Shoreham

East Shoreham is located on the northern shore of Long Island, east of the neighboring village of Shoreham. Despite its official name, East Shoreham is invariably referred to by its inhabitants as "Shoreham," while the adjoining village is often called "Shoreham Village." I visited "Shoreham" today for the second Environmental Site Assessment of the week.

"Shoreham" is also the site of the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant, a $6 billion General Electric nuclear reactor that was closed in 1989 without ever generating any commercial electrical power, the only fully licensed nuclear power reactor never to go into commercial operation. The property I looked at was immediately adjacent to the Plant.

The plant was to be the first commercial nuclear power plant on Long Island and initially had little formal opposition, as the Brookhaven National Laboratory already had multiple research nuclear reactors about 20 miles south of Shoreham. The Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) purchased 455 acres for the plant in 1965. Although within 60 miles of Manhattan, the site was sparsely populated at the time. They announced the plant would produce 540 megawatts, cost between $65 and $75 million and would be online in 1973. By 1968, LILCO increased the size of the plant from 540 to 820 megawatts.

Construction began in 1973 but cost overruns caused its estimated final cost to approach $2 billion by the late 1970s, due to low worker productivity and design changes ordered by the NRC. Organized crime was also accused of stirring problems with local labor unions.

The first anti-Shoreham demonstration took place in June 1976. On June 3, 1979, following the Three Mile Island incident, 15,000 protesters gathered in the largest demonstration in Long Island history. 600 were arrested as they scaled the plant's fences. Protests became increasingly intense following the 1979 Chernobyl tragedy.

In 1989, a deal was made to decommission the plant and pass the $6 billion construction cost to the Long Island ratepayers by adding a 3% surcharge to all electric power for 30 years. LILCO eventually merged with Brooklyn Union Gas to form the KeySpan Corporation, which in turn was acquired by British-owned National Grid two years ago. The State took over the electric utility (socialism, anyone?) by forming the Long Island Power Authority. The Shoreham site is still vacant.

In 2003, local residents objected to an $800 million proposal by American Ref-Fuel to incinerate New York City garbage brought to the Shoreham site by barges. The project did not advance. Area residents have also opposed a ferry terminal at Shoreham because of road traffic. So 45 years after the idea was first conceived, 6 billion dollars, and the takeover of the power authority later, all that remains to show for the effort is another large, spooky industrial relic, unlikely to be redeveloped any time soon.