Day: November 24, 2016

Trump And The Iran Deal

Wed Nov 23, 2016 | 9:11 AM EST
By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin | BEIRUT
Extending U.S. sanctions on Iran for 10 years would breach the Iranian nuclear agreement, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said on Wednesday, warning that Tehran would retaliate if the sanctions are approved.
The U.S. House of Representatives re-authorized last week the Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, for 10 years. The law was first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran’s energy industry and deter Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The Iran measure will expire at the end of 2016 if it is not renewed. The House bill must still be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama to become law.
Iran and world powers concluded the nuclear agreement, also known as JCPOA, last year. It imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear program in return for easing sanctions that have badly hurt its economy.
“The current U.S. government has breached the nuclear deal in many occasions,” Khamenei said, addressing a gathering of members of the Revolutionary Guards, according to his website.
“The latest is extension of sanctions for 10 years, that if it happens, would surely be against JCPOA, and the Islamic Republic would definitely react to it.”
The U.S. lawmakers passed the bill one week after Republican Donald Trump was elected U.S. president. Republicans in Congress unanimously opposed the agreement, along with about two dozen Democrats, and Trump has also criticized it.
Lawmakers from both parties said they hoped bipartisan support for a tough line against Iran would continue under the new president.
President-elect Trump once said during his campaign that he would “rip up” the agreement, drawing a harsh reaction from Khamenei, who said if that happens, Iran would “set fire” to the deal.
The House of Representatives also passed a bill last week that would block the sale of commercial aircraft by Boeing (BA.N) and Airbus (AIR.PA) to Iran.
The White House believes that the legislation would be a violation of the nuclear pact and has said Obama would veto the measure even if it did pass the Senate.
(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, editing by Larry King)

Antichrist’s Army Grows Larger (Revelation 13:18)

Al Monitor 
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliament plans to vote Nov. 26 on a proposal to integrate the militias that operate under the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). The proposal follows a July 27 order by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to make the PMU militias a united governmental force under his direct supervision.
The PMU, a state-sponsored umbrella organization for dozens of mostly Shiite militias, has been lobbying to improve its image in the eyes of the international community by meeting with Western leaders, politicians and diplomats. PMU leaders hope their efforts will help dispel its image as a group of outlawed militias and repair its reputation with the international human rights community. Since its inception in June 2014, the PMU has been accused of human rights violations against civilians in the areas where it has been involved in fighting the Islamic State (IS).
Hadi al-Amiri, the secretary-general of the Iraqi Badr Organization, which has a Shiite military wing, has been a busy ambassador recently for the PMU. He also met with Samonet on Oct. 10 to discuss the war against terrorism and the need to provide humanitarian support for the displaced. During the meeting, Samonet said, “The PMU capabilities and victories are no secret to anyone. Iraq does not need any more ground troops, and we believe that PMU participation in the battles is an internal Iraqi matter.”
On Oct. 4, Amiri met with British Ambassador to Baghdad Frank Baker, whom he told, “The PMU obeys the orders of the commander in chief of the armed forces and will participate in the battle to liberate Mosul alongside other security forces and armed factions to eliminate IS there.”
On Sept. 29, the official website of the French Embassy in Baghdad carried the news about a meeting between Amiri and French Ambassador Marc Barety. According to the website, the men discussed the fight against terrorism, preparations for the battle of Mosul and the city’s future after liberation with regard to politics and the humanitarian and security situations. The meeting also touched on the time frame of the upcoming Iraqi elections and the security status quo.
In a video posted on YouTube, the Badr Organization quoted Barety as saying, “France supports the unity and sovereignty of Iraq and we are well-aware of the great [war] efforts” made by the PMU.
On Sept. 26, the secretary-general of the League of the Righteous movement, Qais al-Khazali, received Spanish Ambassador to Baghdad Jose Maria Ferre to discuss the PMU’s image in the media. Just last year, Khazali was known by some in the West as “Iraq’s most fearsome Shia militia leader.” The movement’s website said Ferre has promised to address his government regarding the PMU’s efforts.
Something that stands out about these meetings, however, is that they did not include the American ambassador or ambassadors of the Arab and Gulf countries that consider the PMU to be a militia affiliated with Iran and say the PMU cannot be part of the Iraqi security institution.
Yet pro-Iraqi government PMU leaders say the meetings demonstrate they have realized the importance of making overtures to the international community, instead of limiting themselves to the political environment of Baghdad and Tehran.
Iraqi Ambassador to Switzerland Majid Abdul Redha has been lobbying in international forums to rebut allegations against the PMU, considering them to be accusations against the security forces of the Iraqi state. On Sept. 21, a PMU delegation headed by Ahmed al-Asadi, a member of parliament and a PMU spokesman, visited the Human Rights Council in Geneva to deny reports about PMU involvement in abuses against civilians.
Asadi told Al-Monitor, “There are some who are seeking to distort the PMU image in the eyes of the international community. Our role now is to relay the true image of the PMU, especially to the West, because we will not allow inaccurate information and reports about our national forces to make the rounds in the media.”
He added, “We are here in Geneva to break this stereotyped image. We have met with Western diplomats and media outlets. We will not stop at this point.”
In his Sept. 23 speech during a seminar in one of the Human Rights Council halls in Geneva, Rayan al-Kaldani, a Christian PMU leader, said, “We ask the international community not to comply with the [long-running] Saudi incitement against the PMU, not to harm any of its members and to release our heroes who are detained in Austria. If Europe has failed to pay tribute or honor those who are defending it against IS, the enemy of humanity, it can at least refrain from abusing or mistreating them.”

The Nuclear Horns of Prophecy (Daniel 7-8)

 
Jeremy Bernstein
For some years I have been puzzling over the question of why some countries that want nuclear weapons succeed in building them and others don’t. As we enter what could be a new age of proliferation, the question takes on considerable importance. The US has a president-elect who has said he would repeal the Iran deal, which among other things prevents substantial uranium enrichment by Tehran for ten years, and who openly suggested during the campaign that our allies in Asia, and even the Arabian peninsula, take responsibility for their own nuclear deterrence. If, say, South Korea or Saudi Arabia began to pursue a nuclear program, how likely might they be to succeed?
History offers us a number of insights about this. Among the countries that succeeded in getting the bomb were Israel and South Africa and among those that didn’t were Libya and Iraq. It seemed to me that what the successful countries had in common was both a substantial technological infrastructure and a government that was both determined and permissive. An anecdote I once heard about the Soviet program makes the point. Stalin decided that the program might be better motivated if he appointed the much-feared Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the secret police, to direct it. When Beria decided that some of the nuclear scientists were straying off the ideological reservation he went to Stalin to complain. Stalin allegedly said to him, “You leave my physicists alone. We can shoot them later.”
Among the successful countries, the story of the Israeli-program is well known: they had a very sophisticated scientific establishment and a determined government. The situation in Pakistan is even more striking. About a half dozen physicists using rather primitive computers designed the device and a very determined government backed the production of the fissile elements. And then there is the remarkable case of South Africa.
South Africa’s interest in nuclear technology goes back to the late 1940s. It was realized that the country had a substantial supply of uranium and a large number of trained scientists. The government acquired two reactors and when it began to think about nuclear weapons, the idea was to generate plutonium for them in reactors. This was abandoned in favor of enriching uranium. South African scientists adapted a method—stationary centrifuges—that had never been used on an industrial scale: injecting Uranium hexafluoride gas at very high velocity into a tube with a sharp curve. When the gas goes around the curve the centrifugal force pushes the heavier isotope U238 out, leaving more U235—which is the fissile isotope of uranium, meaning it can be fissioned by neutrons of any energy which is what you need to make an explosive chain reaction.
From this supply of U235, the South Africans amassed enough weapons-grade uranium to produce seven nuclear devices, which were never tested. In 1989 the country abandoned the program and this material was turned over to the International Atomic Energy Agency. One curious aspect of the program was that only whites were allowed to work on it. I am always reminded of Tom Lehrer’s song on proliferation:
South Africa wants two, that’s right.
One for the black and one for the white.
In this case the whites got them all.
So what happened with the failures, Libya and Iraq? A good deal of sporadic reading has long persuaded me that one way or the other both countries had or had acquired sufficient means to pursue a program—in the case of Libya there were financial resources and in the case of Iraq both financial and scientific resources. The Libyans started with almost nothing, but the oil boom enabled them to buy what they needed. Yet both countries had leaders—Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi—whose feelings about these weapons were ambivalent and always secondary to preserving the ideology of the regime. Neither, I assumed, would have had the slightest hesitation to shoot their physicists.
Now there is an excellent new book, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons, by the Norwegian political scientist Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, that is the most detailed study of these two programs that I have seen. After reading it I think that my general conclusions were right, but the situation was much more nuanced than I had realized. The book is divided into two parts, one on each country. The Libyan story is simpler and the treatment of it is shorter so I will start with that.
One curious feature of the Iraqi and Libyan programs is that both countries had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the case of Libya, this meant that there were sporadic inspections by the IAEA. There was never much to inspect. But Libya’s membership in the NPT also meant something that I was not aware of until I read this book: the IAEA supplied instructors for courses in nuclear physics and engineering. The problem in Libya was that no one showed up for the lectures and the instructors gave up. It is an ineluctable fact that the Libyans never had the remotest chance of making nuclear weapons on their own. They simply did not have scientists with the requisite skills.
Muammar Gaddafi tried without success to buy a finished weapon from the Chinese and in the late 1990s began going to the black market to acquire the necessary technology. The primary source of this was the Pakistani proliferator A.Q. Khan. The Libyans bought a package that included centrifuges and the plans for a Chinese nuclear device that had been successfully tested in a rocket. This was supposed to be a “turn key” facility, which would require less special expertise to operate, and which would provide a direct road to nuclear weapons. But the Libyans never could get it to work. Finally in 2003 they gave up and in 2004 Kahn’s package was turned over to the CIA, in exchange for diplomatic recognition.
The situation in Iraq—where the “preemptive” US war was ostensibly fought on the presumption that there was a covert nuclear weapons program in place—was much more complicated. The Iraqis did have scientists with the necessary skills. But here the regime was an impediment. An interesting case is that of Jafar Dhia Jafar. He came from an important Iraqi family and did his scientific studies at the University of Birmingham in England. He would have liked to stay there on the faculty but was turned down and returned to Iraq. He became involved with the Iraqi nuclear program early and was one of its directors. He and his colleagues never fully understood exactly what their mission was, so when one of the secretaries accidentally wrote “Unclear Physics” on the top of a letter, it was adopted as a mantra. Saddam Hussein appointed his son-in-law to direct the program. When Hussein Shahristani, one of the leaders of the program, was arrested and tortured because it was thought that he deviated from Baathist dogma, Jafar tried to come to his defense. Jafar was placed under house arrest while still trying to direct parts of the program.
A crucial moment in the Iraqi program came on July 7, 1981, when the substantial Osirak reactor that had been supplied by the French was destroyed in a daring Israeli air raid. The Israelis already had suspicions about the Iraqi program and there had been assassinations of Iraqi nuclear scientists. (Just as there have been assassinations of Iranian scientists in recent years.) The 1981 raid is often viewed as the reason the Iraqi program was halted. My view is that it was essentially pointless. The worry of the Israelis was that the Osirak reactor was going to produce plutonium. But it is hard to imagine a reactor more poorly designed for that purpose. The fuel was highly enriched uranium—a large percentage of U235—whereas what one wants is a large percentage of U238. The IAEA was present to take possession of the U235, which could have been useful for making bombs. But after the raid the Iraqis gave up the idea of plutonium and Iraqis decided to pursue a clandestine program to enrich uranium. Needless to say A.Q. Khan tried to sell them his package. The Iraqis did not trust him and in any event were not going to use centrifuges. There were other small reactors that also used highly enriched uranium and that had not been destroyed in the Israeli raid. After the 1990–1991 Gulf War in Kuwait, the IAEA removed this uranium and none was diverted.
One may ask if we had not invaded Iraq in 2003 would they have produced a bomb? I think the answer is not obvious. Saddam Hussein’s son-in law was running the program and he had zero technological competence. He was always announcing absurd deadlines. To make him happy the scientists gave him technical reports that he could not understand. But the deeper question is, Did Saddam really want a bomb? I think sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. What he always wanted was to give the impression that Iraq might get one. In this he seems to have succeeded too well.
Which brings us to the present. Of the various countries that have been mentioned, which might be most likely to succeed? We know North Korea has succeeded. Surely South Korea and Iran could succeed. Saudi Arabia does not at present have enough of a scientific infrastructure, but with their unlimited wealth might try to buy a weapon.
The larger question is whether Trump is serious about abandoning the decades old efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. He has spoken of proliferation as being the greatest danger but does he understand what this means? Given his view if the Iran deal as somehow being financial, one has one’s doubts.
Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer’s Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons is published by Cornell University Press.

Trump And The Nuclear End (Revelation 15)

On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough passed on an intriguing piece of gossip: Donald Trump, speaking with a “foreign policy expert,” repeatedly asked “why can’t we use nuclear weapons.”
Scarborough’s claim was thinly sourced. He didn’t reveal the identity of the expert advising Trump or even where he learned the information. Information attributed to anonymous sources is inherently suspect.
But one need not rely on anonymous sources to glean Trump’s views on nuclear weapons. He has broached the subject repeatedly on the campaign trail. Several of his public comments are similar to Scarborough’s account while others are terrifying in their own way.
MATTHEWS: Well, why would you — why wouldn’t you just say, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about nuclear weapons. Presidents don’t talk about use of nuclear weapons”?
TRUMP: The question was asked — we were talking about NATO — which, by the way, I say is obsolete and we pay a dis —
MATTHEWS: But you got hooked into something you shouldn`t have talked about.
TRUMP: I don’t think I — well, someday, maybe.
MATTHEWS: When? Maybe?
TRUMP: Of course. If somebody —
MATTHEWS: Where would we drop — where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?
TRUMP: Let me explain. Let me explain.
Somebody hits us within ISIS — you wouldn`t fight back with a nuke?
…
MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.
TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?
[MSNBC, March 30, 2016]
9 Terrifying Things Donald Trump Has Publicly Said About Nuclear Weapons
On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough passed on an intriguing piece of gossip: Donald Trump, speaking with a “foreign policy expert,” repeatedly asked “why can’t we use nuclear weapons.”
Scarborough’s claim was thinly sourced. He didn’t reveal the identity of the expert advising Trump or even where he learned the information. Information attributed to anonymous sources is inherently suspect.
But one need not rely on anonymous sources to glean Trump’s views on nuclear weapons. He has broached the subject repeatedly on the campaign trail. Several of his public comments are similar to Scarborough’s account while others are terrifying in their own way.
Trump said he might use nuclear weapons and questioned why we would make them if we wouldn’t use them
MATTHEWS: Well, why would you — why wouldn’t you just say, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about nuclear weapons. Presidents don’t talk about use of nuclear weapons”?
TRUMP: The question was asked — we were talking about NATO — which, by the way, I say is obsolete and we pay a dis —
MATTHEWS: But you got hooked into something you shouldn`t have talked about.
TRUMP: I don’t think I — well, someday, maybe.
MATTHEWS: When? Maybe?
TRUMP: Of course. If somebody —
MATTHEWS: Where would we drop — where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?
TRUMP: Let me explain. Let me explain.
Somebody hits us within ISIS — you wouldn`t fight back with a nuke?
…
MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.
TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?
[MSNBC, March 30, 2016]
Trump said he was open to nuking Europe because it’s a “big place”
TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to take cards off the table. I would never do that. The last person to press that button would be me. Hey, I’m the one that didn’t want to go into Iraq from the beginning. The last person that wants to play the nuclear card believe me is me. But you can never take cards off the table either from a moral stand — from any standpoint and certainly from a negotiating standpoint.
BOLLING: Donald, I understand they are not taking the cards off the table for ISIS or Islamic terror. But when Chris expanded to Europe, what about that?
TRUMP: Europe is a big place. I’m not going to take cards off the table. We have nuclear capability. Now, our capability is going down rapidly because of what we’re doing. It’s in bad shape. The equipment is not properly maintained. There are all lot of talk about that. And that’s a bad thing not a good thing. The last person to use nuclear would be Donald Trump. That’s the way I feel. I think it is a horrible thing. The thought of it is horrible. But I don’t want to take anything off the table. We have to negotiate. There will be times maybe when we’re going to be in a very deep, very difficult, very horrible negotiation. The last person — I’m not going to take it off the table. And I said it yesterday. And I stay with it.
[Fox News, 3/31/16]
DICKERSON: They talk about the presidency and who has the finger on the button. The United States has not used nuclear weapons since 1945. When should it?
TRUMP: Well, it is an absolute last stance. And, you know, I use the word unpredictable. You want to be unpredictable.
And somebody recently said — I made a great business deal. And the person on the other side was interviewed by a newspaper. And how did Trump do this? And they said, he`s so unpredictable. And I didn`t know if he meant it positively or negative. It turned out he meant it positively.
[CBS, 1/3/16]
TRUMP: But I have to say this, there are…
HALPERIN: You’d probably be the last to use nuclear weapons…
TRUMP: Nuclear…
HALPERIN: — against ISIS?
TRUMP: — nuclear.
HALPERIN: But you’re — so you would — you would rule in the possibility of using, right, nuclear weapons against ISIS?
TRUMP: Well, I’m never going to rule anything out.
HALPERIN: Right.
TRUMP: And I wouldn’t want to say — even if I felt it wasn’t going – – I wouldn’t want to tell you that…
HALPERIN: Right.
TRUMP: — because, at a minimum, I want them to think maybe we would use it, OK?
HALPERIN: Right.
TRUMP: It’s the worst thing when we do these interviews, we — with everybody, not me…
HALPERIN: Yes.
TRUMP: — and you ask a question like that and everybody comes clean and they’re so honest. You know, we need unpredictability. The enemy, we have enemies. ISIS is a enemy. And it’s an enemy not wearing uniforms, so we don’t even know who the enemy is. You know, in the old days we’d have Japan or we’d have Germany or we’d have — they would have soldiers.
HALPERIN: Right.
TRUMP: They would be dressed, we’d be dressed, we’d know who we were fighting.
HALPERIN: Right.
TRUMP: You’d have — it was called a war.
We don’t know who these people are. The fact is, we need unpredictability. And when you ask a question like that, it’s a very — it’s a very sad thing to have to answer it, because the enemy is watching and I have a very good chance of winning and I frankly don’t want the enemy to know how I’m thinking.
[Bloomberg, 3/23/16]
WALLACE: You want to have a nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula?
TRUMP: In many ways, and I say this, in many ways, the world is changing. Right now, you have Pakistan and you have North Korea and you have China and you have Russia and you have India and you have the United States and many other countries have nukes.
WALLACE: Understood.
TRUMP: It’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them.
[Fox News, 4/3/16]
Trump had no idea what the “nuclear triad” was
HEWITT: Mr. Trump…
… Dr. Carson just referenced the single most important job of the president, the command, the control and the care of our nuclear forces. And he mentioned the triad. The B-52s are older than I am. The missiles are old. The submarines are aging out. It’s an executive order. It’s a commander-in-chief decision. What’s your priority among our nuclear triad?
TRUMP: Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible; who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important. And one of the things that I’m frankly most proud of is that in 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq because you’re going to destabilize the Middle East. I called it. I called it very strongly. And it was very important.
But we have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ball game. Frankly, I would have said get out of Syria; get out — if we didn’t have the power of weaponry today. The power is so massive that we can’t just leave areas that 50 years ago or 75 years ago we wouldn’t care. It was hand-to-hand combat.
The biggest problem this world has today is not President Obama with global warming, which is inconceivable, this is what he’s saying. The biggest problem we have is nuclear — nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon.
That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.
HEWITT: Of the three legs of the triad, though, do you have a priority? I want to go to Senator Rubio after that and ask him.
TRUMP: I think — I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.
[CNN, 12/15/15]
BLITZER: But — but you’re ready to let Japan and South Korea become nuclear powers?
TRUMP: I am prepared to — if they’re not going to take care of us properly, we cannot afford to be the military and the police for the world. We are, right now, the police for the entire world. We are policing the entire world.
You know, when people look at our military and they say, “Oh, wow, that’s fantastic,” they have many, many times — you know, we spend many times what any other country spends on the military. But it’s not really for us. We’re defending other countries.
So all I’m saying is this: they have to pay.
And you know what? I’m prepared to walk, and if they have to defend themselves against North Korea, where you have a maniac over there, in my opinion, if they don’t — if they don’t take care of us properly, if they don’t respect us enough to take care of us properly, then you know what’s going to have to happen, Wolf?
[CNN, 5/4/16]
COOPER: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?
TRUMP: Saudi Arabia, absolutely.
COOPER: You would be fine with them having nuclear weapons?
TRUMP: No, not nuclear weapons, but they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.
COOPER: So if you said, Japan, yes, it’s fine, you get nuclear weapons, South Korea, you as well, and Saudi Arabia says we want them, too?
TRUMP: Can I be honest with you? It’s going to happen, anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely. But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them.
Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons? And they do have them. They absolutely have them. They can’t — they have no carrier system yet but they will very soon.
Wouldn’t you rather have Japan, perhaps, they’re over there, they’re very close, they’re very fearful of North Korea, and we’re supposed to protect.
[CNN, 3/29/16]

Indian Point Will Contaminate The Hudson With Plutonium At The Sixth Seal

AP
Sunday, May 10, 2015 06:35PM
BUCHANAN —
“There’s no doubt that oil was discharged into the Hudson River,” Cuomo said. “Exactly how much, we don’t know.”
The transformer at the plant about 30 miles north of midtown Manhattan failed on Saturday evening, causing a fire that forced the automatic shutdown.
Cuomo revealed Sunday that even after the blaze on the non-nuclear side of the plant was quickly doused, the heat reignited the fire, but it was again extinguished.
Oil in the transformer seeped into a holding tank that did not have the capacity to contain all the fluid, which then entered river waters through a discharge drain.
Joseph Martens, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, said measures were taken to keep the oil from spreading, including setting up booms over an area about 300 feet in diameter in the water.
The cleanup should take a day or two, Cuomo said.
A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said several thousand gallons of oil may have overflowed the transformer moat.
The reactor itself was deemed safe and stable throughout, said a spokesman for owner Entergy Corp. The plant’s adjacent Unit 2 reactor was not affected and remained in operation.
The Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan supplies electricity for millions of homes, businesses and public facilities in New York City and Westchester County.
“These situations we take very seriously. Luckily this was not a major situation. But the emergency protocols are very important,” Cuomo said Saturday. “I take nothing lightly when it comes to this plant specifically.”
The transformer at Indian Point 3 takes energy created by the plant and changes the voltage for the grid supplying power to the state. The blaze, which sent black smoke billowing into the sky, was extinguished by a sprinkler system and on-site personnel, Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi said. Westchester County police and fire were on site as a precaution.
It was not immediately clear what caused the failure, or whether the transformer would be repaired or replaced. Nappi said there were no health or safety risks.
Officials did not know how long the 1,000-megawatt reactor would be down. Entergy is investigating the failure.
Cuomo said there had been too many emergencies recently involving Indian Point. Unit 3 was shut down Thursday morning for an unrelated issue – a water leak on the non-nuclear side of the plant. It was repaired and there was no radioactive release, Nappi said.
In March, Unit 3 was shut down for a planned refueling that took about a month.
“We have to get to the bottom of this,” the governor said.
Diane Screnci, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said an agency inspector was at the site Sunday and the agency would follow up as Indian Point assesses the affected equipment.
She said there was no impact on the public, and it was not out of the ordinary for a transformer to have a problem.