Indian Point is turning out to be one of the most controversial.

In March, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and local Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) held a news conference at the project gate calling for the five-year-old decommissioning to be reversed and to refit the power plant for operation again.

A similar water release dispute is unfolding in Massachusetts, where state environmental officials have blocked discharges planned by Holtec on another decommissioning project.

In 2023, in response to Holtec's plan for release, the state of New York adopted an amendment to state law prohibiting release of radioactive materials into state waterways. Holtec sued, saying the releases—which were were made regularly during the plant's decades of operation—fell safely within U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission thresholds for safety.

Holtec, the Camden, N.J.-based firm that took over ownership and $2.4-billion decommissioning of the shuttered power plant in 2021, challenged the amended state law, saying the commission had authority over nuclear power plant safety.

In reply, attorneys for New York said the state law concerned regional economics related to the condition of the river, not safety, and therefore was not subject to the commission federal level rules.

Holtec prevailed in a decision issued last year, but the state has appealed.

On June 18, an advisory board on the plant decommissioning—consisting of state, Westchester County and town and village of Buchanan officials—was told that both Holtec and New York attorneys had requested making oral arguments to judges in the case being heard in federal court in White Plains, N.Y. A final decision is not likely for several months.

The water issue and Holtec's response have injected new uncertainty into the cleanup of radioactive materials and demolition work. The water release issue has likely delayed some work while Holtec presses on with numerous other tasks.

Matt Johnson, a Holtec regulatory manager at Indian Point, told the advisory board the last time it met that "we had some consternation over an employee's comment that we had stopped decommissioning" pending resolution of the water discharge. He reassured the board that there has "been a lot of work and it continues to be the plan to continue to complete the decommissioning." 

Of the 300 people on site, half are Holtec employees and half are "trades," Johnson said.

Tritium is a colorless, odorless isotope of hydrogen. Its weak radiation is most dangerous if ingested. Discharged regularly during the plant's normal operation, it is rapidly diluted on release.

But its post shutdown release has become a sore point with anti-nuclear activists, some of whom argue that since ratepayers no longer benefit from power generation, public waterways should not be used as a lowest-cost means of disposal.

A similar controversy over tritiated water release arose in 2024 as part of Holtec's decommissioning work at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station on Cape Cod Bay in Plymouth, Mass. Holtec told the various stakeholders that it could either treat and discharge the water, transport it before treating and discharging the water at another location, or evaporating it slowly.

All the radiation levels were well below danger levels recognized by the commission, Holtec noted. The state declined to allow Holtec to alter its existing permit to allow the water release, and while the administrative mechanism and possible lawsuit over the matter drag onward, the company is evaporating the water by venting the pools where it is held. Holtec also decommissioning is a nuclear power plant in Forked River, N.J., and is refitting for operation the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert, Mich.

State legislators amended state law in 2023 to prohibit radiological pollution or to "throw, drain, run or discharge" a radiological agent into the "waters of the state." 

The appeal in New York hinges on legal issues rather than the medical science of radiation and cancer: One is whether the state law pre-empts federal authority and another is whether the amendment about radiological discharges was motivated by economic or safety concerns.

State lawmakers who sponsored the amendment made a point of stating that the health of the Hudson River was of keen economic importance.

But Holtec argued that “every reference to economic concerns in the Senate and Assembly debates links those concerns to fears arising from perceived safety risks."

In his ruling issued late last year, Judge Kenneth M. Karas wrote the amendment is forcing Holtec to change the way it plans to dispose of the tritiated water, and "has the effect" of trumping commission decision-making on nuclear safety. Its authority, he wrote, should prevail on nuclear safety.

Although New York makes a number of arguments to the contrary, Karas wrote, "none is availing."

The appeal of his decision now awaits the oral arguments.