 1973, after three years of hearings, plans were approved to build the first of the three plants, in Shoreham. It would
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