The company that acquired Indian Point last year with plans to decommission the former nuclear plant conducted a test of its emergency notification system Wednesday, triggering sirens in four counties for a four-minute period.
There was no emergency, though some residents of Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Putnam counties, where sirens sounded at full volume for a seemingly endless 240-second period, likely were a bit unnerved.
Holtec had announced its planned test of the Indian Point sirens days early, on Monday, telling people where and when (a half-hour window between 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m.) the noise should be expected. No public response was required.
In the event of an actual emergency, Holtec says the sirens would not signify an evacuation but instead alert the public to tune into a local EAS (Emergency Alert System) radio or TV station for important information and next steps. If you're not sure of those stations, you can find Holtec's county-by-county emergency guides and more info here.
Indian Point Energy Center is home to three nuclear power plants that operated from 1962 to 2021. Holtec International acquired the facility from Entergy Corp. in May 2021 and says it plans to complete decommissioning efforts decades sooner than had Entergy continued its ownership.
At the time of the acquisition, reports indicated decommissioning the nuclear site along the Hudson River would cost about $2.3 billion and take at least 12 years.
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Indian Point Unit 1 was permanently retired in 1974. Unit 2 didn't shut down until April 2020, while Unit 3 was closed on April 30, 2021. The latter two, which went online two years apart in the mid-1970s, were once an important source of electricity in New York City and the lower Hudson Valley.
