Posted on 05/02/2003 9:10:44 AM PDT by WaveThatFlag
Entergy Corp., the second-largest U.S. nuclear-power generator, is facing new opposition to its Buchanan, New York, plant: Paul Tudor Jones and other hedge-fund managers are joining environmentalists who want the facility closed. Sept. 11 showed the threat of a terrorist attack on the Indian Point reactors is too great, given their location near 20 million people in the New York City region, Jones said in a speech this week before analysts and investors a block from the World Trade Center site. The plant should be shut within five years, said Jones, who manages $8 billion. Financial support from hedge-fund managers may help environmental groups opposing the plant erase the advantage the energy industry typically enjoys in paying for lobbyists, lawyers and publicity, some academics and environmentalists said. ``The concern is beginning to extend beyond the usual environmentalist constituencies that want to close the plant,'' said Gerald Benjamin, professor of political science at State University of New York in New Paltz. ``That is a sign of danger for the people trying to keep the plant open.'' Indian Point, located on the Hudson River 33 miles north of New York City's Times Square, is about 20 miles west of Greenwich, Connecticut, home to Jones's Tudor Investment Corp. and one of the biggest concentrations of hedge funds. The federal government should immediately assume responsibility for security at Indian Point, and spent fuel at the facility should be moved to ``hardened'' storage bunkers, Jones said. The money manager, whose fund has returned about 27 percent per year after fees since its founding in 1986, said an attack might spread radiation and ``take out the financial capital of the U.S.''
Security Measures
Entergy spokesman Jim Steets said Jones is ``clearly misinformed on how well-protected the plant is and the technologies in place that would prevent the kind of scenarios he's talking about.'' Entergy has stepped up security since Sept. 11, spending about $7 million in the past 18 months on such things as vehicle barriers, explosive detection equipment and improvements to the security force. Entergy hired former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's company to provide emergency planning and security consulting for the four nuclear power plants Entergy runs in the Northeast, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Entergy hired Giuliani Partners LLC, which was formed by Giuliani after he left office in 2001, the wire service said. Any decision to close Indian Point would rest with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses and regulates nuclear plants. While the commission has temporarily shut plants for safety problems, it has never permanently closed one. ``Indian Point is no more threatened than any other plant, and we have had no specific threats to nuclear plants anywhere in the country since Sept. 11,'' said Diane Screnci, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman.
Funding
The steps Jones advocates for Indian Point match those of Riverkeeper Inc., a Garrison, New York, environmental group that is campaigning to close Indian Point. In his speech, Jones urged support for Riverkeeper and called for members of the financial community to contact politicians such as New York Governor George Pataki. Jones also is putting his money where his mouth is, said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior counsel for Riverkeeper. Tudor Jones has given a ``very significant'' donation for further publicity about Indian Point . ``We are going to be able to gear up this campaign'' because of his funding, he said. While Jones seldom appears in the press, and declined to answer questions after his speech, he has been willing to support environmental causes publicly before. In the mid-1990s, he backed the Save Our Everglades Committee, a group that was seeking to have sugar growers do more to clean up the Florida Everglades, according to the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. He provided almost $3.7 million to the organization, or 89 percent of its budget, according to a September 1996 Miami Herald article that cited campaign finance records. He also met with reporters to pitch his cause. Jones has three children, a passion for the outdoors, and a second home in the Florida Keys, the newspapers reported.
Capitalists
Support among money managers for shutting down Indian Point goes beyond Jones, said Riverkeeper's executive director, Alex Matthiessen. ``Financial folks are getting increasingly involved,'' Matthiessen said in an interview. He and Kennedy declined to say how much Jones and other Wall Street supporters have donated or promised to the organization. Glenn Dubin, who oversees more than $5 billion at Highbridge Capital Management, says the growing number of hedge-fund managers among Riverkeeper's contributors shows that opposition to Indian Point cuts across the normal split between capitalists and environmentalists. ``What could be a better representation of the capitalist viewpoint than hedge fund managers,'' he said in an interview. ``If something were to happen to Indian Point it would dwarf what happened on Sept. 11,'' he said.
Wall Street
Louis Bacon, chairman of Moore Capital Management Inc. in New York City is a longtime supporter of Riverkeeper. Roy Winnick, a spokesman for Bacon, said there is no ``organized effort by the hedge-fund community per se'' to oppose Indian Point. ``There is just a number of people who have individually concluded that Indian Point is a concern,'' said Winnick, who is with the Kekst & Co. public relations firm. Tudor Capital and Moore Capital, which also has about $8 billion under management, are among the biggest hedge fund firms based on total assets. David Kowitz, one of two managing partners at Indus Capital Management, a $600 million hedge fund firm, said he has given money to Riverkeeper and tried to recruit people based on their concern about the safety of Indian Point following the Sept. 11 attacks. Kowitz was a partner with George Soros's firm until June 2000, at which time he left with the rest of the Asia equities team to start Indus. He said he's meeting with three former Goldman, Sachs & Co. partners, who he declined to name, to try to enlist their support. ``The Wall Street community, because of their growing interest and ability to fund this campaign, are in a position to single-handedly bring about the closure of Indian Point,'' said Matthiessen, whose group's budget is about $2.5 million this year.
--Robert Dieterich in the New York newsroom (212) 893-4485, or at rdieterich@bloomberg.net, with reporting by Maite Junco and Richard Schwartz in New York. Editor: Wiegold, Siler.
Story illustration: For more information about U.S. nuclear power plants, enter {NRCR }. For a recent Federal Emergency Management Agency report on Indian Point, see http://www.fema.gov/regions/ii/2003/indianpt022103.shtm
There is simply no viable power source on Earth that is safer or more environmentally sound than nukes.
Energy is the foodstuff of civilization. Attacking it is nothing short of an assault on the foundations of civilization.
This is, of course, the entire point of the exercise.
Can you say NIMBYism? I knew you could.
How did this guy get to be a successful money manager when he's obviously a communist?
You're right about that.
But what will really happen is the NY Utilities will buy energy from Western PA, Ohio and Indiana generators, who will generate power by burning low-grade coal. And where will the smoke from those coal-fired plants wind up?
You get three guesses, and the first two don't count.
Oddly, there is more energy in the radioactive waste produced by coal burning plants than there is in the coal itself!
If a nuke dumped equivalent amounts of radium, thorium and uranium straight into the atmosphere, it would be shut down and sued into oblivion.
To this day if you ask most people and politicians in the NY area what the Storm King Mountain project was all about, most of them will say it was a nuclear plant. So not only are they ugly up there, but they're stupid as well.
I find it ironic when I see these jean-clad, ponytailed, greasy, dirty, slimey environmentalist wacko types demonstrating for "the environment", when in fact the genesis of "their movement" was the protection of the interests of privileged and wealthy landowners.
There's brinkley, with her huge home, lighted tennis court, pool, etc. not caring a bit about the cost of electricity to the rest of the folks.
I have found that, when asked, those opposed to Indian Point cannot tell you why other than "Its' dangerous". Forget about asking them how a plant works.
Typical self-absorbed airhead celebrity. Doesn't care about anybody but herself, especially not the "little folk" who will lose their jobs and homes and families if the plant shuts down.
Christie (and Alec Baldwin) were responsible for the destruction of the incredibly productive (from a research viewpoint) and valuable High Flux Beam Reactor at Brookhaven Lab back in 1999. A good many brilliant and productive scientists abd technicians lost their jobs and careers as a result, but Christie and Alec didn't give a crap about them. They just wanted to advance their cause (anti-nuke). Clinton Crony Bill Richardson was DOE secretary at the time and made the decision to bulldoze the HFBR in a typically Clintonesque manner. He did a lot of jawboning about doing an environmental impact study and seeking "consensus", but then trashed the place a few weeks after having a "private meeting" with Christie Brinkley. Given the Clinton Administration proclivities, one can't help but wonder what kind of "payments" or "servives" were rendered during that meeting.
Now the scumbums in New Mexico have elected this waste-of-human-flesh buttwipe as their Governor. May he (and they) rot in hell for the pain and harm he brought upon innocent and honest persons and families.
These "temporary" waste holding facilities will be required to store the nuclear fuel until permanent disposal facilities are available at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, or some other location. Unfortunately, it is impossible to open up Yucca Mountain because of opposition from the very people who are so up in arms about nuclear fuel at Indian Point.
Then, if permanent disposal, by some miracle of politics, becomes available, there will be the Battle Royale when the times comes to move the nuclear fuel on public roads or by railroad...
Hey, Bill Gross, perhaps the most well known fixed income manager on the planet was very vocally against the war two months ago. But just because you HAVE a hedge fund doesn't mean you are good at it. I know at least one guy who I am convinced is slightly retarded who runs a hedge fund. And know he is not a numbers savant like Rainman. He's stupid accross the board.
Which is totally stupid anyway. These jackasses say they don't want nuclear plants around. But then they say they don't want to move nuclear material. So what to do with it? Why, just leave it at the plants. Well, then, why not use it there to do something useful while burning it up in the process? No, can't have that, either. Rotten jerks.
they are a few miles from me and I have a good friend and co-worker who lives there.
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